Frank Wu, a professor at University of California Hastings College of Law and the school’s former chancellor and dean, praised Mitchell Hamline’s innovative approach to legal education in a recent blog post on the Huffington Post titled “Reforming Legal Education: The Mitchell Hamline Example.”
Wu credited the school’s leaders for what he called “three smart decisions”:
- The December 2015 combination of Hamline University School of Law and William Mitchell College of Law that created Mitchell Hamline.
- The school’s Hybrid Program, the first part on-campus, part online JD program approved by the ABA.
- Mitchell Hamline’s focus on a rigorous curriculum that prepares students for a legal career, a culture embodied in the school’s motto: “Great in theory. Even better in practice.”
Wu sees Mitchell Hamline’s approach to reinventing legal education as something other law schools in the nation could learn from.
“We can and should learn from one another, about how to change the very nature of training the next generation of professionals,” Wu wrote in the article.
The article follows a visit Wu made to Minneapolis a few weeks ago, where he was the opening speaker at the Sept. 13 Mitchell Hamline Board of Trustees retreat.
