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.
Read more about this topic: Vanderbilt University Law School
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially provincial still, not metropolitan,—mere Jonathans. We are provincial, because we do not find at home our standards; because we do not worship truth, but the reflection of truth; because we are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufacturers and agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The highest end of government is the culture of men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“As the end of the century approaches, all our culture is like the culture of flies at the beginning of winter. Having lost their agility, dreamy and demented, they turn slowly about the window in the first icy mists of morning. They give themselves a last wash and brush-up, their ocellated eyes roll, and they fall down the curtains.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)