Mercer University School of Law

Mercer Law’s nationally-recognized Legal Writing Program prepares students with the essential legal research and writing skills they need to be prepared to practice right after graduation.

We offer more courses in the essential skills of legal research and writing than most law schools and the nation’s first – and still one of the only such certificates in the country – certificate in advanced legal writing, research, and drafting. Employers recognize that when they hire a Mercer Law graduate, they are hiring a lawyer who is highly trained in these skills.

Writing matters at Mercer because the University continues its commitment to prepare students for the practice of law, which now more than ever, requires superb writing skills. We offer not only a variety of writing instruction, but also other opportunities for our students to write more than typical law students. Students write more than memos and briefs. They write complaints, emails, interrogatories, letters, contracts, and PowerPoint presentations. Externships, experiential courses, and upper-level writing courses promote development of advanced writing skills. Members of Mercer Law Review and moot court teams write complex documents.

Mercer is one of only two law schools in the country to have twice won the prestigious American Bar Association Gambrell Professionalism Award for excellence and innovation in ethics and professionalism throughout the curriculum. Mercer is also the first law school in the nation to require a first-year course in legal ethics that forms a foundation for ethical reflection throughout your legal education.

Mercer Law’s commitment to practical training, along with our small size and personal approach, has produced a uniquely intensive and broad-based program of experiential education.  All faculty members who teach in the experiential education program are members of the full-time tenured faculty—indicating the importance we place on these courses.  And our small size allows us to make the experiential education program available to all students while providing an atmosphere that fosters genuine, meaningful relationships between faculty and students.



Experiential learning at Mercer Law is comprehensive, providing both practical experience and specialized course work to complement hands-on learning.  

Highlights of experiential education include: 

• All Mercer Law students take required courses in skills such as interviewing and counseling, negotiation, mediation, and trial advocacy; 
• Second and third-year students take advantage of our extensive externship program, working with a wide range of lawyers and judges, including criminal prosecutors, public defenders, civil legal services, military lawyers, and government agencies;
• Third-year students can take one of our clinical courses, in which they are certified to appear in court under the supervision of a practicing lawyer;
• Students in all three years participate in mock trial, moot court, and other lawyering competitions sponsored by the Mercer Advocacy Council;
• Stipend and fellowship programs support public service internships during the summer; 
• Mercer Law students devote hundreds of pro bono hours each year to legal services organizations such as the Georgia Legal Services Program and Crisis Line and Safe House.

As a result of these experiences and educational opportunities, Mercer Law graduates are ready to take on a wide range of responsibilities from the beginning of their practice.

Mercer Law School offers a robust externship program, allowing you to explore different career opportunities while earning course credit. Tailored to your individual interests and career goals, students are placed in judicial clerk-ships, corporate in-house counsel, non-profits, law firms, and government agencies for their externships.

These opportunities provide students practical work experience while also providing faculty supervision and guided reflection by including an educational component involving discussions, readings, and weekly reflective journals to help students learn from their fieldwork. 

Some of the opportunities include:

• Externship I – offered during the Fall or Spring Semesters
• Externship II – offered to students who who have taken Externship I
• Judicial Field Placement
• Legislative Field Placement
• Corporate Counsel/In-House Externship Program
• Consumer Bankruptcy Externship Program
• Summer Externship

Benefits of the Externship Program include: 

• A great learning experience, letting students apply the knowledge they’ve learned in law school to actual practice settings.
• Practice at being a professional within a support structure of both a fieldwork supervisor and a faculty member.
• Exposure to a field that you may or may not want to work in later. Students learn about their own placement and also about those of fellow classmates, through classroom discussion.
• Creating networking opportunities. Some students have secured temporary or permanent jobs at either their placement sites or through contacts developed during the placement.
• Enhancing your resume, giving you a list of specific skills and experiences that you have gained through the fieldwork. 

Semester-in-Practice

This program allows students to participate in expanded externships during the academic year, in addition to taking additional law courses.

The course is designed to offer students practical work experience in public service offices while providing faculty supervision and guided reflection. In addition to field work, the course meets for two hours per week in a classroom. The course includes readings, reflective journals, and class discussion, all of which are designed to help students learn from their fieldwork experience. Throughout the course, students explore fundamental questions of meaning and purpose in living a life of service in the law. 

Mercer Law has one of the first Asylum and Human Rights clinics in the state of Georgia and in the Southeast. Through the clinic, students work on real-life asylum appeals. Students directly help clients who would otherwise have no legal representation in the complex immigration appeals process.  

Students draft legal documents involved in immigration appeals, gaining experience in how to develop a compelling factual narrative and how to make effective arguments regarding points of law.  The clinic files appeals before the Board of Immigration Appeals in Washington, D.C.

Professor Scott Titshaw, who practiced immigration law and served as chair of the Georgia/Alabama Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), supervises the clinic. 

Mercer Law’s Domestic Violence Clinic provides students with an opportunity to represent victims in Temporary Protective Orders. Under the supervision of Professor Bonnie Carlson, students are responsible for all aspects of trial preparation litigation.

The DVC is a two-semester, 4-hour graded course and it fulfills the advanced writing requirement and the experiential learning requirement.  During the fall semester, students learn the Georgia law and court rules surrounding the issuance of Temporary Protective Orders, as well as client interviewing and counseling, negotiation, and trial skills. In the spring, students work in pairs to represent clients in Temporary Protective Order cases, starting with initial client interviews, investigating cases, drafting trial documents, and culminating with negotiating a settlement or litigating the case before the Bibb County Superior Court.

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In the Habeas Project, Mercer Law’s nationally recognized post-conviction defense legal clinic, students work closely with a faculty supervisor to provide representation for those unable to afford counsel whose constitutional rights have been violated.

Since 2006, the Project has handled dozens of cases pending before the Georgia Supreme Court and various Georgia Superior Courts in post-conviction matters, in which litigants no longer have the right to appointed counsel. In the clinic, Professor Meagan Hurley supervises student case work and mentors in all aspects of representation: client visits, investigation, case planning, brief drafting, and preparing for oral arguments and evidentiary hearings. Students begin to integrate their understanding of larger constitutional criminal law concepts with rules of evidence, appellate/post-conviction rules and procedures, and legal writing and client counseling techniques. Qualified students may sign their clients’ briefs, in addition to engaging in oral advocacy in a variety of courts. The Habeas Project has had remarkable success in a number of appellate and post-conviction cases.

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Third-year students are eligible to participate in the Public Defender Clinic. Under the Third Year Practice Act, students have the opportunity to appear in court at hearings and trials on behalf of clients. Students assist in the representation of clients of the local public defender office in all aspects of representation, including fact investigation, witness interviewing, legal research and drafting, and preparing cases for trials and hearings. During the Fall and Spring semesters, students work at least 14 hours per week in the public defender office. Additionally, students participate in a weekly faculty-led seminar to further develop practice skills, explore questions of professional satisfaction and identity, and to unpack ethical challenges that come with live-client representation. 

Mercer Law and the Stetson-Hatcher School of Business of Mercer University offer a joint program of study that permits both the Juris Doctor and the Master of Business Administration degrees to be earned in as few as three years. Both schools have collaborated to offer strong combined programs in law and business. The MBA program offers a flexible evening format and an intimate graduate setting, providing students with an opportunity to develop strong connections with each other, the faculty, and the business community. With its focus on ethical leadership and problem-solving skills, Mercer's MBA program enables students to make connections between business theory and its practical application. Neither the JD nor MBA degree will be awarded to a student until he or she has completed the requirements set forth in the joint program for both degrees.

Business Certificates

Students in good standing at Mercer Law may choose to take up to three 600-level graduate courses in the Stetson-Hatcher School of Business without applying for admission to the MBA Program. Two specific combinations of courses can be taken for either a Certificate in Practice Management or a Certificate in Corporate Finance.

Mercer Law School offers a full array of international law courses and other opportunities for students. Our curriculum contains courses in both public and private international law, comparative law, and immigration law. Each semester students have classes in each of these areas available, and for those who are particularly interested in international and comparative law the faculty has developed a pathway devoted to these areas.  

Mercer Law School is one of a select group of institutions, and the only law school, that participates in the programs offered by the Oxford Consortium for Human Rights. Students may apply to attend a one-week program (usually in March) at Merton College, Oxford to study human rights and humanitarian law. 

Study abroad programs can further enhance your interest in international law. If you are interested in learning about international law, Mercer has a number of options to allow you to explore this dynamic and fascinating area of law.