A law school for Daytona Beach?

Two Jacksonville attorneys have begun making preparations for what could be Florida's 13th law school, a supposedly cost-effective program based in Daytona Beach.

The Florida Space Coast School of Law would cater curriculum to students, emphasize public service and pro bono work, and foster a cooperative, rather than competitive, atmosphere.

"The best way to predict the future is to create it, so that's what we're doing," said Eric Smith, a former legal educator and attorney with Maddox Horne in Jacksonville. "We think education is changing--legal education is changing--and we'd like to be in that wave."

Smith found a partner in a former colleague from Florida Coastal School of Law, Steve Nemerson. Nemerson has agreed to serve as the new school's dean, and like Smith, he has big plans for the program, including offering quality legal education at up to 35 percent less than most law schools in the state.

"One of the things we believe we can do by having a lower tuition is enable people to make the kind of socially conscious choices they would otherwise make," said Nemerson. "The way tuition is now structured, there are many people who have the minds and the hearts to serve in the legal profession, but financially, they simply cannot. You are keeping out potentially excellent lawyers, merely for a financial reason.

"We want to open the profession to those people."

"Lawyers are dedicated to serving the poor and the powerless and those with unpopular or difficult causes," said Smith. "One way I think Florida Space Coast School of Law will be helpful to society is to create a model that is affordable, where lawyers can go into various practices they simply can't afford to go these days, because the cost of going to law school has jumped exponentially.

"We are confident we can create an institution that is a quality institution, affordable, so that someone with a dream of practicing elder law or law on behalf of the poor with legal aid or environmental law can afford to do that."

Nemerson and Smith believe the lower cost of education isn't the only thing that will set them apart from Florida's 12 other law schools. The new law school's founders also plan to utilize practicing attorneys and judges as faculty, emphasizing, said Nemerson, the school's desire to have an individualized learning model designed for each student and for each course.

"We're not solely looking for a professor who has an outstanding scholarship record. A lot of scholarship...