William Mitchell College of Law

William Mitchell College of Law was a private, independent law school located in St. Paul, Minnesota, United States, from 1956 to 2015. Accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA), it offered full- and part-time legal education in pursuit of the Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree. On December 9, 2015, Hamline University School of Law merged into William Mitchell College of Law, and became the Mitchell Hamline School of Law.

History

William Mitchell was the product of five predecessor schools, all in the Twin Cities, which ultimately merged in 1956. Although they varied in size and location, each one was originally established as a part-time, evening-program law school. This was meant to open the doors of the legal profession to men and women working full-time to support themselves and their families.

St. Paul College of Law

William Mitchell's first predecessor, the St. Paul College of Law, was founded in 1900 by five attorneys in Ramsey County. They intended the school to be an alternative for legal education in the state, with the only others being the University of Minnesota Law School and the outmoded nineteenth-century practice of "reading" law with a licensed practitioner.

Three of the five were transplants from the east coast: Hiram F. Stevens, Clarence Halbert, and Ambrose Tighe. Stevens, a Vermont native, had read law with New York Court of Appeals Judge John K. Porter and graduated from Columbia Law School. When former Justice William Mitchell of the Minnesota Supreme Court died before assuming the deanship, Stevens took his place. Halbert came from New York, having graduated from Yale Law School. Tighe, also from New York, earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Yale, where he was a member of the college's Skull and Bones society. The other two founders, Thomas O'Brien and Moses Clapp, came from Minnesota and Indiana. O'Brien read law in St. Paul and later served as a justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court. Clapp graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School, served three terms as Minnesota Attorney General, and later represented Minnesota in the United States Senate.

The St. Paul College of Law's first class had twenty students and annual tuition amounted to $60. During its official existence, the school was housed in three different locations, all in downtown St. Paul. Classes were originally held in the top floor of the former Ramsey County Courthouse, which had stood at Fourth and Wabasha Streets before being torn down. In 1917, the school moved to the McColl Building, which still stands today, at Fifth and Jackson Streets. Finally, from 1921 until after the merger, the law school occupied what was known as the Berkey Mansion, at Sixth and College Streets. That building, also long since torn down, was located in the middle of the current Kellogg Boulevard, just south of the entrance to the Minnesota History Center.

Until 1938, when it was accredited by the ABA, the law school relied entirely upon local attorneys and judges for its faculty and administration. One of them was Harry Blackmun, a professor at the St. Paul College of Law from 1935 to 1941. Years later, after the merger, Justice Blackmun also served as a Trustee of William Mitchell. Others were Minnesota Supreme Court Justices George Bunn and Oscar Hallam, both of whom served as deans of the law school while on the bench.

Minneapolis law schools

Four Minneapolis law schools formed, all of which would eventually merge into William Mitchell: the Northwestern College of Law and the Minneapolis College of Law in 1912, the Minnesota College of Law in 1913, and the YMCA College of Law in 1919. Their apparent lack of institutional stability stands in contrast to the history of the St. Paul school. Among them they occupied more than a dozen different locations in downtown Minneapolis and were often beset by financial difficulties.

The Northwestern school was founded by George Young, a University of Minnesota law graduate and local entrepreneur. When the University of Minnesota began to consider discontinuing its part-time evening program in 1912, Young sensed an opportunity and stepped into the breach to provide a similar service. Northwestern operated without incident until 1926, when Young died. By 1928, the school had declared bankruptcy and its students transferred to the Minneapolis College of Law. Similarly, the YMCA school ceased functioning in 1934, despite discussions of a formal merger with the Minnesota College of Law.