collageUMKC School of Law provides academic and professional training to students seeking careers in law. Our faculty are outstanding scholars who have extensive practice experience. Faculty at UMKC are actively engaged with students both inside and outside the classroom. Our classes are relatively small (by law school standards) and many of our substantive courses incorporate simulations and service learning opportunities. Our faculty and students are collegial and the school provides many opportunities for interaction and development of close personal relationships that will last throughout one’s career. We like to think of ourselves as the urban, public law school with the small, liberal arts feel.
We are a law school that teaches students to become lawyers in the best tradition of the profession and introduces them to the opportunities and obligations of the legal profession and its role in the greater community. We appreciate the work of lawyers and their many contributions, which include educating people and institutions about their rights, helping to design prosperous business and community ventures, and working towards the effective and efficient resolution of disputes. We maintain a faculty devoted both to professional service and to advancing knowledge through the production of excellent academic scholarship.
UMKC School of Law is a community of scholars, with faculty and students working together to address the legal issues and problems confronting society today on the local, state, federal, and international levels. Because we train many of the region’s practitioners, business people, judges, and politicians, we have a special responsibility to see that they are competent members of the bench and bar, advisers, and administrators; technically proficient, professionally responsible, and knowledgeable about the range of social, political, and economic ideas that influence our society. In doing so, we are aware that our graduates must be comfortable in a variety of professional settings with people from a variety of experiences, from land-use planning meetings with the local town council to trade negotiations in Mexico City, from an opening statement in the county courthouse to an appellate argument before the United States Supreme Court. While the details of such settings change over time, we can prepare students for such varied work by always concentrating on the foundations of good lawyering: respect for people, respect for knowledge and ideas, and respect for justice.
As a Law School, we build on a strong tradition of advocacy, civic engagement, and academic excellence—a program that has not only produced some of the region’s best lawyers and judges, but one that has also trained a US Supreme Court Justice (Charles Whittaker) and an American President (Harry Truman). We embrace and foster a collegial, collaborative model of professional education and maintain an intellectual and cultural environment that fosters broad thinking, local and global awareness, and creative problem-solving.
The School of Law in the Community
UMKC takes pride in being the urban law school in the University of Missouri system. From this unique vantage point, faculty and students actively lead and participate in professional activities with greater Kansas City bar associations, continuing legal education programs, lawyers and law firms located in both Kansas and Missouri, and the judiciary.
The School of Law community enjoys strong partnerships with many area causes and concerns. A variety of community-based projects, ranging from the rehabilitation of inner-city houses to tax preparation services, receive benefits from this involvement. Students work with faculty on research of value to the community and are often involved in drafting or commenting on pending legislation. The Law School houses and assists the Kansas City Youth Court, a diversion program from juvenile court, where high school students act as lawyers and judges. Faculty, students, staff, and alumni volunteers also help introduce inner-city high school students to careers in law.
Graduates of the UMKC School of Law have important responsibilities in legal arenas throughout the city, state, and country. From corporate counsel positions in more than 25 national companies to the library of the Supreme Court of the United States, Law School alumni provide distinguished service.
On a local level, the annual listing of “Outstanding Lawyers in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area” names more UMKC alumni than from any other school. In addition, only two women have served as president of the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association and only one African American has served as president of the Missouri Bar; all are UMKC Law School alumni. A majority of the active judges of the US District Court for the Western District of Missouri, the Missouri Court of Appeals (Western District), and the Sixteenth Judicial Circuit of Missouri are graduates of the School of Law, as is the first African American Chief Justice of the Missouri Supreme Court. Courts throughout the multicounty metropolitan area are populated with UMKC alumni.
The Law School is proud of the fine reputation of its alumni and the outstanding contributions they have made and continue to make in both the legal and nonlegal communities.
Law School Enrollment
- JD full-time: 373
- JD part-time: 43
- LLM full-time: 11
- Tax program: 5
- Lawyering program: 5
- General program: 1
- LLM part-time: 20
- Tax program: 4
- Lawyering program: 14
- Urban Affairs: 2
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