About the School
Founded in 1891, New York Law School is an independent, dynamic law school located in the heart of Lower Manhattan. From its inception, the Law School’s location, in the midst of the country's largest concentration of government agencies, courts, law firms, banks, corporate headquarters, and securities exchanges, has made immersion in the legal life of a great city an essential part of the School's identity and curriculum.
The Law School offers the course of study leading to the J.D. degree through full-time day and part-time evening divisions. It also offers Master of Laws (LL.M.) degrees in Taxation, Real Estate, Financial Services Law, and American Business Law, as well as a Master of Arts (M.A.) in Mental Disability Law Studies.
A full-time faculty of approximately 94 men and women is joined by a first-rate adjunct faculty, consisting of attorneys, judges, and other public officials who offer many elective courses in the various fields of their expertise. Approximately 1,500 J.D. students, most of them entering right after college, study at the Law School. In the Evening Division, many of the students have established careers in other fields. New York Law School students are 51 percent women, and 35 percent self-identified minority (in the entering class of 2012).
The Law School's curriculum is distinguished by its systematic effort to integrate the study of theory and practice and to include the perspectives of legal practitioners. The Law School's unique skills-based curriculum offers clinics, simulation courses, externships, project-based learning courses, and a new first-year Legal Practice program to carry out that goal. Further, to that end, the faculty established nine academic centers which provide specialized study and offer opportunities for exchange between the students and expert practitioners:
- Center for Business Law & Policy
- Center on Financial Services Law
- Center for International Law
- Center for New York City Law
- Center for Professional Values and Practice
- Center for Real Estate Studies
- Diane Abbey Law Center for Children and Families
- Institute for Information Law & Policy
- Justice Action Center
The centers engage many students through the John Marshall Harlan Scholars Program, a rigorous academic honors program designed for students who have performed at the top of their law school class. Harlan Scholars have the opportunity to focus on a particular field of study, gaining depth and substantive expertise beyond a broad understanding of the law.
