Senate approves bill to launch public law school at San Jose State

The California Senate on Monday approved a bill to establish a public law school at San Jose State University -- not by building one from scratch, but by merging the struggling, state-accredited Lincoln Law School into the campus.

Authored by Sen. Dave Cortese, a Lincoln alumnus, SB 550 passed 29-6 and aims to address what he called a glaring gap in affordable legal education for one of the nation's largest and most diverse cities.

"SB550 helps close these gaps by enabling the development of an affordable public law school to serve the heart of Silicon Valley and diversify California's legal pipeline," Cortese, whose district includes the university, told his Senate colleagues on Monday.

Cortese pointed out that San Jose in the third largest city in California and the largest city in the nation without a public law school. The area is two-thirds Asian and Latino, he said, arguing the integrated school would help bring underrepresented groups into the legal profession. Cortese also cited the 2024 California Access to Justice study the State Bar released last week, which found most civil legal needs go unmet because of lack of attorneys.

The bill passed 29-6. All the no votes came from Republican senators. In an opposition letter to lawmakers, the University of California argued it operates several law schools and that two of these campuses, Berkeley, and San Francisco, "are accessible through public transit" to students living in San Jose.

Lincoln supports the bill. In a letter, its administration noted the proximity of its campus to San Jose State and wrote "there is a history of full-time San Jose State University professors serving as part-time professors at Lincoln."

SB 550 could soon land in the Assembly Judiciary Committee, whose chair, Assembly Member Ash Kalra, D-San Jose, is an instructor at the school. Lincoln was founded in 1919 as a part-time night school. In recent years it has suffered from financial problems and low bar exam passage rates. Lincoln is accredited through the California Committee of Bar Examiners, but not the American Bar Association.

In February, Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, D-Riverside, pulled SB 91, her bill to create a law school at UC Riverside. She introduced three previous bills when she was a member of the Assembly, but none ever received a vote.

The Inland Empire legal community has been pushing to build a public law school in the area for decades. In 1999, the late building magnate Henry W, Coil, Jr. donated $5 million to build a law school at UC Riverside. But the University of California Board of Regents instead greenlit the UC Irvine School of Law, which opened in 2009.

This story was originally published in the Daily Journal