History
Phoenix School of Law opened its doors in January 2005 and already we are educating highly qualified, highly accomplished professionals of all ages and backgrounds. Our vision is to transform legal education and become the de facto standard for the 21st Century. Graduating new lawyers "practice ready" is what the legal community wants and it's what law students need to truly be successful in our increasingly fast-paced world.
In 1992, a ground-breaking article published in the American Bar Association section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar foretold of an important gap that existed between legal education and legal practice. Titled: The Report of the Task Force on Law Schools and the Profession: Narrowing the Gap, it defined a need for change in legal education. It said law firms could no longer serve as finishing schools for young lawyers who knew the law, but knew nothing about how to practice law. It also forecasted changes in employment opportunities and said that most graduates would practice in small firms or independently. There's simply no time for the extended learning curves of yesteryear.
It was this report that inspired Donald E. Lively, a seasoned legal education professional, to found the Florida Coastal School of Law (FCSL). Since its opening in 1996, FCSL students have had the highest, or among the highest job placement and bar exam passage rates. In 2006, FCSL students had the highest bar passage rate of any law school in Florida.
The success of FCSL has proven that the transformational model graduates better lawyers and that people nationwide, who want a legal education, should be afforded the opportunity. The InfiLaw System was born. InfiLaw is a consortium of independent, community-based law schools that is leading the way in making legal education more responsive to the realities of modern law practice. InfiLaw includes FCSL, Phoenix School of Law and Charlotte School of Law, which opened in North Carolina in 2006. InfiLaw's mission is to establish student-centered ABA accredited law schools in underserved markets that graduate students who understand about the realities of practicing law, and achieve true diversity programs aimed at student academic and career success. In addition, InfiLaw has an ongoing commitment to encouraging innovation, facilitating law school quality, fostering humility-based culture, continuously improving the academic profile and outcomes of each school, and securing funding for new campuses.
