As noted on this site back in March, Jacksonville University announced that it is planning to open a new law school. What was unusual about this announcement was that when JU made it, it announced that it was going to open the law school in under 6 months with a fall entering class starting the first week of August. (The typical timeline for opening a new law school after a public announcement is 3 years.) JU announced that it was planning to enroll 30 students in its inaugural fall class. Later in March, JU announced a Dean search and posted a hiring announcement seeking 5 inaugural faculty to teach the incoming 1L class. I live and practice in Jacksonville and have been attempting to follow developments at the new law school. (Full disclosure: I applied to be the Dean. I didn't get an interview.) I regularly check the school's website and otherwise scour the internet for information about the school, but so far, there has been very little information released publicly about the school. The website has only the barest information on it, with no information at all about the administration, faculty and staff. Through various sources, I have learned the following: the school has reached an agreement with an inaugural Dean and five faculty members, but they are not yet formally under contract. I know who the new Dean is, but the school says that they are planning to announce the Dean soon, so I won't steal their thunder by announcing it here. Suffice it to say that s/he is an experienced and respected former Dean. I also know that at least two of the new faculty members were tenured full professors recruited from other law schools. But who will they be teaching? The school appears to have fallen well short of their admissions goal of 30 (later amended to 20-30) students. As of the end of May, they had seat deposits from only about 10 students and were hoping to get a few more after the June LSAT results came out. I can't think of any other law school to start with such a small entering class in the past 25 years. The only one that came close to such a small class was Indiana Tech, which shut down in its 4th year of operation when all the graduates of its first graduation class failed the bar (one of those students appealed and was later passed). Hopefully, Jacksonville University College of Law has chosen quality over quantity for its inaugural entering class. But it is not clear who is making admissions decisions or setting admissions policy. ABA Standards require the Dean and faculty to make admissions decisions, but there was no Dean or faculty in place when these students were admitted. The school has also published a student handbook and curriculum, again without input from the non-existent law school faculty, another violation of ABA Standards. Another unusual aspect of the new law school is that it has no law library. The school is reportedly planning to use a public law library downtown initially. While there has been some hints that JU will build a dedicated law school building, the school will initially offer classes in a downtown office building where JU currently rents some space. I am hopeful that the new Dean will move quickly to improve the transparency of what is going at the new school and bring the school into compliance with ABA Standards. With less than three weeks to go until orientation, s/he has his or her hands full if the school is to have a successful launch. As a member of the Jacksonville legal community, I am pulling for the law school to succeed. Stay tuned for further updates.
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