Washburn University history

Classes began January 3, 1866 with 38 high school students enrolled, including one African-American student.

When Horatio Q. Butterfield, a professor and lead fundraiser at financially struggling Lincoln College in Kansas, visited Washburn’s home in Worcester, Mass. in October 1868, the businessman apparently liked what he heard.

The School of Law was founded in 1903 when Washburn College President Norman Plass asked a prominent Topeka lawyer, Robert Stone, to head a committee for the formation of a law school.

In 1905, the Association of American Law Schools admitted Washburn Law into its ranks.

The law school moved to the Washburn campus in 1918.

In 1923, the American Bar Association included Washburn on its first list of fully accredited law schools.

Washburn became a municipal university in 1941, and today receives partial funding from the state of Kansas.

In 1951, Washburn Law alumni found themselves on both sides of Brown v.

On June 8, 1966, a tornado devastated the law school and other campus buildings.

And, when the Kansas Supreme Court authorized senior law students to practice law under supervision, Washburn responded by establishing the Law Clinic in 1970.

Professor Jim Concannon succeeded Carl Monk as dean in 1988.

WashLaw, initiated in 1991 by the Washburn Law Library, is a legal research portal that provides users with links to significant sites of law-related materials on the Internet.

Formerly a municipal university, the university's primary funding was moved from city property tax to county sales tax sources in 1999, with the school retaining status as a municipal subdivision of the state.

During the summer of 2004, all of the law school classrooms underwent a major renovation that included desktop Internet access, new furnishings, improved acoustics, new carpeting, and state-of-the-art teaching tools.

In 2008, Washburn Law launched its newest Center for Excellence, the Robert J. Dole Center for Law and Government, with a national symposium on "The Rule of Law and the Global War on Terrorism: Detainees, Interrogations, and Military Commissions."

The Law School’s Business and Corporate Law program was ranked in the top 17 in the nation in preLaw magazine, 2016 edition; the Taxation Law program was ranked among the top 11.

The Trial Advocacy program was ranked in the top 16 in the nation in preLaw magazine, 2017 edition.