Culture
With total enrollment of approximately 640 Juris Doctor and L.L.M. candidates, usually no more than 195 students comprise each entering J.D. class, with approximately 40 LL.M. students each year.
The small class size has contributed to a congenial, non-competitive atmosphere. VLS has more than 40 student organizations, which support many lectures, presentations and social events throughout the year. Students are also encouraged to form new organizations tailored to their personal interests, which has most recently produced Law Students for Social Justice (LSSJ), a new organization within the Social Justice Program that aims to facilitate an increasing number of students interested in pursuing public interest careers or hearing from legal practitioners on various ways to implement social justice values into their practice.
Regarding career options, Vanderbilt's small class size and diverse makeup of its students contribute to a dispersing graduating body, both in terms of industry and geography. While 67.6% of the most recent graduating class (the Class of 2009) pursued law firm work, 11.2% found employment as judicial clerks, 6.4% took government positions, 2.1% accepted corporate positions, 8.5% accepted public interest positions, and 3.2% are pursuing another graduate degree. Geographically, Vanderbilt 2009 graduates accepted positions throughout the United States, with 26.6% choosing employment in the Northeast, 14.4% in the West/Southwest, 43% in the South, 13.3% in the Midwest and 2.1% abroad. 99.5% of Vanderbilt's 190 2009 graduates had jobs by graduation.
This geographic dispersal, along with its lack of a class rank system, has minimized competition among students for firm opportunities among different regions and different firms. Moreover, students may not compete with each other relative to other schools because of heavy firm recruiting; hundreds of firms participate in the Vanderbilt's On-Campus Interview (or OCI) program. Notable firms include Skadden, White & Case, Williams & Connolly, and Davis Polk.
The law school also offers a 1L OCI program in the spring semester, which typically involves more regionally proximate firms based in the Southeast.
On some Friday nights throughout the school year, various student organizations sponsor informal social gatherings known as "Blackacres," named after the outdoor courtyard on campus where the gatherings are often held. The law school also has an annual auction to support its Legal Aid Summer Stipend program, which provides financial assistance to enable students to do pro bono legal work during the summer break.
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Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences and a flourishing culture in our land.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)
“I know that there are many persons to whom it seems derogatory to link a body of philosophic ideas to the social life and culture of their epoch. They seem to accept a dogma of immaculate conception of philosophical systems.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)