University at Buffalo Law School - Background

Background

UB Law School has a favorable student-faculty ratio of 12.5:1. Currently, more than 75 percent of its upper division courses comprise fewer than 40 students. In addition, many of the 81 faculty members hold advanced degrees in the social sciences and other disciplines in conjunction with their law degrees.

The first-year program includes traditional legal courses in civil procedure, torts, contracts, property, criminal law, constitutional law, and ethics. In the second and third years students choose from a dozen curricular concentrations that allow for in-depth study. Each student has the opportunity to craft a custom-made curriculum, beyond the selected concentrations to build a personalized sequence of courses and experiences.

Under the Law School's Legal Analysis, Writing and Research (LAWR) program, all students complete a 10-credit, three-semester LAWR curriculum, with two semesters in their first year and a third semester during their second or third years. All three semesters are taught by full-time LAWR faculty. Throughout the LAWR program, students learn legal analysis and writing through immersion in the practice of writing, and through cycles of trial and error, feedback, and reflection. Because the courses are taught in small sections with an excellent instructor-to-student ratio, students are inspired to think critically and approach legal questions in a newly-disciplined way.

Most students are part of the Juris Doctor (J.D.) program. Interdisciplinary dual degree programs permit J.D. students to seek other graduate degrees along with their J.D., including master's or doctoral degrees from the School of Management, School of Social Work, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Public Health and Health Professions, or School of Architecture and Planning. UB Law also has a the only post-professional Master of Laws (LL.M.) program in criminal law in the United States, and a general LL.M. program designed exclusively for international students.

The Neil D. Levin Graduate Institute of International Relations and Commerce is a joint program of UB Law with UB's business school. Named after Neil David Levin, the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey who was killed in the September 11 attacks, the Levin Institute conducts an annual spring semester program in New York City for about 20 students, divided into five teams to work on projects sponsored by law firms and financial institutions. For example, in 2006 the teams where sponsored by CLSA, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, UBS, Credit Suisse, and M&T Bank.

The general law journal is the Buffalo Law Review, a student-run publication managed by 3L J.D. candidates. Founded in 1951, the Law Review currently publishes five issues per year (January, April, May, July and December), featuring full length articles by practitioners, professors and students in all areas of law. Each issue contains approximately four such articles and one student-authored comment. Six other specialist journals are also based at UB Law: The American Bar Association's Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law, Buffalo Environmental Law Journal, Buffalo Public Interest Law Journal (BPILJ), Buffalo Journal of Gender, Law & Social Policy, Buffalo Human Rights Law Review, and Buffalo Intellectual Property Law Journal.

The student newspaper, The Opinion, has been in publication since the 1950s, making it one of the oldest law school newspapers in the country.

UB's Clinical Legal Education program operate the school's legal clinics, which involve client service, impact litigation, transactional practice, and public policy development. Students participate in clinics throughout the school year and are given classroom credit for their work. The eight clinics are the Affordable Housing Clinic, Community Economic Development Clinic, Environment and Development Clinic, Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, Law and Social Work Clinic, Mediation Clinic, William and Mary Foster Elder Law Clinic, and Women, Children and Social Justice Clinic.

The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy is an institute that supports the interdisciplinary study of law and legal institutions. Over 100 UB faculty members from 17 academic departments participate as well as graduate students participate in Baldy Center research and teaching activities. The Center maintains cooperative ties to other interdisciplinary research centers and co-sponsors a regional network of sociolegal scholars in New York and Canada. The Baldy Center hosts distinguished scholars from around the world as visitors, consultants, and conference participants. The Baldy Center and UB Law also publishes the journal Law & Policy.

The Charles B. Sears Law Library is UB's law library. It is named for Charles Brown Sears and occupies six floors in the center of the Law School. The Law Library contains 300,000 bound volumes and over 221,000 volumes in microform. Included within the Federal, New York, and State Core Collections are basic legal research tools: court reporters and digests, session laws and codes, rules and regulations, attorney general reports, jurisdictional encyclopedias and citators. The Law Library's special collection includes the Howard R. Berman Collection, Iroquois Books of Marilyn L. Haas, John Lord O'Brian Papers, Law Library Archives, Law School Archives, Morris Cohen Rare Book Collection, Onondaga Nation Land Claims Records, Seneca Land Claims Records, Tibetan Legal Manuscripts, and Watergate Collection.