131 21st Avenue South
Nashville, TN 37203
Phone: 615.322.6452; Fax: 615.322.1531
E-mail: admissions@law.vanderbilt.edu; Website: www.law.vanderbilt.edu
Among the nation's leading law schools, Vanderbilt is recognized for its distinguished faculty, its talented students from across the nation and abroad, and its rigorous curriculum with an array of joint-degree, specialized, and interdisciplinary programs. Building on this tradition of excellence, Vanderbilt has established itself as a leader in designing programs that connect outstanding theoretical training to real-world experiences relevant to twenty-first century law practice. A legal education that links the best scholarly research to effective lawyering provides immediate advantages to Vanderbilt graduates.
With about 195 students in each entering JD class, Vanderbilt fosters a tradition of challenging intellectual inquiry in an atmosphere of mutual respect. This small-school sense of collegiality combined with a distinguished and accessible faculty creates an exceptional environment to prepare for leadership in private practice, public service, business, or government. With state-of-the-art facilities situated on a beautiful and vibrant university campus in a sophisticated and livable city, Vanderbilt offers a first-rate legal education in a setting that promotes a great quality of life.
The central experience of a Vanderbilt legal education is working closely with leading experts in an array of fields, including corporate and business law, constitutional law, litigation, criminal law, negotiation, international law, law and economics, law and human behavior, dispute resolution, and intellectual property. Widely respected for their scholarly impact, professors draw on their cutting-edge research to create engaging educational experiences that not only train students "to think like lawyers," but also to use their training effectively in practice. Faculty members take an open-door, student-centered approach, extending their availability to students well beyond class times.
An outstanding foundational curriculum reinforced by experiential and interdisciplinary approaches to advanced training are the hallmarks of a Vanderbilt legal education. The first-year curriculum provides an intellectual framework on which to build a legal education tailored to individual needs and interests in the second and third years. Entering students begin their studies with "Life of the Law," a course designed to distill the core ideas on which legal education is based, providing tools and information helpful to mastering law school. First-year sections of 65 students study torts, contracts, criminal law, civil procedure, property, and the regulatory state. Legal writing and a spring semester elective course round out the first-year curriculum.
Upper-level courses are almost entirely elective, allowing students to choose from a broad curriculum, combining courses, seminars, clinics, externships, independent studies, and Vanderbilt courses outside the law school. Students may also participate in programs that focus on particular areas of law. The Law and Business Program is designed to produce lawyers who understand the complex corporate finance and regulatory environments that corporate managers face. The Cecil D. Branstetter Litigation and Dispute Resolution Program is directed at connecting scholarly research on litigation and court systems to practice-based skills and strategies used to settle disputes. The International Legal Studies Program offers a unique International Law Practice Lab in which students undertake specific projects for real-world clients such as the Iraqi Special Tribunal and the International Criminal Court. The Environmental Law Program offers an extensive curriculum and a range of research and experiential opportunities. The Intellectual Property Program coordinates with noted practitioners to provide fellowships and externship opportunities to students interested in studying technology, intellectual property, entertainment, and innovation law. Vanderbilt also offers programs in criminal justice, law and government, and social justice.
Vanderbilt-in-Venice allows students to study abroad in the rich cultural center of Venice, Italy. Taught by Vanderbilt Law and University of Venice faculty, courses cover topics in international law with intensive classwork augmented by outside experiences. The six-week program concludes in early July, allowing students to work or intern during the remainder of the summer.
Vanderbilt's PhD in Law and Economics provides the next generation of training in this field: a combination of professional and academic degrees that train scholars for academic positions, law practice, policy making, and public interest work. Students either have a JD upon entry to the PhD program, or obtain a PhD and JD concurrently at Vanderbilt. The JD/PhD in Neuroscience Program is associated with the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience at Vanderbilt University, which addresses a focused set of problems in criminal justice and challenging issues arising at the intersection of the two disciplines.
Joint-degree programs make it possible to combine the JD with an MBA, MD, MDiv, MTS, MPP, MA, or PhD in conjunction with the university's various graduate and professional schools. The law school also offers an LLM program for international lawyers and the LLM/MA in Latin American Studies.
Students earn academic credit while serving the public in real practice settings through the Law School's clinical programs. Clinical offerings include international law, appellate litigation, civil practice, criminal practice, community and economic development, domestic violence, intellectual property and the arts, and individualized semester externships. Students also can gain valuable experience in nonprofits, government agencies, and other organizations around the world through robust externship and stipend opportunities.
The Law School facilities are among the best designed in the nation, featuring a central open courtyard with adjacent café, comfortable lounges, and abundant natural light. Situated on a park-like campus that is designated a national arboretum, the building is designed for twenty-first century legal studies and research with wireless connectivity, state-of-the-art classrooms and trial courtroom, and on-site and remote access to a host of electronic resources. The law library provides a variety of study spaces, including two reading rooms and nearly 200 carrels. The service-oriented library staff oversees a collection of over 605,000 volumes and more than 250 electronic databases, and all other Vanderbilt libraries, containing more than 3.3 million volumes, are also available to law students.
One of the reasons that students choose Vanderbilt is the congenial, collaborative atmosphere on campus. Spirited competition in an atmosphere of mutual respect creates a rare combination of intellectual vibrancy with a strong sense of community. A busy schedule of visiting speakers, symposia, and conferences is augmented by the activities of more than 50 student organizations. Four student publications provide opportunities to strengthen legal research and writing skills—Vanderbilt Law Review, Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, and Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review in conjunction with the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) in Washington, DC.
Vanderbilt is an internationally recognized university with strong partnerships among its 10 schools, neighboring institutions, and the Nashville community. In the natural beauty of Tennessee, Vanderbilt's hometown has emerged as a vibrant and progressive city that offers numerous professional opportunities, wide-ranging cultural and recreational options, and a great quality of life. Among the nation's most livable cities, Nashville is the state capital with a metropolitan area population of 1.6 million, and Vanderbilt is ideally situated in this major center for legal activity, allowing students an array of opportunities in law firms, state and federal courts and government, public agencies, nonprofits, and corporations.
Vanderbilt offers comprehensive resources to help students explore career options and to guide graduates to careers across the United States and abroad. Legal employers across the nation come to campus to recruit students for summer and permanent employment and solicit students' résumés throughout the year. For the JD classes of 2006 through 2010, 18 percent of graduates took employment in Tennessee, while 82 percent fanned out broadly over 41 other states, DC, and abroad with the largest numbers in New York (10.5 percent); Washington, DC (8.6 percent); Atlanta (7.6 percent); Chicago (5.7 percent); Texas (5.7 percent); and California (5.5 percent). About 15 percent of graduating students have obtained judicial clerkships each year, the great majority with federal judges. In all, the Law School's alumni network covers 49 states; Washington, DC; 3 US territories; and 27 foreign nations.
Vanderbilt provides generous financial assistance through need- and merit-based scholarships. All admitted applicants are considered for merit scholarships, and several Law Scholar Merit Awards of full tuition plus stipend are given each year through a supplemental application process. Vanderbilt's Loan Repayment Assistance Program provides financial support to graduates who choose low-paying public service employment upon graduation.
Admission to Vanderbilt is competitive, and the selection process reflects our belief that the quality of the educational environment at the Law School benefits from considering a range of information about each prospective student that is far broader than GPA and LSAT. Each file is reviewed in its entirety for indicators of academic excellence, intellectual curiosity, hard work, interest in others' welfare, obstacles overcome, professionalism, and other characteristics of successful law students. We believe that talented students with a mix of backgrounds, perspectives, and goals promote a vibrant and beneficial educational environment and that full-file review in the admission process is central to that objective. We do not provide a two-factor applicant profile grid to describe a multifactor selection process in which decisions are based on experienced judgment applied to individual cases.