Thomas Jefferson School of Law’s Teach-Out plan for its ABA program has been approved by the ABA Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.

This plan allows students who matriculated prior to December, 2019, to complete their education at Thomas Jefferson’s campus in downtown San Diego.  The J.D. program offered through the Teach-Out Plan remains an accredited program for the limited purpose of teaching out and issuing the J.D. degree to students who matriculated prior to December, 2019, and meet the Law School’s graduation requirements no later than the end of the Spring 2023 semester. Recipients of those degrees are considered by the ABA Council to be graduates of an ABA-approved J.D. program.

The Law School will admit new J.D. students only to its J.D. program accredited by the California State Bar Committee of Bar Examiners for the Fall 2020 term, with an optional Early Start in Summer 2020.  For more information on this opportunity, please see www.tjsl.edu/admissions/jd-admissions.

Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar of the American Bar Association

321 North Clark Street, Chicago, IL 60654 

312-988-6738

Review Period – April 25 – April 30, 2024

Final Exams - May 1 – May 10, 2024

Semester Ends - May 10, 2024

Thomas Jefferson School of Law

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Thomas Jefferson School of Law

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TJSL Student Bar Association

Mission Statement: The mission of the law school is to provide an outstanding legal education for a nationally-based, diverse student body in a collegial and supportive environment with attention to newly emerging areas of law, particularly those related to technological development, globalization and the quest for social justice.

Thomas Jefferson School of Law's Board of Trustees is a group of highly distinguished professionals from many fields of endeavor, including the law, education, finance, business, government and law enforcement. Their collective experience and insight help guide Thomas Jefferson as we move forward on our journey to become one of the most innovative law schools in the world.

Our Commitment to Diversity

Diversity is the lifeblood of our law school. It isn’t an option; it’s an on-going commitment that comes from our core values.

Thomas Jefferson School of Law is committed to helping diversify the profession through its admission practices and in the creation of an environment for faculty, staff and students that is inclusive and supportive of a diverse community.

More about Diversity

It’s because one of the most improbable coincidences ever occurred right here at Thomas Jefferson School of Law’s new downtown campus.

While construction crews were excavating the new site, a backhoe operator struck something hard. It turned out to be the tusk of a 300-thousand year old Ice-Age mammoth that was buried in the soil for all those thousands of years!

Paleontologists unearthed both tusks and the skull of the mammoth, in what they describe as a highly significant fossil find.

What made the find such a coincidence was that one of the most ardent scholars of ancient mammoths was none other than President Thomas Jefferson, after whom our law school is named.

Jefferson not only had a “bone room” in the White House where he collected the skeletons of these ancient giants, but he fully expected the Lewis & Clark expedition he sent into the wilds of undiscovered North America to encounter live mammoths during their journey.

“As the father of American paleontology, Thomas Jefferson would be ecstatic that the school that carries his name has such rich paleontological discoveries,” said TJSL Dean Rudy Hasl.

The discovery of the mammoth attracted world-wide media attention to the law school and its fledgling construction project.

Only weeks after the mammoth was removed by the San Diego Natural History Museum paleontologists, lightning struck again. Ten feet directly below where the mammoth had lain, workers found the skeleton of an ancient California Gray Whale. It was about 500-thousand years old and was an ancestor of the gray whales that migrate off the San Diego coast each year.

Amazingly, the paleontological discoveries didn’t slow construction of the new building in the least. Crews continued to excavate in other parts of the dig site and it was full-speed ahead. Other, smaller fossils were discovered during the digging, but nothing like the mammoth and the whale.

What becomes of the treasure trove of fossils? Some of the bones are on display at the museum in Balboa Park and there is a display case in TJSL's library with part of the mammoth's tusk, a molar and several other bones.

Parts of these ancient creatures, however, will always be at the law school site where they have rested for hundreds of thousands of years.

The museum is donating one of the whale’s ribs for display in the lobby of the new law school building, as well as some of the eons-old seashells, like the giant scallops that were hidden in soil that used to be ocean floor. Other shell fragments from the dig have been ground up to become part of the floor tiles in the lobby of the new building, where everyone who enters the law school will be literally walking on ancient history.

It all seems to fit together so perfectly—the law school named after the president who treasured the bones of giant creatures and the fossils that will be part of the law school as long as it stands.