Pre Law
Penn State Dickinson Law in Carlisle and Pennsylvania State University, Penn State Law in University Park are in the final steps of uniting.
Ten years after splitting the law school between two locations, all that remains are approvals from the submitted applications to the council of the American Bar Association Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, and then approvals from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and the U.S. Department of Education.
The anticipated unified law school will be called Penn State Dickinson Law, led by Danielle Conway, current dean at Dickinson Law, with its primary location in Carlisle and an additional location in University Park.
Pennsylvania State University, which has several campuses throughout Pennsylvania, took over Dickinson School of Law, a private school in Carlisle, in 2000. It planned to move the law school to State College, but it ran into opposition in 2005. It operated the two campuses as one single entity until 2014.
When the number of law school applications dropped, the faculty voted to discontinue first year law classes in Carlisle. However, the university had accepted a $25 million grant from the Cumberland County Redevelopment Authority to upgrade the Carlisle campus, but with the caveat that first-, second- and third-year programs would continue there.
Unable to stop admitting new students in Carlisle, the university chose to separate the two schools, thereby allowing them to have different admissions criteria. Some thought the University Park school would attract higher-quality students from across the nation while the Carlisle school would cater to local students, presumably with lower entering credentials.
But it did not turn out that way with both schools having similar entry criteria and missions.
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Dickinson Law and Penn State Law seek final approvals to unite
