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Alabama (Birmingham) -- Miles Law School -- Accreditation: Alabama -- Year Founded: 1974
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Re: Miles Law School (Alabama)
Miles Law School is a law school located in Birmingham, Alabama. It is independent of Miles College, having its own separate Board of Trustees.
Miles Law School was founded on August 26, 1974. Among the founders were Bishop C. A. Kirkendoll of the C.M.E. Church, Dr. W. Clyde Williams, former President of Miles College, former Alabama Judge and State Senator J. Richmond Pearson, and Morris Dees, Founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Graduates of the law school include former Birmingham Mayor Carole Smitherman and Alabama State Senate President Pro Tempore Rodger Smitherman.
Graduates of the law school receive the Juris Doctor degree and may sit for the Alabama State Bar exam. Miles Law School is not accredited by the American Bar Association. The law school offers a part-time four year evening program.
In July 2009, Miles Law School's passage rate for the Alabama Bar Exam first time test takers was 0%. This placed Miles Law School behind all four of Alabama's other law schools: University of Alabama (95.3%), the Cumberland School of Law (91.3%), Jones School of Law (90.7%), and Birmingham School of Law (54.2%).
The Dean of Miles Law School is J. Richet Pearson-Johnson. -
About Miles Law School
In the early 1970s, then Miles College President W. Clyde Williams, along with then Bishop of the Fifth Episcopal District of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, Chester A. Kirkendoll, now deceased, who served as chairman of the Miles College Trustee Board, Judge J. Richmond Pearson, then an Alabama state senator, and the school’s current chairman of the trustee board, Dan Turberville, Harry Lyons, Morris Dees, Esquire, co-founder of the Southern Law Poverty Center, Arthur D. Shores, noted civil rights attorney, now deceased, and others mobilized and provided the impetus for the school’s founding. Troubled by the dearth of minority lawyers in an impoverished state with a sizeable black population, these bold-thinking visionaries recognized the need for a law school that would produce lawyers committed to pubic service and social justice.
Current board chairman Judge Pearson recounts the challenges faced by the law school during its nascent beginnings.It was out of this reality, concern and desire to change the legal landscape of Alabama that Miles Law School was founded, admitting its first class in August 1974. Before his appointment by President Jimmy Carter in 1980 as the state's first black federal judge, then-State Senator U.W. Clemon served in an advisory role to the law school. Senator Clemon co-chaired with fellow State Senator J. Richmond Pearson an effort to raise funds for the fledgling school. Judge Clemon currently serves on the law school's trustee board.
The law school's motto of “Striving to Balance” directly relates to the imbalance, disparity and disproportionality of black lawyers and of the underserved minority populace that existed in this state. Since the first graduates in 1978, the law school’s sons and daughters have made tremendous strides in closing the gap.
Contact Miles Law School
Phone: 205-923-7739
Fax: 205-923-774
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