The Jacksonville University College of Law is moving into the historic former Atlantic Bank Building at 121 W. Forsyth St.
Published on March 4, 2024 at 12:11 pm
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The Jacksonville University College of Law has received provisional accreditation from the American Bar Association, two years after the program began.
The approval makes students eligible to take the bar examination, become members and qualify for jobs and clerkships open only to students graduating from ABA-accredited schools.
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The JU College of Law was created in 2022 as the state’s first new law school in more than two decades.
“This is the vision of Jacksonville University, its faculty, staff, and leadership — to build a great law school with great students who become great lawyers who go on to serve their communities with ethical professionalism and the highest ideals of a noble profession,” JU President Tim Cost stated in a news release. “Our university has applied for and received accreditation in numerous programs in disciplines across our institution, and we are proud to add law to our long list of accredited programs.”
Nick Allard, the law college’s founding dean, said he is “enormously proud” that the law school faculty, staff and students made accreditation a priority amongst all their other responsibilities.
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“The deliberate speed with which the College of Law has been able to achieve accreditation must be credited to the years of careful planning and preparation to open a law school by this university,” Allard said. “Attaining ABA accreditation is a justifiably rigorous and demanding process.”
The College of Law applied for provisional accreditation in March 2023, one year after its board of trustees voted unanimously to launch the school. The application process required the college to submit almost 500 pages of materials to the ABA accreditation council and staff. That paperwork included a feasibility study, comprehensive self-study and responses to almost 100 questions from accreditors, JU officials said.
In October, ABA-appointed faculty and administrators from law schools across the country conducted a three-day site evaluation as they toured the college, observing classes and interviewing administrators, faculty, staff and students. Then, after responding to the site visit team’s written report, college senior administrators, Cost and others met with the 21-person ABA Accreditation Committee in New Orleans, resulting in the provisional award accreditation.
Two years after a law school receives its initial ABA accreditation, it can apply for an affirmation of that, JU officials say. The school then undergoes additional site visits and must demonstrate it is maintaining the standards it displayed during the initial accreditation application process to keep its accreditation.
The JU law school fills the educational gap left on the First Coast by the closure of the the Florida Coastal School of Law, which lost accreditation in 2021 and closed after the summer semester.
JU’s third law school class will begin their studies this August, as the College of Law moves from its temporary home in the VyStar Tower and into 50,000 square feet on four floors of the historic former Atlantic Bank Building at 121 W. Forsyth St.
The move will allow expansion for more classes, faculty and staff, the college said. The building at Hogan and Forsyth streets, built in 1909, will be renamed for the Jacksonville University College of Law.
