The Jacksonville University College of Law is at a pivotal moment since it welcomed its first students a little more than two years ago.
Our remarkable early progress is not overnight success. Our big ambitions are realistic and attainable.
Long before a founding dean was hired, the vision of JU President Tim Cost, his senior leadership team and trustees and more than a decade of careful planning and hard work went into building a strong foundation for success.
This critical groundwork was bolstered by the enormous support of the city of Jacksonville, its bench, Bar and the people of Jacksonville and the region. Thank you.
Consequently, your law school achieved several important milestones faster than expected and in a manner that makes everyone involved proud.
Now, we are making the turn from completing the launch of a new law school to charting its future.
Some things we will not change. We still will color within the lines and deliver all the fundamentals of legal education in the best possible way.
Yet we also will continue to innovate and demonstrate our “Jacksonville Pollack-style” creativity throughout our curriculum of legal theory and practical training to experiment and improve legal education.
From the start and each day since, we work to deliver the best possible legal education to our students and contribute to the university and the community that have been the springboard for our success.
Moreover, in our bold educational experiment our remarkable students never have been guinea pigs. They are more like test pilots helping us check out, redesign and build a state-of-the-art educational rocket while we fly it exploring exciting new educational spaces.
Our students are receiving an excellent legal education and an entrepreneurial experience rolled into one.
Seven priorities of the Jacksonville University College of Law distinguish its excellence and value to students, the profession and the public who our future lawyers will serve.
• Professionalism and ethics are what surveys show that lawyers throughout Florida and the U.S. believe, by a large margin, deserve attention. This top priority is consistently echoed by the leaders of the Northeast Florida bench and Bar, businesses and people who are consumers of legal services when we ask them to tell us what the most needed improvement is in preparing new lawyers for their careers.
• Skills training inside and outside the classroom is critically important to hone the tools new lawyers must use when they begin the broad range of jobs and different careers that legal education prepares them to pursue.
It is easier to find a rare Florida panther in the wild than a lawyer who does not believe that law school graduates need more and better practical education.
• Bar exam preparation is still essential in almost every state, including Florida, for graduates who choose to use their J.D. to practice law and earn a license to do so.
Although the Bar exam is an imperfect, expensive and often controversial method for assessing whether law graduates have the minimal competency required for practice, and there are considerable efforts afoot across the country to improve the test and offer alternative paths to practice, it remains the necessary gateway to start a career for most law graduates throughout the country.
As such it is the responsibility of a law school to facilitate and support preparation of students for success on the test. We note here the singular quality of the Florida Board of Bar Examiners with gratitude for their constant outreach, guidance, and assistance meeting our responsibilities to ready our students for the test.
• Competent, just and ethical use of technology is imperative, not niche expertise.
Lawyers historically have been late adaptors of new technology, often for good reasons. Legal educators are even slower. In a world when the only constant is continuously accelerating disruptive change, often driven by new technology, lawyers cannot adequately function, much less satisfy increasing professional requirements for the use of technology.
Nor should they miss the opportunity to use new technological tools to expand the availability of affordable, quality legal services including to underserved and less advantaged communities and people.
Law students who are prepared to use new legal technology will have a competitive advantage when they enter the job market.
• Service is a hallmark of our honorable profession of law. The privilege of a law degree and license to practice enables lawyers to do well but obliges them to do good too.
There are myriad ways that lawyers advance the public good, uphold equal justice and sustain our constitutional democracy through their daily paid legal work and as volunteers. Inculcating dedication and enthusiasm for the important and deeply gratifying role of serving the public good can and should be a priority in every law school. Indeed, it is a signature strength of legal education in America.
• Leadership training is a subject receiving widespread attention by legal educators. That is because, for reasons that have not been adequately studied much less understood, lawyers have always served as leaders in government, politics, education, business and many other top positions in disproportionate numbers that far exceed their relatively small percentage of the population.
Is leadership innate, learned, and teachable are important questions.
• Adaptability is arguably the most important and certainly the newest and most challenging characteristic that forward looking educators should embrace.
Yes, students should be “practice ready,” that is, prepared for a worthwhile job upon graduation that matches their talent and aspirations. But they also should be equipped with the intellectual theoretical capacity, critical thinking and lifelong learning skills to adjust and qualify for other jobs, including ones that do not yet exist.
And they should be equipped to help solve future problems we have not imagined.
Similarly, for a law school to remain relevant and effective requires infusing its institutional DNA with the restless dynamic motivation to improve, assess what it is doing, question whether it can do it better and if so, determine how best to adapt to all the new things under the sun that lawyers will need to do.
Our educational priorities are not just taught and learned in stand-alone courses, specialty electives, work experiences and special programs. We are intentional about finding ways to weave these subjects into the fabric of every aspect of legal education during all the long days and three short years students spend earning their law degrees.
The examples of how this is done, even in traditional required law school courses, are too extensive to describe in this small space.
However, it is worth underscoring the immeasurable value of what our students learn from their role models, mentors and teachers from law practice and the local voluntary Bar associations. This occurs from their first day at convocation in the Duval County Courthouse and continuously until graduation, which we will celebrate for the first time in May 2025.
Something special is going on at your law school and we hope you continue to be an indispensable part of it.
Buckle your seatbelts and join our adventurous journey educating new lawyers who will make us proud and the future better.