Law school moves closer to accreditation

Jennifer Knight

Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2002 | 9:46 a.m.

UNLV's William S. Boyd School of Law reached another milestone Thursday after learning that it received approval for accreditation from a key board.

The American Bar Association's Council of the Section of Legal Education unanimously approved accreditation for the school. The only formality left now is for the vote to be formally accepted by the ABA's House of Delegates during a meeting in February.

"It confirms our beliefs that UNLV's Boyd School of Law is rapidly becoming a first-rate center for legal education," Carol Harter, president of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said.

The law school will receive its full accreditation at the earliest time possible under ABA guidelines, law school Dean Richard Morgan said. It received provisional accreditation in 2000, which allowed its students to sit for bar exams anywhere in the nation.

The 5-year-old law school has been a rising star in the university system since it threw open its doors to the first group of students in 1998. Its first graduating class placed above the rest of the state on its state bar exam scores and accreditation officials have often pointed to the Boyd School of Law as a good example of how to start a law school the right way, officials have said in the past.

In September, when the school moved from the elementary school facility where it began to a newly renovated building in the center of campus, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and other legal luminaries were there to honor the occasion.