A Brief History of William Mitchell and Hamline University Law Schools
Mitchell Hamline School of Law was born out of a 2015 combination of the William Mitchell College of Law and Hamline University School of Law. With over 19,000 alumni and forty faculty members, the new law school is leading the way in innovating new legal education opportunities in its blended programs and experiential education in particular.
One historical stream of Mitchell Hamline School of Law goes back to the 1900 founding of a night law school for working people who needed an alternative to daytime law school. Hiram Stevens, a Vermont native who had read law in New York, and Clarence Halbert and Ambrose Tighe, who had degrees from Yale, worked with Thomas O’Brien, who read law in Minnesota and Moses Clapp, originally from Indiana and the University of Wisconsin Law School, to form the St. Paul College of Law. The college, with a first class of 20 students and a tuition of $60, eventually received ABA approval in 1938.
Former Justice William Mitchell of the Minnesota Supreme Court was to be its first dean, but when he unexpectedly died, Hiram Stevens took the deanship. One of the attorneys and judges who made up its faculty was Harry Blackmun, later to serve on the United States Supreme Court, who taught at the college from 1935 to 1941. Another St Paul College of Law faculty member as Warren Burger ’31, who became chief justice of the United States. The first woman to serve on the Minnesota Supreme Court was William Mitchell alumna Rosalie Wahl, one of many alumni from both William Mitchell and Hamline University School of Law to serve with distinction on state trial and appellate courts.
In 1956, St. Paul College of Law merged with the Minneapolis-Minnesota College of Law to become the William Mitchell College of Law. Minneapolis-Minnesota College of Law was itself the product of the merger of four Minneapolis-based night law schools: the Northwestern College of Law and the Minneapolis College of Law, both founded in 1912; the Minnesota College of Law, founded in 1913, and the YMCA College of Law, founded in 1919.
William Mitchell became known for its pioneering work in practical legal education, including highly ranked clinical programs, and centers in American Indian law, children and the law, intellectual property, and law and business. Mitchell established the first half online/half in-person J.D. program at an ABA-approved law school.
The second historical stream that became Mitchell Hamline began when Hamline University started offering a program in legal education soon after its founding in Red Wing, Minnesota in 1854. The University was named after Methodist Bishop and lawyer Leonidas Lent Hamline, whose donations funded the establishment of the University. The law school, led by lawyer Benjamin F. Crary, offered a two-year legal studies program for an annual tuition of $15 per year in 1857. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, most of Hamline’s students joined the Union army; and, bereft of students, the legal studies program closed.
Hamline’s second venture into legal education began in August 1974, when it became a home to a new law school organized by about three dozen law students attending the proprietary Metropolitan School of Law in Minneapolis. Fearing that their law school was not advancing toward ABA accreditation, the students met at the Normandy Inn in Minneapolis in December, 1972, to found a new law school built from the ground up. The Metropolitan students recruited judges and lawyers such as Midwest National Bank vice-president James Polzak to assist in the founding of the new Midwestern School of Law, and Hamline’s first dean, 31-year-old lawyer Richard T. Oakes ’69. In 1975, after encouragement by Hamline trustees such as Minnesota Supreme Court Justice James Otis, the law school became an official part of Hamline University; and it was provisionally accredited by the ABA in the same year.
Hamline University School of Law inaugurated one of the first weekend part-time J.D. programs in the country. It became especially known for its public service focus in areas like children and the law, and its highly ranked Dispute Resolution Institute and Health Law Institute, which offered specialized certificates to practicing lawyers and non-lawyers. Hamline’s interdisciplinary approach to legal education was reflected in its dual degrees: J.D./MBA, J.D./Master in Public Administration, and J.D./Master in Fine Arts in Writing; as well as its Master in the Study of Law (MSL) degree for non-lawyers.
An animated history of the predecessor law schools