MUMBLINGS June 29, 2006

Lawyers and law schools are probably not at the top of your interest list. However, I’ve had unique experiences with both and ask you to please stick with me while I tell you about one of them.

Not everyone has bought a law school. I have!

The University of Alabama had bought Jones School of Law in Montgomery from Charlie Bennett who had inherited it from Judge Walter B. Jones. Bennett then sold the private school which was in Montgomery to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

It was established in 1928 by Judge Jones in honor of his father who had been governor of Alabama. The school has trained many lawyers. The school did not own many physical assets; only a desk, a typewriter and a few hundred books with about 75 students. Mostly, it was just there and obviously the University did not intend to do anything with it.

It occurred to me that they might be willing to sell it to a private college and so I approached Dr. Thomas, President of the University of Alabama and asked him about purchasing it for Faulkner University in Montgomery. He asked me a lot of questions and I explained to him that we were a private institution and we would not take any tax money and certainly, we would not be a threat to his fine law school. He asked me to let him think about it.

Two or three months passed without me hearing from him and then, one day he called. He said, “Jimmy, I am interested in selling it; how much would you give me for the school.” To which I told him “I did not buy a law school every day and therefore,
would not like to put a price on his commodity”

Laughing he said, “Well Jimmy, I don’t sell a law school every day either. Let me think about it.”

Two or three more months passed and he called stating he would take $225,000.00 for it, to which I said, “O.K. I’ll pay you $50,000.00 down and $25,000.00 a year until it is paid in full.” He said he couldn’t do that and I immediately said, “Yes you can because we’ll pay you 6% interest.” He agreed and we got the school. Then finally, it was paid in full.

This was in 1984. It was housed at Huntington College. We immediately moved it to our campus on Atlanta Highway.

For years, our university struggled with it and turned out many good students. However, it was not accredited by the American Bar Association, which is the highest ranking a law school can achieve.

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We finally got as many as 400 students enrolled and they were doing well but unless your law school is ABA accredited, the graduates cannot practice law outside of Alabama until five years have passed. Naturally, this was a handicap for our students and we struggled but we aimed to get ABA accredited.

It is very difficult to get ABA accredited and we spent a lot of money, $10 million for physical facilities, and we acquired more library books, more professors and a new dean. To get accredited, we had to tighten our student requirements; therefore, our enrollment fell to 260 this year.

About the best way to judge a law school is the percentage of students who passes the bar examine. Jones was fortunate in this respect and one or two times, beat the other law schools in percentage of student passage. Last year, 100% of our students taking the bar, passed, which is almost unheard of.

There are five law schools in Alabama: University of Alabama, Sanford University with Cumberland School of Law, Birmingham School of Law, Miles College also in Birmingham and Jones in Montgomery. Only the University and Cumberland were ABA accredited and each turns out fine students.

Finally, following the second try in two years, the school received the news that Jones had been cleared as an ABA approved school of law.

With the struggles that the professors and the school had gone through to achieve this high honor, you can imagine how excited we all were to receive this recognition.

Montgomery, AL was the only state capital in the nation without an ABA accredited law school. Naturally, this achievement is great news for Montgomery and Alabama.

Prospective law students must take LSAT tests and the requirements are difficult. Many people who take the test do not pass. University of Alabama requires their students to make 155 on the LSAT and Cumberland, 153 before they can be admitted. Jones has been requiring a minimum of 147 but will push the requirements up higher.

Professors and deans of law schools make high salaries. Often, deans make more money than the presidents of the schools for which they work. We were fortunate in employing, several months ago, Charles Nelson who was acting dean of Pepperdine University in California. He has done a fine job. Before him, our dean was Wendell Mitchell, an outstanding lawyer and state senator who built the school up greatly, to strengthen it.

See you again soon, I hope.