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 future Associate Justice
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. They were 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. Although incorporated in 1912, the Minneapolis school did not offer any formal classes until 1925. Its existence was dominated by funding issues, which were only alleviated by a formal merger with the Minnesota College of Law in 1940. The Minnesota school had been the most solvent of the four, so the two surviving Minneapolis law schools became one, the Minneapolis-Minnesota College of Law.
Merger Discussions of a merger between the St. Paul College of Law and the Minneapolis-Minnesota College of Law began in 1952, but it wasn't until 1955 that they yielded tangible results. Due to shortcomings in the size of the faculty and its physical location, Minneapolis-Minnesota was repeatedly unsuccessful in gaining ABA approval. Without it, their students were not eligible for tuition assistance through the
G.I. Bill. Hervey intimated to the Minneapolis-Minnesota Trustees that he could ensure ABA approval so long as the school agreed to merge with the St. Paul College of Law. Conversely, Hervey hinted to the St. Paul Trustees that their school could lose ABA approval if they didn't agree to move forward with the merger. In the interim, students enrolled at what was in name the same law school attended classes in different cities, with the Minneapolis students at their downtown campus and the St. Paul students at the Berkey Mansion. It wasn't until 1958 that the school truly unified under one roof. The next few decades saw rapid expansion for the school and its programs. By 1976, William Mitchell had outgrown the space at St. Thomas and required larger facilities. The administration successfully purchased the building at 875
Summit Avenue, a former Catholic secondary school called Our Lady of Peace. In 1974, William Mitchell had launched its flagship legal journal, the
William Mitchell Law Review. This journal later formed half of the merged
Mitchell Hamline Law Review. By 1980, William Mitchell began offering traditional daytime classes and the option of full-time enrollment. In 1990, the school completed work on its campus additions, which included a new classroom building and the Warren E. Burger Law Library. The library houses WMCL's collection of nearly a half-million volumes, affords electronic access to thousands of additional documents, and provides extensive study space. Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor accompanied Chief Justice Burger to the dedication. Continuing its tradition of attracting adjunct faculty from the state and federal bench,
Donald Lay,
Paul Magnuson,
Donovan Frank,
Edward Toussaint, Jr. and others have taught and continue teaching at WMCL. In 2010, William Mitchell launched an intellectual property law journal,
Cybaris. In 2000, to celebrate its one hundred years of legal education, Governor
Jesse Ventura declared November 19–25 "William Mitchell Centennial Week" throughout the state. Later, William Mitchell became one of two law schools in the country that refused to let military recruiters on campus in protest against the
Solomon Amendment. ==Employment and cost of attendance==