Office of Admissions, 559 Nathan Abbott Way
Stanford, CA 94305-8610
Phone: 650.723.4985; Fax: 650.723.0838
E-mail: Admissions@law.stanford.edu; Website: www.law.stanford.edu
Stanford Law School is part of one of the world's leading research institutions, providing plentiful opportunities for interdisciplinary cooperation. Stanford University is a private university located in the heart of Silicon Valley, just 35 miles south of San Francisco. The university's 8,180 acres stretch between the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains and the cities of Palo Alto and Menlo Park in a part of the country that offers an ideal Mediterranean climate of dry, warm summers and wet, but temperate winters.
Current enrollment at the university is more than 15,000 students, of whom more than 8,000 are graduate students. The law school is small, with 571 JD students, 60 LLM and JSM students, and approximately 70 faculty members including clinical faculty, senior lecturers, and emeriti. The school has teaching and research ties with schools and departments across campus. Law School courses are taught in 16 multimedia classrooms with full wireless Internet connectivity.
Stanford Law School offers a unique combination of the classic and cutting edge in legal education. The school is preparing its students for a rich and varied professional life in an era of great excitement and rapid change—much of it generated by the remarkable innovations in information technology pioneered in Silicon Valley—and for careers in an increasingly global community.
Stanford Law School's faculty is distinguished not only for its scholarship, but also for its commitment to teaching and curricular innovation. The school's unusually low student-to-faculty ratio of 7.8 to 1 creates an intimate, collegial environment that fosters students' intellectual and professional development both in and out of the classroom. Students have many opportunities to work closely with faculty members as research assistants on scholarly projects, and the faculty encourages interested students to develop their own scholarship for future academic careers. The relationships formed between Stanford Law faculty and students often last a lifetime.
Instruction at Stanford Law takes place primarily in small classes and seminars and through individually directed research. It also takes place via a diverse range of legal clinics, which offer students experience with real cases and clients and personalized feedback.
The faculty is continually engaged in developing new teaching methods to complement curricular innovations. Case studies, similar to those of business schools, challenge students to consider the interaction of legal and nonlegal factors involved in a given situation. Numerous interdisciplinary opportunities allow faculty and students from the law school and other parts of the university, joined by practitioners and policymakers, to engage in applied research.
Housed within Crown Quadrangle is the Robert Crown Law Library, which holds an excellent collection of print materials and a vast collection of online resources. Popular with the law students are the library's spacious reading rooms. An entire floor of the library, with its comfortable reading room and technology-enabled meeting rooms and classroom, is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The friendly and service-minded staff members are dedicated to helping students, faculty, and staff with all their research needs.
Joint-Degree Programs—Stanford Law School has dramatically expanded its joint-degree programs, leveraging the highly rated graduate schools and academic programs across Stanford University. To facilitate interdisciplinary study and scholarship, and simplify the pursuit of joint degrees, Stanford Law has adapted the law school calendar to be compatible with that of the wider university. The school offers more than 20 formal joint-degree programs in such areas as Bioengineering; Business; Computer Science; Economics; Education; Electrical Engineering; Environment and Resources; Health Research and Policy; History; International, Comparative and Area Studies; International Policy Studies; Management Science and Engineering; Medicine; Philosophy; Political Science; Psychology; Public Policy; and Sociology. Joint-degree programs are also offered with Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and with Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies. For students with specialized career aspirations, opportunities to customize a joint degree are limitless.
Programs and Centers—Stanford Law School's 20-plus innovative academic programs and centers give students the opportunity for concentrated study and close interaction with faculty. Students may engage in graduate-level research and policy-oriented study through centers and programs such as the Stanford Constitutional Law Center; Stanford Criminal Justice Center; Environmental and Natural Resources Law and Policy Program; Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation; Rule of Law Program; Stanford Program in International and Comparative Law; Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance; John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics; Stanford Program in Law, Science & Technology; Center for E-Commerce; Center for Internet and Society; Center for Law and the Biosciences; Transatlantic Technology Law Forum; CodeX: Stanford Center for Legal Informatics; Stanford Center on the Legal Profession; Martin Daniel Gould Center for Conflict Resolution; Gould Negotiation and Mediation Program; and John and Terry Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law.
Team-Taught Courses and Concentration—Stanford Law now offers 13 team-oriented, problem-solving courses, many of which are cotaught by law school faculty and faculty from Stanford's other top-rated schools and departments. Classes are open to students from a variety of disciplines.
Clinical Program—Stanford Law is a leader in the development of clinical teaching and has expanded its clinical program to include 10 clinics that offer students the opportunity to undertake, under the close supervision of experienced practitioners, the roles and responsibilities of practicing lawyers. Students engage in witness examination, depositions, discovery, negotiations, drafting pleadings and memos, oral arguments, and analysis of tactical and ethical problems. Clinics include the Criminal Defense Clinic, Criminal Prosecution Clinic, IP and Innovation Clinic, Environmental Law Clinic, Immigrants' Rights Clinic, International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic, Organizations and Transactions Clinic, Stanford Community Law Clinic, Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, and Youth and Education Law Project.
Stanford provides a variety of housing options for law students. Students may choose from furnished single rooms to four-bedroom apartments equipped with full kitchens. A new residence built specifically for law students and other graduate students from around campus—and adjacent to the law school—intensifies the interdisciplinary learning experience. The university also lists off-campus housing opportunities. More information about housing is available at the Housing Assignment Services website.
More than 50 student organizations plus nine journals and a film documentary project enrich the law school experience. Opportunities for scholarly work are provided through the Stanford Law Review and journals focused on civil rights and civil liberties; international law; law, business, and finance; law and policy; technology law; environmental law; animal law and policy; and law, science, and policy. Advocacy skills are developed in moot court and mock trial.
Students who are female, Asian, African American, Latino, Native American, Christian, or LGBT will all find groups that share their particular concerns. Other organizations focus on environmental law, international law, law and technology, and public interest law. Local affiliates of the Federalist Society, the American Constitution Society, and the National Lawyers Guild are present.
Estimated expenses are as follows: for 2011–2012, full-time tuition is $47,460, with additional expenses including housing estimated at $27,522 for single students living on campus and $28,998 for single students living off campus. Scholarships are awarded on the basis of financial need. The purpose of financial aid is to assist students who would otherwise be unable to pursue a legal education at Stanford. Approximately 80 percent of the student body receives tuition fellowship or loan assistance.
The school also offers funding to students who dedicate a law school summer to qualified public service work. And for graduates who take low-paying public interest jobs and have substantial educational debt, the school has an excellent loan repayment assistance program—the Miles and Nancy Rubin Loan Repayment Assistance Program.
The Office of Career Services, together with the John and Terry Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law, provides assistance and guidance to students in every facet of their job search. Resources on both legal and nonlaw options; education, including substantive programming; and ongoing counseling help students to identify and achieve their career goals. In addition, the office's On-Campus Interviewing Programs each spring and fall collectively bring to campus approximately 250 employers recruiting for over 500 offices worldwide.
A survey of students graduating in the class of 2010 shows the following employment patterns: law firm associates, 57 percent; judicial clerks, 32 percent; business (legal and nonlegal), 2 percent; public interest, government, or law teaching, 9 percent.
Our admission process takes into consideration many factors besides the undergraduate GPA and LSAT score. A statistical grid, as is typically provided here, only takes into consideration these two factors. We have chosen not to provide applicants with such a grid because our admission process would not be accurately portrayed.