Trends in Legal Education: Lessons Learned from the First JD Hybrid Program

In 2015, Mitchell Hamline School of Law launched the first Hybrid JD Program under a variance from the American Bar Association. The program quickly grew to encompass two large sections of entering students each year, making legal education available to persons who wanted to pursue a law degree but could not relocate or leave jobs to attend a traditional part-time program. This disruption of the traditional, lecture-based approach to legal education led to surprising and beneficial results, like the innovation of face-to-face instruction, improved accessibility across all courses, and a head start on the challenge of moving to emergency remote teaching at the advent of COVID-19 pandemic.