Officials at the University of North Texas-Dallas College of Law tried something different. They welcomed a diverse group of students, many with grit but not the grades or test scores to get into top law schools. They kept tuition low to avoid six-figure debt.

But that plan will succeed only if students graduate, pass the bar exam and find jobs. A key group with the American Bar Association doubts UNT-Dallas can pull it off and has recommended that the school not be accredited.

At stake are the futures of 360 students and more than $100 million that taxpayers have invested in the University of North Texas law school, which opened two years ago in downtown Dallas.

The bar association accredits the nation’s law schools. Its role “is to safeguard the public interest by not allowing programs that aren’t up to snuff,” Barry Currier, the ABA’s managing director of accreditation and legal education, told The Dallas Morning News.

Despite the setback, UNT’s mission continues to draw support.

“We don’t need more carbon copies of existing law schools. We need more doing different things,” said Andrew Morriss, dean of Texas A&M’s law school in Fort Worth.

What’s happening in Dallas reflects a national debate in American legal education.

There are calls to democratize law schools and make sure minority and working-class students can join a profession that remains mostly white, male and privileged.

Meanwhile, high debt and poor job prospects have scared off many a prospective lawyer. After peaking in 2004, the number of people applying to law schools each year has dropped nearly in half.

First-tier law schools such as Yale, Stanford and Michigan can still pick the top students. But other schools have to admit those with lower test scores and grades to keep their seats filled.

At the same time, passing rates on state bar exams have dropped, especially in Texas. In 2013, 85 percent of students passed the Texas bar exam on their first try. Last year, 71 percent did.

UNT has expressly not chased after students who had great grades in college and scored high on the Law School Admission Test.

LSAT scores and undergraduate grades help predict how well students will do in law school. Students who do well in law school are more likely to pass the bar.

An advisory group with the bar association is particularly worried about students whose LSAT scores and grades put them in the bottom fourth of their class, the group said in a July report.

LSAT scores range from 120 to 180. At UNT-Dallas, students in the bottom fourth had scores of 143 or lower — a number that one watchdog group says puts them at “extreme risk” of failing the bar. Only one law school in the state, Texas Southern, has a lower LSAT score for that group of students. In 2015, just 57 percent of Texas Southern students passed the bar on the first try.

No UNT students have taken the bar yet because the school is so new.

There’s no magic minimum LSAT score or college GPA that students need to become lawyers, Currier said.

But the lower the score or grades, the greater the burden for admissions offices to look for other qualities that may predict future success, he said.

UNT-Dallas leaders say they do just that.

“We don’t just take people. We look at their backgrounds,” said Royal Furgeson, the law school dean and a former federal judge. The student body includes military veterans and people who started their own businesses.

Some of their stories, he said, would make you cry.

“I wouldn’t change who we’re taking. I love who we’re taking,” Furgeson said.

There’s an old tale about law school: A dean tells incoming students, “Look to your left, look to your right, because one of you won’t be here by the end of the year.”

After his first semester at UNT, Tyler Mendez came close to being that one. He had a 1.7 grade-point average and wound up on academic probation last fall.

A total of 31 first-year students ended up on probation then, the report said. That’s 20 percent of the class.

Students on probation had to have at least a 2.0 GPA to stay in school. So Mendez, 24, doubled down on studying and shaved hours from his work schedule. He brought his GPA up to a 2.4.

Mendez, who struggled with a learning disability and got in a lot of trouble growing up in suburban Bedford, is headed back for another year of law school.

“I persevere. I’ve had to do it my entire life,” Mendez said.

Tricia Wachsmann, another student starting her second year, said she had the scores and grades to get into other law schools. But UNT’s price — about $15,000 a year, the lowest law school tuition in the state — couldn’t be beat.

Wachsmann is a hairstylist raising a 9-year-old son on her own.

“I couldn’t rationalize putting myself into $200,000 worth of debt when I have a little boy to take care of,” she said.

She was also drawn to UNT’s mission of producing lawyers who will serve more middle- and working-class people, not only corporations and the elite.

Lawyers in those jobs tend to charge much less, so they earn less. But UNT’s low cost means she would be more able to make the tradeoff.

“There’s something wrong in our society if something that protects our rights and our freedoms, we can’t even afford it,” said Wachsmann, 32.

UNT-Dallas College of Law intends to argue its case to the bar association in October. Without accreditation, graduates can’t take the bar exam or practice law in Texas.

The first class of UNT law students is scheduled to take the bar in 2017. If it’s not accredited by then, the school would ask the Texas Supreme Court to let them take the test.

Despite the risk, several students said they intend to stick around for the fight and have no intention of switching schools.

That includes Melinda Chaney, who belongs to the inaugural class and returns to campus this month.

“We will be bigger, better and stronger in the near future,” she said. “I am very optimistic of this.”