The process of accreditation by the ABA takes at least three years. The Association monitors a potential law school candidate during that time to make sure it meets the standards of other ABA-accredited schools. The end result is an equality of education among any one of its approved schools. A school with an ABA seal of approval will be on par with the others with regard to comprehensiveness of training and education.
A degree from an ABA-accredited school allows graduates to sit for the bar anywhere in the country. This is critical because you cannot work as an attorney without having passed the bar in the state where you intend to seek employment. If you attend a non-ABA school, you can only take the bar exam in the state where it is located, and most likely nowhere else. Many law firms only accept ABA-accredited graduates, and graduates usually start at higher salaries than those without an ABA-approved law degree.
Each state has its own rules and regulations for admittance to its bar, and most states have their own accreditation systems for law schools there. If you attend a law school in Maine that is not ABA-approved, but the Maine Bar Association has accredited it by its own standards, then you are eligible to take Maine's bar exam and you are employable in that state. In some states, this is sufficient. For instance, the California Bar Association is the largest and most respected in the country, and many of its law schools have CBA accreditation but not ABA accreditation. If graduates can pass the bar there, which is the most difficult in the United States, their employment options are limited to California, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Other states with several state-accredited schools include Massachusetts, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia.
The ABA notes that it awards no ranking system to the schools that it has accredited. As far as the ABA is concerned, all its approved law schools are created equal and the Association disclaims any such notoriety. While rankings have nothing to do with the ABA, many law schools are quick to point out their status on Leiter's Law School Rankings, the Princeton Review, the National Jurist and U.S. News and World Report. These can offer students helpful guidance in choosing a school, but they have nothing to do with the American Bar Association.