Cumberland School of Law

The Cumberland School of Law is an ABA-accredited law school at Samford University in Homewood, Alabama, United States. It was founded in 1847 at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee, and is the 11th oldest law school in the United States.
The school offers two degree programs: the 90-hour Juris Doctor, and the Master of Comparative Law, which is designed to educate foreign lawyers in the basic legal principles of the United States. The school also offers eight dual-degree programs and a Master of Laws program with concentrations in financial service regulatory compliance, health law and policy, higher education law and compliance, and legal project management.
Cumberland Law School is unrelated to the University of the Cumberlands in Williamsburg, Kentucky, and is no longer a part of Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee.

History

This summary is based on From Maverick to Mainstream, a review of Cumberland's history and the development of the American legal education system.
Langum and Walthall summarize the history of Cumberland Law School as:

From its very local, Tennessee origins in 1847, Cumberland...emerged as a premier law school with a national status. It excelled in faculty, teaching methodology, and numbers of students. Following the American Civil War, Cumberland rebuilt itself and ultimately succeeded on a grand scale with its single-year curriculum.

Early years and founding

Cumberland School of Law was founded on July 29, 1847 in Lebanon, Tennessee at Cumberland University. At the end of 1847, there were 15 law schools in the United States.
Prior to the law school's official founding, Cumberland University facilitated the study of law and admitted a diverse student body, evidenced by graduates such as George W. Harkins, a Choctaw chief, who received a law degree from Cumberland and became a judge in 1834.
File:George-W-Harkins.jpg|thumb|100px|left|George W. Harkins, a Choctaw chief and graduate of Cumberland University

Antebellum years

Prior to the founding of the United States' first law schools, the primary means for a legal education was apprenticeship. Establishing law schools was difficult in the early 19th century. Harvard was only able to reestablish its law school in 1829 and Yale in 1826. By 1859, Cumberland, Harvard, and the University of Virginia School of Law were the three largest law schools in the United States. A year later, in 1860, only 21 university law schools existed in the country, and, in no school did the curriculum extend beyond two years.
During the Antebellum years, Cumberland enjoyed success. Nathan Green Jr., son of then professor Nathan Green Sr., stated that Cumberland enjoyed "the highest degree of prosperity", with a beautiful campus, picturesque trees and fences, and fine architecture. Cumberland's first graduate Paine Page Prim ultimately became chief justice of the Oregon Supreme Court.
Students were taught through reading treatises, approximately two hours worth of recitations each morning, and a mandatory moot court program. Caruthers considered the law a science and the Socratic Method a necessity. The cost was $50 a session and a $5 "contingent fee". After the Civil War, this treatise method, the legal formalism of the school's approach, and Nathan Green Jr.'s unwillingness to make changes, were all considered reasons for Cumberland's drift out of the mainstream.

Civil war

At the start of the American Civil War, the campus split within a week; some students joined the northern army; many joined the southern. Nathan Green Jr.'s father, a law professor, went home, but in fear of arrest, Abraham Caruthers fled to Marietta, Georgia, where he died a year later.
During the war, professors John Carter and Nathan Green Jr. fought as Confederate officers. Carter was killed, but Green survived. The campus did not. The trees were cut down and fences destroyed and burned. The Confederate Army burned the University buildings, apparently because a Confederate major was offended that Black Union soldiers had used them as barracks.

Reconstruction

The law school began the slow process of rebuilding. In July 1866, Cumberland adopted the image of the phoenix, the mythological Egyptian bird that is reborn from its own ashes. The new motto was E Cineribus Resurgo or "I rise from the ashes."
In September 1865 classes resumed with 11 students, which soon grew to 20. The 1865 class included a Confederate General and Union colonel, enemies only a few months earlier. Nathan Green Jr. kept the school together until Henry Cooper, a circuit judge, Andrew B. Martin, and Robert L. Caruthers, brother of deceased founder Abraham Caruthers, joined the faculty. Robert Caruthers had previously served as the state attorney general and had been elected Governor of Tennessee during the war in 1863, but was never inaugurated.
In 1873 Robert Caruthers purchased Corona Hall from the Corona Institute for Women for $10,000, which he immediately donated to the University for use by the law school.
The destruction of the campus and the devastation of war had impoverished the school, and it was almost 15 years before it saw students enter from outside the South, when a student from Illinois and a member of the Choctaw Nation enrolled at Cumberland. But there were few students from outside of the defeated Southern states, which Langum and Walthall claim underscored "how terribly the Civil War blighted Cumberland."
Robert Caruthers persisted, despite the setbacks, and in 1878 Caruthers Hall was dedicated in his honor. This new school replaced Corona Hall, which had limitations. The new hall apparently had "excellent acoustics and hard seats" and is described as a:

splendid structure, built after the latest architectural style, is nearly one hundred feet from base to spire, and contains two recitation rooms for the Law Department, two Society Halls, a Library, and a chapel whose seating capacity is about seven hundred.

National shift in legal education

Despite the heroic efforts to keep the school alive, Cumberland was falling into the minority at the turn of the 20th century. It maintained a one-year curriculum when other schools moved toward longer terms, and it was entrenched with legal formalism, which had reached its peak in the 1870s and would soon be on the decline. In 1876, for instance, Harvard Law School began to encourage a three-year curriculum. Through 1919, Cumberland did not adapt to the shift in legal education.
Historian Lewis L. Laska observed that:

Cumberland, which had once marked the high point of professional education, had become a captive of its own success. Unwilling to adopt modern techniques such as the case method, or to expand and deepen its curriculum by opting for the three-year standard, Cumberland became the symbol of the democratic bar.

In 1903 Nathan Green Jr. became the first dean of the law school. For the prior 57 years the school did not have this position, which was becoming more and more popular among law schools.
Cumberland first admitted women in 1901, and the library grew from 600 volumes in 1869 to 3000 in 1878. Today, the Lucille Stewart Beeson Law Library contains 300,000 volumes and microform volume equivalents.
In 1915 Cumberland refurbished its halls with an $8000 grant from the U.S. government as reparation for federal occupancy during the Civil War.
When Cordell Hull graduated from Cumberland, he commented on the diploma privilege, which granted the right to practice law without taking a bar exam, saying that

according to custom, we members of the graduating class, the moment we received our diplomas, took them to the courthouse, where a district judge awaited us. He swore us in as members of the bar. I was not 20 years old.

Cordell Hull is today honored at Cumberland with a Moot Court room bearing his name.
Cumberland eventually did adapt to the changing times, moving from Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee, to Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama in 1961. It is one of a few law schools in the United States to have been sold from one university to another.

Planning

In December 2005 Cumberland adopted a long-term plan for the school. One call of the plan is to gradually downsize the number of students in order to provide smaller classes and closer individual attention to students. In 1995 the entering class was 212 and by 2023 that number had been reduced to 152.
Today the law school is known for its emphasis on trial advocacy and is building a biotechnology emphasis through its Biotechnology Center.

Institution

The law school emphasizes practical skills and integrity. Former dean, former federal judge John L. Carroll, has stated that:

The prevailing philosophy is simple: Practical skill outweighs raw knowledge, and application transcends erudition. If the goal were to produce great law students, the tenets might be exactly the opposite. Our goal is to produce exceptional lawyers. That's why Cumberland’s curriculum emphasizes the core competencies of legal practice: research, writing and persuasion.

Curriculum

The first-year required classes are Civil Procedure, Contracts, Property, Torts, Criminal Law, and Evidence. Students are divided into one of three sections, where the students remain together in their respective classes for the entire first year. First-year students are also enrolled in smaller sections for Lawyering and Legal Reasoning, a class that focuses on honing the students' ability to think and write like a lawyer.
Second- and third-year courses allow students more choices and some degree of specialization. Cumberland offers a balance of traditional courses, such as Criminal Procedure, Family Law, and Basic Federal Income Tax, and practical courses, such as Basic and Advanced Trial Skills, Business Drafting, Real Estate Transactions, and Law Office Practice and Management.
Students must also take Professional Responsibility and the MPRE, an exam that is required to practice in addition to the bar exam.
Students are taught using the Socratic method, typical of law school pedagogy.