University of Pennsylvania Law School
The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School is the law school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Penn Carey Law offers the degrees of Juris Doctor, Master of Laws, Master of Comparative Laws, Master in Law, and Doctor of the Science of Law.
The entering class typically consists of approximately 250 students. Penn Carey Law's 2020 weighted first-time bar passage rate was 98.5 percent. For the class of 2024, 49 percent of students were women, 40 percent identified as persons of color, and 12 percent of students enrolled with an advanced degree.
History
18th century
The University of Pennsylvania Law School traces its origins to a series of Lectures on Law delivered in 1790 through 1792 by James Wilson, one of only six signers of the United States Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. Wilson is credited with being one of the two primary authors of the first draft of such constitution, due to his membership on the Committee of Detail established by the United States Constitutional Convention on July 24, 1787, to draft a text reflecting the agreements made by the Convention up to that point.As a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Wilson gave these lectures on law to President George Washington and Vice President John Adams and the rest of George Washington's cabinet, including Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. Wilson was one of the original five U.S. Supreme Court associate justices nominated by George Washington and confirmed by the U.S. Senate via unanimous voice vote on September 26, 1789. In 1792, Wilson was appointed as Penn's first full professor of law and remained a professor at Penn through the date of his death in 1798.
19th century
In 1817, the University of Pennsylvania trustees appointed Charles Willing Hare as the second professor of law. Hare taught for one year before becoming "afflicted with loss of reason."The University of Pennsylvania began offering a full-time program in law in 1850, under the leadership of the third professor of law at the Law Department of the University of Pennsylvania, George Sharswood. Sharswood was also named Dean of Penn's Law School in 1852 and served through 1867, and was later appointed as chief justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.
In 1852, the University of Pennsylvania was the first law school in the nation to publish a law journal. Then called The American Law Register, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review is the nation's oldest law review and one of the most-cited law journals in the world.
In 1881, Carrie Burnham Kilgore became the first woman admitted to, and, in 1883, to graduate from, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and subsequently became first woman admitted to practice law in Pennsylvania.
In 1888, Aaron Albert Mossell became the first African-American man to earn a law degree from Penn. Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, Mossell's daughter, was awarded the Frances Sergeant Pepper fellowship in 1921 and subsequently became the first African-American to receive a PhD in economics in the United States, a degree she earned at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1927, Alexander became the first African-American woman to graduate from Penn Law and in 1929, she became the first African-American woman to be admitted to practice law in Pennsylvania.
William Draper Lewis was named dean of Penn's law department in 1896 and founded the American Law Institute.
20th century
In 1900, the trustees of the University of Pennsylvania approved his and others' request to move the Law School to the core of campus and its current location at the intersection of 34th and Chestnut Streets. Under Lewis' deanship, the Law School was one of the first schools to emphasize legal teaching by full-time professors instead of practitioners, a system that is still followed today.As legal education became more formalized, the school initiated a three-year curriculum and instituted stringent admissions requirements.
After 30 years with the Law School, Lewis founded the American Law Institute in 1925, which was seated in the Law School and was chaired by Lewis himself. The ALI was later chaired by another Penn Law Dean, Herbert Funk Goodrich, and Penn Law Professors George Wharton Pepper and Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.
In 1969, Martha Field became the first woman to join the faculty at the Law School at Penn; she is now a professor at Harvard Law School. Other notable women who have been or are presently professors at Penn Carey Law include Lani Guinier, Elizabeth Warren, Anita L. Allen, and Dorothy Roberts.
From 1974 to 1978, the dean of the Law School was Louis Pollak, who later became a federal judge. Since Pollak ascended to the bench, Penn Law's deans have included James O. Freedman, former president of Dartmouth College, Colin Diver, former president of Reed College, and Michael Fitts, current president of Tulane University.
21st century
In 2014, the University of Pennsylvania Law School established a master's degree and certificate program offering a specialized curriculum for professionals and students from diverse fields to enhance their understanding of legal principles and concepts. A tenth anniversary celebration of the master's program in 2024 involved a public interview between journalist Linda Greenhouse in and legal scholar Jeffrey Rosen, head of the National Constitution Center.In November 2019, the University of Pennsylvania Law School was renamed the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School after it received a donation from the W.P. Carey Foundation. The school was renamed in honor of the foundation's first president, alumnus Francis J. Carey, the brother of William Polk Carey who founded the W. P. Carey Inc real estate investment trust. The change was met by some controversy, and a petition to quash the abbreviated "Carey Law", in favor of the traditional "Penn Law", was circulated. The official short-form name, according to the school's 2025 style guide, is "Penn Carey Law".
Osagie O. Imasogie, a 1985 graduate of Penn Law, is the current chair of the school's board of overseers, having replaced Perry Golkin on January 1, 2021. Imasogie has been a member of the board since 2006 and more recently a trustees of the University of Pennsylvania. He is the first African-born chair of an American law school.
Except for the period during which the law school's policy prohibited military recruiters from recruiting on the law school campus during the don't ask, don't tell policy era, Penn Carey Law has actively supported the armed forces. The Harold Cramer Memorial Scholarship Program was established in June 2021 to ensure that all veterans admitted to the law school will be able to afford to attend.
Academics
Admissions and costs
For the J.D. class entering in the fall of 2022, 9.74 percent out of 6,816 applicants were offered admission, with 246 matriculating. The class boasted 25th and 75th LSAT percentiles of 166 and 173, respectively, with a median of 172. The 25th and 75th undergraduate GPA percentiles were 3.61 and 3.96, respectively, with a median of 3.90. 13 percent of matriculating students identified as first-generation college students, and 35 percent identified as first-generation professional school students.Over 1,250 students from 70 countries applied to Penn's LLM program for the fall of 2019. The incoming class consisted of 126 students from more than 30 countries.
The entering class typically consists of approximately 250 students, and admission is highly competitive. Penn Law's July 2018 weighted first-time bar passage rate was 92.09%. The law school is one of the "T14" law schools, that is, schools that have consistently ranked within the top 14 law schools since U.S. News & World Report began publishing rankings. In the class entering in 2018, over half of students were women, over a third identified as persons of color, and 10% of students enrolled with an advanced degree.
Based on student survey responses, ABA and NALP data, 99.6 percent of the Class of 2020 obtained full-time employment after graduation. The median salary for the Class of 2019 was $190,000, as 75.2 percent of students joined law firms and 11.6 percent obtained judicial clerkships. The law school was ranked #2 of all law schools nationwide by the National Law Journal, for sending the highest percentage of 2019 graduates to join the 100 largest law firms in the U.S., constituting 58.4 percent.
The total cost of attendance for J.D. students for the 2020–2021 academic year was estimated by the university to be $98,920. The estimated cost of attendance increased by over 7% to $105,932 for the 2023–2024 academic year.
The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School offers several large merit scholarships, up to full tuition, such as the Levy Scholars Program, Silverman Scholars, Dean's Scholarship, and the Earl R. Franklin and Barbara Corwin Franklin Endowed Merit Scholarship.
Centers and programs
Interdisciplinary studies
Throughout its modern history, Penn has been known for its strong focus on interdisciplinary studies, a continuation of policy promoted by the school's early 20th-century dean, William Draper Lewis. Penn Carey's tight integration with the rest of Penn's schools have created many interdisciplinary degree programs. More than 50 percent of courses are interdisciplinary, and Penn Carey offers more than 20 joint and dual degree programs, including a JD/MBA, a JD/PhD in communication, and a JD/MD.Further JD-concurrent certificates and degrees include those in business and public policy with the Wharton School; in cross-sector innovation with the School of Social Policy and Practice; in international business and law with the Themis Joint Certificate with the ESADE in Barcelona; and in social cognitive and affective neuroscience. 19 percent of the Class of 2007 earned a certificate.