Atlanta's John Marshall Law School

History[edit]

AJMLS was founded in 1933 in Atlanta and was among the first southern law schools to integrate.^[7] It did not receive American Bar Association (ABA) approval until 2005.^[8] In October 2017, the ABA concluded that the Law School was not in compliance with ABA Standards 301(a), 309(b), and 501(a)/501(b), and in December 2018, the ABA placed the school on probation for "substantial" and "persistent" non-compliance with those standards.^[9] At its November 2019 meeting, the Council removed the Law School from probation.^[10] On May 15, 2020, the council of the American Bar Association’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar determined AJMLS and nine other ABA law schools had significant noncompliance with Standard 316.^[11] This Standard was revised in 2019 to provide that at least 75% of an accredited law school's graduates who took a bar exam must pass one within two years of graduation.^[11] On February 26, 2021, the ABA's council posted that the school was now in compliance with the standard.^[12]


In late 2011, AJMLS opened a branch campus in Savannah, Georgia, named Savannah Law School.^[13] In March 2018, the Law School announced its branch campus in Savannah was no longer accepting applications for 2018 and offered its current students options to continue their legal education in Savannah, initiate an intra-campus transfer to the main campus in Atlanta, or seek to transfer or visit at a different institution.^[14] A class action suit on behalf of Savannah Law School students claimed that the Savannah school is being closed to benefit the parent school in Atlanta.^[15]