Law school in the United States


A law school in the United States is an educational institution where students obtain a professional education in law after first obtaining an undergraduate degree.
Law schools in the U.S. confer the degree of Juris Doctor, which is a professional doctorate. It is the degree usually required to practice law in the United States, and the final degree obtained by most practitioners in the field. Juris Doctor programs at law schools are usually three-year programs if done full-time, or four-year programs if done via evening classes. Some U.S. law schools include an Accelerated JD program.
Other degrees that are awarded include the Master of Laws and the Doctor of Juridical Science degrees, which can be more international in scope. Most law schools are colleges, schools or other units within a larger post-secondary institution, such as a university. Legal education is very different in the United States than in many other parts of the world.

Terminology

A 2006 study found that the names of the 192 law schools approved by the American Bar Association at that time included one of five generic identifiers: "school of law", "college of law", "law school", "law center", and "faculty of law". However, in ordinary speech, "law school" is universally preferred for its "brevity and clarity".

Admission

In the United States, law schools require a bachelor's degree in any discipline, a satisfactory undergraduate grade point average, and a satisfactory score on the Law School Admission Test as prerequisites for admission. Some states that have non-ABA-approved schools or state-accredited schools have equivalency requirements that usually equal 90 credits toward a bachelor's degree.
Globally, the requirement of a bachelor's degree is one of the most distinctive features of the American law school. Elsewhere, it is routine to award law degrees to undergraduates. In contrast, a typical American lawyer must first complete seven years of postsecondary education before they become eligible for a license to practice law. Another significant distinction is that, unlike many other countries where law professors usually hold research doctorates, most American law professors have earned only the same J.D. degree which will be awarded to the students they are teaching.
Though undergraduate GPA and LSAT score are the most important factors considered by law school admissions committees, individual factors are also somewhat important. Personal factors are evaluated through essays, short-answer questions, letters of recommendation, and other application materials. The standards for grades and LSAT scores vary by school. Interviews—either in person or via video chat—may be optional, or invitational, application components. Many law schools actively seek applicants from outside the traditional pool to boost racial, economic, and experiential diversity on campus. Most law schools now factor in extracurricular activities, work experience, and unique courses of study in their evaluation of applicants. A growing number of law school applicants have several years of work experience, and correspondingly fewer law students enter immediately after completing their undergraduate education. However, law schools generally only consider undergraduate and not post-collegiate transcripts when considering an applicant for admission; the former are considered by law schools to be a more uniform standard than the latter for judging academic performance.
Many law schools offer substantial scholarships and grants to many of their students, dramatically reducing the actual cost of attending law school compared to listed tuition prices. Some law schools condition scholarships on maintaining a certain GPA.
, there were 128,641 students enrolled in JD programs at the 204 approved ABA law schools. A decade later, in 2023, J.D. programs enrolled 116,897 students at the 196 institutions then approved by the ABA., women enrolled in American law schools have outnumbered men. In 2024, 56.09 percent of JD students enrolled at ABA-accredited schools were women.

Accreditation

To sit for the bar exam, the vast majority of state bar associations require accreditation of an applicant's law school by the American Bar Association. The ABA has promulgated detailed requirements covering every aspect of a law school, down to the precise contents of the law library and the minimum number of minutes of instruction required to receive a J.D., there are 203 ABA-accredited law schools that award the J.D., divided between 202 with full accreditation and one with provisional accreditation. The Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School in Charlottesville, Virginia, a school operated by the United States Army that conducts a post-J.D. program for military attorneys, is also ABA-accredited.
Non-ABA approved law schools have much lower bar passage rates than ABA-approved law schools, and do not submit or disclose employment outcome data to the ABA.
In addition, individual state legislatures or bar examiners may maintain a separate approval system, which is open to non-ABA accredited schools. If that is the case, graduates of these schools may generally sit for the bar exam only in the state in which their school is accredited. California is the most famous example of state-specific approval. The State Bar of California's Committee of Bar Examiners approves many schools that may not qualify for or request ABA accreditation. Graduates of such schools can sit for the bar exam in California, and once they have passed that exam, a large number of states allow those students to sit for their bars.
California is also the first state to allow graduates of distance legal education to take its bar exam. However, online and correspondence law schools are generally not accredited by the ABA or approved by state bar examiners, and the eligibility of their graduates to sit for the bar exam may vary from state to state. Even in California, for instance, the State Bar deems certain online schools as "registered", meaning their graduates may take the bar exam, but also specifically says the "Committee of Bar Examiners does not approve nor accredit correspondence schools." Kentucky goes further by specifically disqualifying correspondence school graduates from admission to the bar. This applies even if the graduate has gained admission in another jurisdiction.

Curriculum

Law students are referred to as 1Ls, 2Ls, and 3Ls based on their year of study. In the United States, the American Bar Association does not mandate a particular curriculum for 1Ls. ABA Standard 302 requires only the study of "substantive law" that will lead to "effective and responsible participation in the legal profession." However, most law schools have their own mandatory curriculum for 1Ls, which typically includes:
These basic courses are intended to provide an overview of the broad study of law. Not all ABA-approved law schools offer all of these courses in the 1L year; for example, many schools do not offer constitutional law and/or criminal law until the second and third years. Most schools also require Evidence but rarely offer the course to first-year students. Some schools combine legal research and legal writing into a single year-long "lawyering skills" course, which may also include a small oral argument component.
Because the first year curriculum is always fixed, most schools do not allow 1L students to select their own course schedules, and instead hand them their schedules at new student orientation.
At most schools, the grade for an entire course depends upon the outcome of only one or two examinations, usually in essay form, which are administered via students' laptop computers in the classroom with the assistance of specialized software. Some professors may use multiple choice exams in part or in full if the course material is suitable for it. Legal research and writing courses tend to have several major projects and a final exam in essay form. Most schools impose a mandatory grade curve.
After the first year, law students are generally free to pursue different fields of legal study. All law schools offer a broad array of upper-division courses in areas of substantive law like administrative law, corporate law, international law, admiralty law, intellectual property law, and tax law, and in areas of procedural law not normally covered in the first year, like criminal procedure and remedies. Many law schools also offer upper-division practical training courses in client counseling, trial advocacy, appellate advocacy, and alternative dispute resolution. Depending upon the law school, practical training courses may involve fictional exercises in which students interact with each other or with volunteer actors playing clients, witnesses, and judges, or real-world cases at legal clinics.
Graduation is the assured outcome for the majority of students who pay their tuition on time, behave honorably and responsibly, maintain a minimum per-semester unit count and grade point average, take required upper-division courses, and successfully complete a certain number of units by the end of their sixth semester.
The ABA also requires that all students at ABA-approved schools take an ethics course in professional responsibility. Typically, this is an upper-level course; most students take it in the 2L year. This requirement was added after the Watergate scandal, which seriously damaged the public image of the profession because President Richard Nixon and most of his alleged co-conspirators were lawyers. The ABA desired to demonstrate that the legal profession could regulate itself, wished to reassert and maintain its position of leadership, and hoped to prevent direct federal regulation of the profession.
As of 2004, to ensure that students' research and writing skills do not deteriorate, the ABA has added an upper division writing requirement. Law students must take at least one course, or complete an independent study project, as a 2L or 3L that requires the writing of a paper for credit.
Most law courses are less about doctrine and more about learning how to analyze legal problems, read cases, distill facts and apply law to facts.
In 1968, the Ford Foundation began disbursing $12 million to persuade law schools to make "law school clinics" part of their curriculum. Clinics were intended to give practical experience in law practice while providing pro bono representation to the poor. However, conservative critics charge that the clinics have been used instead as an avenue for the professors to engage in left-wing political activism. Critics cite the financial involvement of the Ford Foundation as the turning point when such clinics began to change from giving practical experience to engaging in advocacy.
Law schools that offer accelerated JD programs have unique curricula for such programs. Nonetheless, ABA-approved law schools with Accelerated JD programs must meet ABA rules.
Finally, the emphasis in law schools is rarely on the law of the particular state in which the law school sits, but on the law generally throughout the country. Although this makes studying for the bar exam more difficult since one must learn state-specific law, the emphasis on legal skills over legal knowledge can benefit law students not intending to practice in the same state they attend law school.