Community Service

Policy

Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School is dedicated to instilling in its students the highest sense of ethical and moral responsibility. In fulfilling its mission of training ethically and morally sound lawyers, all first-year students are required to complete four hours of community service. Upon completion of the four hours of community service, first-year students are required to log the hours into a database for review and approval. The Law School strongly encourages all students to volunteer and perform pro bono work throughout their law school career.

Community service is performed for the benefit of others. It includes work done for those in need, children, senior citizens, people with disabilities, English language learners, animals, etc. Community service can also be performed to improve places, such as local parks, historic buildings, or scenic areas. The work done must be uncompensated work. Please see below for examples of community service. Should you have any questions regarding what constitutes community service and/or how to enter the work performed into 12Twenty, please contact Dean Harrison-Mercer or Assistant Dean Jamison.

Examples of Community Service:

Tutoring children after school

Collecting school supplies to donate

Planting a school garden

Visiting residents of a retirement center

Delivering meals to senior citizens

Planting trees

Creating a new trail at a nature center

Passing out food at a soup kitchen

Collecting used clothes to be donated

Making first aid kits for homeless shelters

Collecting donations for a charitable purpose

Volunteering with the Street Law Program or Mock Trial Program at AJMLS or other school(s)

Performing pro bono work

Volunteering at a homeless shelter or food pantry

Community Service Instructions: Overall Process

  1. Create and submit community service experience
  2. Add hours
  3. Final Approval

Create your community service record

  1. Access your student account
  2. Click Experiential Learning in the menu on the left
  3. Click New Experience at the top right
  4. Under the Basics section, select Experiential Learning Type, and then click Community Service
  5. Complete required information
  6. When all information has been entered, click Save. This action will take you to a preview of your community service experience before final submission
  7. If you need to make edits to your record before submission, select Action at the top right and click Edit
  8. If you do not need to make edits to your community service experience, click Submit at the top right
  9. Once you click Submit, your status will change to In Progress
  10. Now that your status is In Progress, you may enter your hours into the hour log
  11. When you have completed your community service experience and all hours are entered, click Submit for Approval at the top right. This will send your community service experience record to the Assistant Dean of Student Affairs, Hope Jamison, for final approval.
  12. If your community service experience is approved, your status will change to Complete. However, if additional information is required, you will receive an email detailing next steps from Dean Jamison.

Add hours to your community service record

  1. Once you have created your community service experience, you can add hours by clicking on the Hour Log tab at the top of the page
  2. Under the Hour Log tab, click Add Hours at the top right and a new window will appear called Create New Hour Log Entry
  3. Under Create New Hour Log Entry, enter the date, hours, and the description of your service
  4. Once complete, click Save and the hours will be added to your community service experience
  5. Hours can only be entered on a daily basis. If you are recording hours weekly, put the date of the hours completed and then note the week (e.g. 8/26-8/30/19) in the description box along with your work performed.