Stanford Law School - Academics and Admissions

Academics and Admissions

Stanford Law School is known for its uniquely low student-to-faculty ratio, with first-year classes counting approximately 170 students.

The academic program is flexible and includes a diverse array of courses and clinics. First-year students (or 1L's) are required to take criminal law, civil procedure, contracts, torts, and legal research and writing during the fall quarter, and constitutional law, property, and federal litigation during the winter quarter. Upper-level courses range from white-collar crime to Supreme Court simulation seminar. SLS also boasts a clinic program that allows student to get hands-on experience. The Supreme Court Clinic has successfully brought over twenty cases before the Court, making it one of the most active Supreme Court practices of any kind. Because of its proximity to other top academic programs on campus, there has been a growing focus on joint-degree programs and classes within the other professional schools.

Students run about thirty student organizations and publish seven legal journals. The most influential journal is the Stanford Law Review. Advocacy skills are tested in the Kirkwood Moot Court competition.

The Robert Crown Law Library at Stanford holds 500,000 books, 360,000 microform and audiovisual items, and more than 8,000 current serial subscriptions.

In August 2008, Stanford Law School changed its grading system, which no longer relies on traditional letter grades, joining Yale Law School, the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, and Harvard Law School. Students now receive one of four grades: honors, pass, restricted credit, or no credit.

Stanford has a chapter of the Order of the Coif, a national law school honorary society whose stated purpose is to encourage legal scholarship and advance ethical standards of the legal profession.

Between 4,000 and 5,000 students apply for admission each year. Selection is competitive: the median undergraduate grade point average of admitted students is a 3.9 and the median LSAT score is 170 (out of 180). Beyond numbers, Stanford places considerable emphasis on factors such as extracurricular activities, work experience, and prior graduate study. About three quarters of the members of each entering class have one or more years of prior work experience and over a quarter have another graduate degree. In 2006, Stanford Law School's acceptance rate was 8.7%, one of the lowest in the nation. The Law School also accepts a small number of transfers each year.