Founded in 1846, the University of Louisville's Brandeis School of Law is Kentucky's oldest law school and America's fifth oldest law school in continuous operation. It began as the Law Department of the University of Louisville and remained so until 1923, when it became the School of Law and hired its first full-time professor. In the early 1900s, the Jefferson School of Law also existed in Louisville and competed by operating on a part-time basis. The national trend, however, was moving toward a more formal legal education and, in 1950, the Jefferson School of Law and the University of Louisville School of Law merged.
