Concordia’s Boise law school gets new parent. Here’s how that affects students, workers
A Minnesota university has agreed to take over operation of the Concordia University School of Law in Boise.
This fall, the Boise law school will become part of Concordia University St. Paul, the two Lutheran schools announced at a news conference Thursday.
The agreement removes the threat that the school might cease along with the rest of Concordia University in Portland, which opened the law school eight years ago but which is now closing. The law school will continue uninterrupted, and its students and employees can stay put, law school executives said.
“What an amazing opportunity for us at Concordia St. Paul,” Eric LaMott, the school’s provost and chief operating officer, told reporters. “We are so very pleased to see this opportunity and see the law school maintain its Concordia connection.”
The Minnesota school’s Board of Regents agreed to the arrangement Friday. It will be a new program for the St. Paul school, which does not currently operate a law school but had considered it.
Latonia Haney Keith, the law school’s interim dean, said students, faculty and staff members were informed of the new affiliation before the news conference.
“Their response has been overwhelmingly positive,” she said. “We’ll have a partner with shared mission and values and a shared commitment to preserving Concordia’s Law’s program of legal education and a commitment to the belief that higher education should be accessible and affordable to a diverse student body.”
Strom Porter, a first-year law student from Terre Haute, Indiana, said he was pleased by the announcement. He said by email that he believes the arrangement with Concordia St. Paul will be a positive experience and will allow the law school to grow.
“I am very proud of Concordia School of Law for adapting and reacting so fast to a tough situation,” Porter wrote. “Our affiliation with Concordia St. Paul is not supposed to affect our day-to-day (dealings), which is good because being a law student is stressful enough.”
The law school has set up a web page with questions and answers about the transition with Concordia St. Paul.
The American Bar Association needs to give its approval for Concordia Law School to retain its accreditation. The ABA is expected to visit both campuses in the next few months as part of its decision-making process.
Concordia St. Paul was founded in 1893, one of nine Concordia universities across the country affiliated with the Missouri Synod of The Lutheran Church. It offers 76 undergraduate majors, 25 graduate majors and 48 majors for online students. Last fall, it reported a record 5,139 undergraduate and graduate students.
Last week, Concordia University in Portland announced that is shutting down its Portland campus after 115 years. At the same time, its leaders said they were in discussions to keep the School of Law in Boise operating.
Haney Keith did not say how many schools Concordia had talked with, but said several schools showed interest in taking over the law school.
Meanwhile, the university notified the city of Portland and the Oregon Labor Department last week that all of its employees in Portland and at the Boise law school, including 12 full-time professors, 20 other staff members, 48 part-time faculty members and 17 part-time student workers, would be laid off.
Haney Keith reiterated in a statement to the Idaho Statesman that the law school was seeking a new parent and expected the Boise layoffs would not take place.
The Concordia University School of Law opened in fall 2012 with 75 students. About 150 students are enrolled at the law school now. The school has seen the number of students interested in attending increase since full accreditation from the American Bar Association was obtained in March 2019.
Ninety first-year students began law school last fall — twice as many as the previous year’s class — and Concordia is on track to have an even bigger incoming class this fall, Haney Keith said Thursday.
The Lutheran university’s board of regents made the decision earlier this month to close the Portland campus. The closure came after years of mounting financial challenges and a changing educational landscape, the school said in a news release.
The university has more than 6,000 students in Portland and Boise and through online classes.
Concordia will hold its final commencement ceremony at the Portland campus on April 25. The law school commencement will take place in Boise on May 2.
Concordia, which opened in 1905, said it is working with its accrediting groups to help Portland students transfer to other colleges and universities. Concordia has 15 undergraduate majors and graduate programs in education, management and law.
Concordia announced plans in April 2008 to open the law school in Boise the following year, though delays kept the school at 501 Front St. from opening until fall 2012.
The school spent $10.2 million to remodel a two-story building and add a three-story addition. Boise businessman George White and his wife, Geri, donated $1 million toward the building.
Between the time Concordia announced it would open a law school in Boise and the time it began admitting students, the University of Idaho opened a Boise campus for third-year law students. It later added first- and second-year-students.
Concordia had trouble obtaining accreditation for its program from the American Bar Association. The bar association put off making a decision for a year in 2014 after visiting the school and seeking additional information.
That year, 12 students were in their final year of classes. Without accreditation, they would not qualify to take the Idaho State Bar Exam, which they needed to pass to practice law. Concordia received provisional accreditation in June 2015, allowing the 11 first graduates to take the bar exam.
This week, Concordia University in Portland has been holding fairs with colleges and universities offering to have students continue their educations with them. Northwest Nazarene University and the University of Idaho were among the schools participating.
The College of Idaho has also offered to accept Concordia’s Portland students, saying it would match scholarship offers, waive admission fees and reimburse students for the cost of transcripts.
LaMott grew up in Boise and earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in exercise science from Boise State University. He earned a doctorate in kinesiology from the University of Minnesota.
He said Concordia St. Paul will also take over Concordia Portland’s nursing program, which offers campus and online instruction for students working toward a bachelor of science in nursing. The nursing school operates from a separate Portland campus that is about 10 miles from the main campus.
Concordia St. Paul accepted a number of students from Argosy University, a for-profit career school with 22 campuses, including one in the Twin Cities, that shut down last year. Concordia already had a system in place to consider opportunities from distressed schools and that helped in its evaluation of the law school in Boise.
“Once I had the data and the metrics, we were able to ascertain the opportunity and the risks associated with a school of law here,” LaMott said. “And it was very clear there’s more upside and a huge opportunity to grow and serve here than there would be risk.”
He said Concordia St. Paul was impressed by the Boise law school’s achievements. All 56 graduates of the three-year program from 2016 and 2017 passed the bar exam within two years.
Only two other law schools, Yale and the University of Wisconsin, achieved the same rate, according to the American Bar Association. Nationally, 88.6% of law school graduates pass a bar exam within two years of graduation
Tuition for Boise law school students will remain at about $19,900 per year for the 2020-21 school year. The law school was founded with the promise to make a legal education affordable. Concordia St. Paul, which charges its students about $18,000 per year. Law schools generally charge students more than other programs.
This story was originally published February 20, 2020 at 12:22 PM.
