Our History

The history of New York Law School can be summed up in a single sentence: A year ago, a seemingly daring venture; today the largest law school, with one exception, in these United States.
— The Counsellor, The New York Law School Law Journal, 1892

The year was 1891. Leading scholars and practitioners of the day saw the need for a school to teach law in a distinctive style—and in a setting close to the federal, state, and local courts and the seat of New York City government. To meet that need, Columbia Law School faculty, alumni, and students, led by their former dean, Theodore Dwight, broke away and established New York Law School, a totally independent institution. It was a bold experiment.

The founding of New York Law School became a story of conflict between government control and the desire to be self-governing. It also reflected a conflict between the desire to restrict legal education to a privileged few and the desire to keep it open to all those who wished to train themselves for the bar in an academic setting. The school’s triumph was a fittingly New York result—a shrewd application of political power in the service of opportunity. New York Law School hit the ground running—and for more than a century has been an independent law school committed to keeping the doors of the legal profession open to a diverse population of students. From the beginning, the Law School welcomed students of all races and in 1904 created the Evening Division to give those who need it the opportunity to work and attend classes.

From its auspicious start to the present day, New York Law School has graduated some of this country’s most innovative leaders, from U.S. Senator Robert F. Wagner, Class of 1900, pioneering congressional leader of the New Deal reforms, and U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan ’24 to Judge Roger J. Miner ’56, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Charles E. Phillips Jr. ’93, president of Oracle, the world’s largest enterprise software company.