Michigan State University College of Law
legal education branch of Michigan State University
The Michigan State University College of Law (Michigan State Law or MSU Law) is the law school of Michigan State University, a public research university in East Lansing, Michigan. Established in 1891 as the Detroit College of Law, it was the first law school in the Detroit, Michigan, area and the second in the state of Michigan. In October 2018, the college began a process to fully integrate into Michigan State University, changing from a private to a public law school. The integration with Michigan State University was finalized on August 17, 2020.
For the class entering in 2023, the school had a 39.37% acceptance rate, 35.37% of those accepted enrolled, and entering students had a median LSAT score of 159 and a median undergraduate GPA of 3.55.
For the 2023 graduating class, 69.59% of graduates obtained full-time, long-term bar-passage-required employment (i.e., employment as attorneys), and 13.92% were not employed part- or full-time in any capacity, within 10 months after graduation.
History
Detroit College of Law
Detroit College of Law opened in 1891 with 69 students and was incorporated in 1893. Among the first class of students to graduate were a future circuit judge and an ambassador. It was the oldest continuously operating independent law school in the United States until it was assimilated by MSU in 1995. The college was affiliated with the Detroit Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA).
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Michigan State University College of Law” as legal education branch of Michigan State University. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as legal education branch of Michigan State University. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6837719. VIAF identifies the subject as 144551973. The Library of Congress control number is n83228696. Authority coordinates are 42.726, -84.473. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1891, 2018, 2020 and 2023.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Michigan State University College of Law”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Michigan State University College of Law primary sources, Michigan State University College of Law archive and Michigan research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Michigan State University College of Law”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Michigan State University College of Law” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.