| Mississippi College School of Law | |
| Motto: | Motion to succeed |
| Parent: | Mississippi College |
| Established: | 1930 |
| Type: | Private |
| Parent Endowment: | $89.2 Million [1] |
| Head: | John P. Anderson |
| City: | Jackson |
| State: | Mississippi |
| Country: | US |
| Coordinates: | 32.303°N -90.1873°W |
| Students: | 432 (FT)[2] |
| Ranking: | 168th (tie) (2024)[3] |
| Faculty: | 25 (FT) 10 (PT) |
| Bar Pass Rate: | 75.61% (ultimate 2021)[4] |
| Aba Profile: | Mississippi College School of Law |
Mississippi College School of Law (MC Law or MC Law School) is an American Bar Association accredited law school. MC Law is one of two law schools in the state of Mississippi, and is the only law school in the capital city of Jackson, Mississippi. The school is a professional school of Mississippi College, founded in 1826.[5] [6]
The law school was founded in 1930 as the Jackson School of Law. In 1975, the law school was acquired by Mississippi College. In 1980, MC Law gained full ABA accreditation.[7] MC Law is one of two law schools in the state of Mississippi, and the only law school in the capital, Jackson. Since 1990, MC Law has been a member of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS).[8]
On May 15, 2020, the council of the American Bar Association’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar met remotely and determined this school and nine others had significant noncompliance with Standard 316.[9] This Standard was revised in 2019 to provide that at least 75% of an accredited law school’s graduates who took a bar exam must pass one within two years of graduation. The school was asked to submit a report by February 1, 2021, and if the council did not find the report demonstrated compliance, the school would be asked to appear before the council at its May, 2021 meeting. Compliance with the 75% standard had not been demonstrated by statistics released by the ABA at the end of April, 2021, which showed the college with a 73.83% pass rate for 2018 graduates, compared with 72.64% for 2017 graduates.[10] However, the council found on May 18 that the college had demonstrated compliance based on data for 2019 graduates, for whom the pass rate was 79.2%.[11]
The Mississippi College School of Law is located in the historic sector of downtown Jackson, within walking distance of City Hall, the Mississippi Supreme Court, the Federal District Courts, and the Governor’s Mansion.
In December 2005, MC Law completed a construction and renovation project which more than doubled the size of the original campus. A new classroom building was added along with an auditorium building. The Law Library occupies three floors in the Law School’s West Wing, and contains one of the largest Mississippi collections of legal books, journals and microforms including statutes, court reports, digests, encyclopedias, treatises, loose-leaf services, periodicals and government documents. Beginning in 2013, the Law Library is also the repository of the Mississippi Legislature’s video archive footage. The main campus for Mississippi College is located about 15 miles to the west in Clinton, Mississippi.
The 2022 entering class had an enrollment of 126, with an LSAT median score of 150 and a median GPA of 3.38.[7] The average age at enrollment is 25.7. 59 colleges and universities are represented, along with 16 states.
MC Law offers courses in common law and a certificate in Louisiana civil law.[12]
MC Law has more than 25 full-time faculty members in all major disciplines of law, with more than 20% of the faculty holding a PhD or equivalent degree, and more than 50% of the faculty with an LL.M. or Masters in a specialized field.[13] The Law School provides a national certificate programs for civil law training, and hosts six centers, the Mississippi College Law Review, and a Moot Court program. The Law School also offers an externship program with more than 50 students at any one time placed in externships, and more than 85% of MC Law students completing an externship or working part-time in the legal field prior to graduation. Since 2010, the Law School has offered a one-year LL.M. degree in U.S. legal studies for students holding law degrees from foreign law programs. In 2020, MC Law students posted a bar passage statistic in the state of Mississippi of higher than 86% first time passage rate.
Each summer, MC Law offers students study abroad programs in France, Cuba, Germany, Mexico, and South Korea. MC Law was one of the first U.S. law schools to offer a program in Cuba.
According to MC Law's official 2021 ABA-required disclosures, 69.6% of the Class of 2021 obtained full-time, long-term, JD-required employment (i.e., as attorneys) within nine months after graduation, and 10.9% were not yet employed in some capacity by that time.[14]