Mitchell Hamline is recognized for its remarkable academic programs, faculty, and student-friendly environment. Below are some of the accolades earned by the school.
Academics
- Voted Best Law School and Best Non-Association Continuing Legal Education Provider by readers of Finance and Commerce and Minnesota Lawyer in 2024. Mitchell Hamline has won these two awards every year but one since 2017.
- Mitchell Hamline’s dispute resolution program, anchored by the Dispute Resolution Institute, ranks in a tie for 7th in the nation, making it 24 consecutive years the program has been ranked 9th or higher. Also highly ranked were health law, legal writing, clinical training, trial advocacy, and intellectual property law. U.S. News & World Report 2025
- Named a “top school” by preLaw magazine in Fall 2024 in Business Law.
- Named a “top school” by preLaw magazine for 2024-25 in Women in Leadership, Health Law, and Family Law.
- Won Silver in Graduate/Professional Education in the Star Tribune “Minnesota’s Best” Readers’ Choice survey in 2024, after winning Gold in 2022 and 2023. Also won Silver in 2024 in the College/University category.
- We were named a Top School for Online Offerings, Alternative Dispute Resolution, and Intellectual Property in the Spring 2024 edition of preLaw magazine.
- The Princeton Review named us a “Best Online JD Program” for 2024.
- We were listed as a “top law school” for tax and business law in preLaw magazine’s Fall 2023 edition.
- Our health law and child and family law programs earned A+ ratings in preLaw magazine’s Back to School edition in 2023.
- Student Nicole van Lierop was named by National Jurist as one of 10 Law Students of the Year in March 2022, becoming the fourth Mitchell Hamline student in six years to be honored in this way.
- Students Austyn Boothe and Daniel Sheikhan won first place in the 2021 International Negotiation Competition. Briana Al Taqatqa ’18 and Brian Kennedy ’18, both students in the blended-learning enrollment option, placed first in the same competition in 2017.
- In November 2019, Mitchell Hamline came in #3 in College Gazette’s “10 Prominent Law Schools on the Rise.” Mitchell Hamline is “perhaps the best independent law school in the country when it comes to employment,” the story said, and that the school’s clinic program makes it “truly remarkable.”
- The Warren E. Burger Library was chosen as the 2015 Best of Saint Paul Awards for Libraries.
Student Life
- preLaw magazine named Mitchell Hamline a “Most Diverse Law School” and a “Best School for Native American Students” in its Winter 2024 edition.
- Also in Winter 2024, preLaw gave Mitchell Hamline a B+ in its ranking of “Best Law School Buildings.”
- Mitchell Hamline is one of 10 law schools nationally to receive a 2018 Education, Diversity, and Greater Equality (EDGE) Award from the Council on Legal Education Opportunity.
- Minnesota Lawyer magazine honored Mitchell Hamline in 2018 with a Diversity and Inclusion group award for going “above and beyond in their efforts to create a more diverse and inclusionary community.”
Alumni
- Warren E. Burger ’31—one of only seventeen people to have served as chief justice of the United States—is a graduate of Mitchell Hamline.
- Half of Minnesota’s district court judges are Mitchell Hamline alumni.
- 49% of Minnesota’s county attorneys are Mitchell Hamline alumni.
- Mitchell Hamline alumni led the Ramsey County Bar Association for 10 consecutive years (2006-2016).