More than 600 law center students at Wolfson Campus will have easier access to lay down the law.
The United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida donated their entire collection of books to Miami Dade College’s Law Center.
The library is set to have approximately 4,722 books as opposed to the current paralegal collection of 1,500.
“I’m very excited, we’ve been working on growing our program for years and this new law library is definitely a huge stepping stone,” said Law Center Director, Thomas Nguyen.
The Law Center at MDC is the only ABA approved program in Miami-Dade County. It has been working for more than a year to build communication partnerships with all legal law offices and legal organizations in South Florida.
Because the U.S Attorney’s office is going electronic, they have made their collection available to MDC.
“Most books they have provided are federal volumes that we lack, the entire collection is about four times the size of ours.” Nguyen said. “This law collection will probably make our legal law collection one of the biggest in the country and is set to be worth approximately $600,000.”
It will be located on the first floor of the library located at Wolfson Campus in an area the size of two classrooms.
“We have knocked down the walls of the two spare classrooms we had here at the library to make room for this enormous collection of Law books,” said Adria Leal, a Wolfson campus librarian.
Previously, students were limited with the small collection at the campus library or would have to commute to the Miami Federal Courthouse’s library in Downtown.
“As someone who has done legal research at the University of Miami library and the Federal Courthouse, it is very nice to have something that is more accessible to the students here at MDC,” said Jose Medina, an intern at the Law Center. “We will feel more comfortable which will ultimately improve our ability to do the required research.”
