Mitchell Hamline School of Law

Mitchell Hamline School of Law (MHL) is a  private law school in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It is accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA) and offers full- and part-time legal education for its Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree. It has currently estimated alumni of over 19,000 lawyers. The school offers more practical externships than any other school in the Upper Midwest. It was the first American law school to offer an ABA-accredited hybrid J.D. program.

All students, regardless of their program take the traditional 1L and 2L courses: criminal, torts, contracts, property, civil procedure, evidence, constitutional law, etc.

All 1Ls also participate in a comprehensive course called Lawyering (formerly WRAP, for Writing and Representation: Advice & Persuasion). It focuses on legal research, reasoning, and writing, while providing a broad overview of critical skills like client interviewing and counselling, contract negotiation and drafting, dispute mediation, and pretrial litigation.

Generally, all students follow the same curriculum and hypothetical cases, regardless of whether they are a traditional bricks-and-mortar (BAM) student, weekend student, evening student, hybrid student, or executive student. On some occasions, students from one learning model get the opportunity to interact with students of another.

As a top-rated school in the subject matter, Mitchell Hamline has a very intentional focus on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and Mediation.

For example, students start their training in ADR during their very first semester. Hybrid students start conducting mediations in their very first week of law school. Mitchell Hamline has also rebranded its course in "Civil Procedure" as "Civil Dispute Resolution," which infuses the traditional curriculum of the procedure with other methods such as mediation, arbitration, and tribal law procedure. It also sends a message to students right away that MHL plans to education lawyers well versed in alternative methods of civil dispute and procedures.