Empire College School of Law | |
---|---|
Parent school | Empire College |
Established | 1973 |
School type | Private/For-Profit |
Dean | Brian J. Purtill [1] |
Location | Santa Rosa, California, US 38°28′03″N122°43′43″W / 38.4674°N 122.7286°W |
Faculty | 56 (includes adjunct) [2] |
Bar pass rate | 35% (July 2019 1st time takers) [3] |
Website | law |
The Empire College School of Law, part of Empire College and founded in 1973, is a four-year evening law school program approved by the Committee of Bar Examiners of the State Bar of California. [4] As an evening-only law school, the School of Law is not accredited by the American Bar Association. [5] As a result, graduates are generally only eligible to take the bar and practice law in California. Empire Law School's professors are practicing attorneys and judges from the North Bay area who teach in their specialty areas.
Empire graduates comprise approximately 25 percent of the Sonoma County Bar and include members of the judiciary in Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino, Merced, Lassen, Lake, and Calaveras counties.[ citation needed ]
Following a year of construction, the college opened its new campus in January 2000 which includes, as tenants, two California superior courts for the County of Sonoma at which civil cases are conducted. Moot Court and Trial Practice classes are held in the courtrooms.[ citation needed ] In the 2000 Roger J. Traynor California Appellate Moot Court Competition, the Empire College Moot Court Team won first place in both The California Academy of Appellate Lawyers Award for Best Brief and The Bernard E. Witkin Award for Excellence In Appellate Advocacy. [6] In 2018, Empire's team won first place in oral argument at the competition, with both of their team members ranked among the top oralists. [7]
In July, 2022, Empire reached an agreement, approved by the State Bar of California Committee of Bar Examiners to become a branch of the Monterey College of Law, pursuant to which it would transition from a for-profit, approved law school, to a non-profit, approved branch of Monterey, while retaining the Empire name. [8]
A law school in the United States is an educational institution where students obtain a professional education in law after first obtaining an undergraduate degree.
Admission to the bar in the United States is the granting of permission by a particular court system to a lawyer to practice law in the jurisdiction. Each U.S. state and jurisdiction has its own court system and sets its own rules and standards for bar admission. In most cases, a person is admitted or called to the bar of the highest court in the jurisdiction and is thereby authorized to practice law in the jurisdiction. Federal courts, although often overlapping in admission standards with states, set their own requirements.
The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students; it is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. Founded in 1878, the ABA's stated activities are the setting of academic standards for law schools, and the formulation of model ethical codes related to the legal profession. As of fiscal year 2017, the ABA had 194,000 dues-paying members, constituting approximately 14.4% of American attorneys. In 1979, half of all lawyers in the U.S. were members of the ABA. In 2016, less than one third of the 1.3 million lawyers in the U.S. were included in the ABA membership of 400,000, with figures largely unchanged in 2024.
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