600 New Jersey Avenue, NW, Room 589
Washington, DC 20001
Phone: 202.662.9010; Fax: 202.662.9439
E-mail: admis@law.georgetown.edu; Website: www.law.georgetown.edu
Georgetown Law, founded in 1870, is a dynamic and diverse intellectual community in which to study law. Not only does its curriculum include a staggering number of courses and seminars, but its distinguished full-time faculty is one of the nation's largest and is augmented by the experience and perspective of outstanding members of the bench and bar. The goal is education in its fullest sense—not only mastery of law, but a sense of the philosophical, political, and ethical dimensions of law. Preeminent in the fields of constitutional, international, and tax law, as well as clinical legal education, Georgetown Law's faculty is also known for its expertise in civil rights, corporate law, environmental law, family law, feminist jurisprudence, health law, human rights, immigration and refugee law, intellectual property law, legal history, and securities law. The Supreme Court, the Congress of the United States, and the Library of Congress are within walking distance of the campus, forming a unique environment for creative legal thought and learning.
Georgetown Law's campus is the culmination of a longtime goal to create a campus that will nurture students in mind, body, and spirit. McDonough Hall, with its lecture halls, seminar rooms, faculty offices, bookstore, student dining area, and lounges, is the academic center of the campus.
The Hotung Building brings all the major components of Georgetown Law's international programs under one roof and includes the John Wolff International and Comparative Law Library. The Sport and Fitness Center features a four-lane lap pool, basketball and racquetball courts, and a café and lounge with wireless network connectivity.
The Law Center's Edward Bennett Williams Law Library houses the fourth largest academic law library collection in the nation. The library also provides students with access to web-based services providing the most advanced research support available.
The campus features a vibrant residential program, with housing for approximately 300 students in the Gewirz Student Center. The building offers a variety of apartment styles with one, two, and three bedrooms with full kitchens and baths in each suite. Apartments designed for students with disabilities are also available. Resident Fellows offer programming to the 1L residents throughout the academic year ranging from fireside chats with faculty members, to talent shows, to informal seminars on course outlining and exam-taking.
Georgetown Law offers full-time and part-time programs leading to the JD degree. Entry to both programs is in the fall. First-year students in the full-time program choose either the A or B curriculum. Curriculum A is the traditional first-year curriculum, which parallels those at all other major law schools, and includes one elective course in the spring semester. Curriculum B includes courses that emphasize the sources of law in history, philosophy, political theory, and economics. It also seeks to reflect the increasingly public nature of contemporary law. Rather than an elective, Curriculum B students take a fall seminar in legal theory. Full-time students are required to be in residence for six semesters; part-time students must be in residence for eight semesters or its equivalent.
The curriculum includes an innovative program for first-year students titled "Week One: Law in a Global Context." Involving an intensive week of study of complex problems of international and transnational law, the purpose is to deepen students' understanding of how legal problems increasingly transcend national boundaries and involve more than one legal system. The skills-based format of Week One also introduces students to Georgetown Law's extensive experiential curriculum, where students may choose from problem-solving, simulation, externship, and other experiential learning courses, up to and including our nationally and internationally recognized clinics.
Georgetown Law offers a large and wide-ranging upper-level curriculum. Of the more than 350 courses offered to upper-class students, more than 150 have enrollments under 25 students. The only upper-class course requirements are a course in professional responsibility and a seminar or approved supervised research project meeting the upper-class legal writing requirement.
Georgetown Law offers 15 joint-degree programs: JD/Master of Public Policy; JD/Master of Science in Foreign Service; JD/Master of Arts in Arab Studies; JD/Master of Arts in German and European Studies; JD/Master of Arts in Latin American Studies; JD/Master of Arts in Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies; JD/Master of Arts in Security Studies; JD/Master of Business Administration; JD/Master of Public Health (with Johns Hopkins School of Public Health); JD/Master of Arts or Doctorate in Philosophy; JD/Doctorate in Government (Master of Arts En Passant); JD/LLM in Taxation; JD/LLM in Securities and Financial Regulation; JD/LLM in International Business and Economic Law; and the JD/LLM in National Security Law.
Georgetown Law has many highly regarded programs dealing with different aspects of cross-border law.
Students have the unique opportunity to study for a semester in London at the Center for Transnational Legal studies, a Georgetown-led partnership of over 20 leading schools from five continents. Distinguished faculty, drawn from around the world, teach a transnational curriculum to a global student body in a context where there is no host school, majority nationality, or domestic legal system.
The Global Law Scholars Program, which combines language skills with directed legal training, provides an opportunity for a limited number of full-time JD students to prepare for a law practice involving more than one legal system.
Georgetown Law also offers a summer law program in London with distinguished professors from Europe and the US, as well as the opportunity to study abroad for a semester at prestigious institutions in Europe, Asia, India, Israel, Latin America, and Australia.
The Law Center's International Summer Internship Program offers opportunities to work abroad in law firms, corporations, and government organizations. Georgetown Law's Institute of International Economic Law awards a certificate in World Trade Organization studies to students who fulfill special course requirements.
Georgetown Law, a pioneer in clinical legal education, offers an unmatched clinical program. Our 14 clinics offer approximately 300 students per year an opportunity to enroll in clinics where (1) they represent clients in court or in administrative hearings, or (2) they work in a nontrial context in federal and local agencies, schools, and other institutions.
Georgetown Law's unparalleled public interest offerings include a Loan Repayment Assistance Program, a stand-alone public interest career office, guaranteed summer funding for public interest and government internships, a comprehensive student pro bono program, an extensive and diverse public interest curriculum, and public interest scholarships and a public interest fellowship program. The Office of Public Interest and Community Service (OPICS) houses a public interest resource library, provides specialist career advising on government and nonprofit internships and employment, oversees student and student group volunteer activities, and serves as the student liaison to the faculty and administration.
Georgetown Law evaluates candidates on two scales: academic or objective criteria and personal criteria. Academic information includes undergraduate and graduate records and LSAT scores. Personal factors include extracurricular activities, recommendations, work experience, and diversity of background. Georgetown Law does not use numerical cutoffs. Early application is encouraged since Georgetown Law employs a rolling admission process.
Cocurricular life at the Law Center centers around the more than 75 law student organizations that support students' personal, social, spiritual, political, and professional interests. The largest of these organizations, the student-led Barristers' Council, fields dozens of teams in appellate advocacy, mock trial, and alternative dispute resolution divisions, and competes successfully in national and international competitions. Students also share in the governance of the Law Center through the Student Bar Association and more than a dozen student/faculty committees, and supplement their academic pursuits by editing and publishing 11 scholarly journals and the Law Weekly, the award-winning school newspaper.
Georgetown Law offers need-based, three-year financial aid grants to approximately one-third of the entering full-time class. Federal and commercial loans, along with on- and off-campus work-study opportunities, are also available. Approximately 90 percent of Georgetown Law's JD students obtain financial aid.
Acknowledged as one of the nation's top programs by Equal Justice Works, Georgetown Law's Loan Repayment Assistance Program assists JD graduates in pursuing careers in public service.
The Office of Career Services (OCS) offers a wide range of career counseling and related programming. First-year students work closely with advisors who counsel them individually throughout law school. The fall recruiting program is one of the largest in the country, and OCS sponsors a robust judicial clerkship application process.
Since the Georgetown Law Admissions Committee takes into consideration a number of factors in evaluating whether a candidate would be suitable for admission, we cannot provide an applicant profile based solely on GPA and LSAT scores. In making such determinations, the Committee focuses on various aspects of a candidate's background and experience that, in combination with a candidate's academic record and LSAT score, give insight into a candidate's suitability for admission.