Before the
COVID-19 pandemic, online law schools were uncommon outside of California. In 2015,
Mitchell Hamline School of Law was the first "ABA-approved law school to receive an ABA variance to offer a half on-campus/half online JD program." In 2018,
Syracuse University College of Law was given approval by the ABA to conduct a JD program that was mostly online. As of 2025, 20 ABA accredited law schools have JD programs with at least a 50 percent online component, with 7 of those programs listed as fully online. The others have residencies ranging from a few days a year to in-person sessions on weekends.
History Early years Law school study by correspondence has existed in the United States since 1890 when Sprague Correspondence School of Law was established by William C. Sprague in Detroit, Michigan. It eventually merged with Blackstone Institute, and later was known as Blackstone School of Law. Among the school’s early graduates was Antoinette D. Leach, first woman attorney in Indiana, who in 1893 became the first woman admitted by the
Indiana Supreme Court to practice law in Indiana. In 1908,
La Salle Extension University was founded in Chicago by
Jesse Grant Chapline. It operated until 1982. Among the La Salle Extension University graduates who went on to make contributions in law and politics are governors
Harold J. Arthur and
Eurith D. Rivers, Senator
Craig L. Thomas, U.S. Representatives
John S. Gibson and
William T. Granahan, and African-American leaders
Arthur Fletcher,
Jessie M. Rattley, and
Gertrude Rush. Other correspondence law schools included the American Correspondence School of Law of Chicago, Columbian Correspondence College of Law in Washington D.C., and New York Correspondence School of Law in New York. They were innovative for the time in providing many poor, working-class, women, and ethnic minorities educational opportunities.
Consumer (student) protection In 1994, the
St. Petersburg (Florida) Times published information about a Rev. James Kirk who opened a diploma mill calling it
LaSalle University in
Slidell, Louisiana, which, while being investigated by Louisiana authorities, "contend[ed] it [was] exempt from licensing because even though it offers degrees in engineering and law, it is a religious institution." In 2007, the
California State Legislature passed legislation transferring oversight authority of unaccredited law schools from the
Bureau for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education (which oversees non-law education), to the State Bar in response to the historically low bar passage rate of students graduating from unaccredited law schools, including correspondence/online schools.
Present day Northwestern California University School of Law is the oldest existing correspondence law school in the United States. It was founded in 1982 and began presenting its correspondence program entirely online in 2002. It is the first online law school to offer Internet based and faculty led videoconferencing sessions for students for some courses. In 1996,
Abraham Lincoln University began a hybrid in-class and correspondence approach to law school, designed to offer scheduling flexibility to students, before adding an online component in 2004. The first law school to offer a degree program completely online was
Concord Law School, the law school of
Purdue University Global, the online division for Purdue University, which started in 1998. Concord graduated its first class in November 2002. As of 2006, Concord was the largest of the seven distance learning law schools. The California School of Law, founded in 2007, is the first law school to utilize synchronous technology in all courses. Such technology provides direct communication between professors and students in live "real time" virtual classrooms. == Correspondence and online legal education in California ==