New York University School of Law

Coordinates: 40°43′50″N 73°59′58″W / 40.7305°N 73.9995°W / 40.7305; -73.9995

Established in 1835, the New York University School of Law (NYU Law) is the oldest law school in New York City. The school offers J.D., LL.M., and J.S.D. degrees in law, and is located in Greenwich Village, in downtown Manhattan.

NYU Law is regarded as one of the top 6 most prestigious and selective law schools in the United States. U.S. News & World Report currently ranks NYU Law 6th in the nation,^[3] and has ranked the law school as high as 4th in recent years.^[4] NYU Law is especially renowned for its strength in international law and tax law, and has been consistently ranked 1st in the country by U.S. News & World Report in both areas.^[5] Additionally, NYU Law is ranked in the top 5 law schools in the world in the QS World University Rankings.^[6] The latest edition of University of Chicago Professor Brian Leiter's ranking of the top law schools by student quality places NYU Law 4th (behind Columbia, ahead of Chicago) out of the 144 accredited schools in the United States.^[7]

According to New York University School of Law's 2013 ABA-required disclosures, 93.7% of the Class of 2013 obtained full-time, long-term, JD-required employment nine months after graduation.^[8]

Academics

NYU Law publishes ten student-edited law journals, including the New York University Law Review. The journals appear below in the order of their founding:

• New York University Law Review
• NYU Annual Survey of American Law
• NYU Journal of International Law and Politics
• Review of Law & Social Change
• Moot Court Board (which is considered a journal at NYU Law)^[9]
• New York University Environmental Law Journal
• Journal of Legislation & Public Policy
• Journal of Law & Liberty
• Journal of Law & Business
• Journal of Intellectual Property & Entertainment Law

The law school's Root-Tilden-Kern Scholarship Program is a full-tuition scholarship awarded each year to twenty students committed to public service.

NYU Law offers several fellowships to students admitted to the LLM Program. The Hauser Global Scholarship admits eight to ten top LLM students from all over the world. The scholarship includes full tuition waiver and reasonable accommodation costs. In addition, it offers the Hugo Grotius as well as Vanderbilt scholarships for International law studies and other branches of law respectively.^[10]

The Law school has a law and business program in which eight of the nation's student-leaders in law and business are awarded fellowships in the Mitchell Jacobson Leadership Program.^[11] In addition, the NYU Center for Law, Economics and Organization administers the Lawrence Lederman Fellowship to facilitate the study of Law & Economics. The Fellowship provides a $5,000 scholarship to selected students who are afforded the opportunity to work closely with NYU Law faculty and participate in a series of collaborative workshops designed to help students write a substantial research paper.^[12]

NYU Law also hosts the original chapter of the Unemployment Action Center.

LL.M. in Taxation Program

NYU Law School's LL.M. in Taxation and in International Taxation programs are widely considered to be the strongest LL.M. in Taxation and International Taxation programs in the United States, and has been consistently ranked #1 by the U.S. News & World Report magazine since they started ranking specialty law school programs in 1992.^[13][14] Joshua D. Blank is currently the faculty director of the program.^[15]

Tax LL.M. students are permitted to enroll in a general course of study or specialize in specific areas such as business taxation or estate planning.^[16] Many of the program's professors are practitioners in their respective fields.^[17]

LL.M is an abbreviation for Master of Laws, an advanced academic degree, pursued by those holding a professional law degree. In general, there are two types of LL.M. programs in the United States. The majority are programs designed to expose foreign legal graduates to the American Common Law. The other programs involve post doctoral study of a specialized area of the law such as Admiralty, Tax Law, Banking and Financial Law, Elder Law, Aeronautical Law or International Law.^[18]

Partnerships

NYU has implemented a jointly granted NYU/Osgoode LLB/LLM program in which graduates are granted the LLB as well as an LLM from NYU in only 3 and a half years instead of the normally required four. More recently, the NYU School of Law has entered into similar dual degree agreements with the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law and the University of Melbourne Law School.

Oxford University has a program of academic exchanges with New York University School of Law, mainly involving Faculty members and research students working in areas of shared interest.^[19]

NYU Law offers a dual-degree program with Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Students may earn a JD/MPA or a JD/MPP.^[20]

NYU Law offers a dual-degree program with Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Students may earn a JD/MPA.^[21]

There is also a limited amount of cross-registration permitted with Columbia Law School. Each year, a limited number of students are permitted to take classes at each other's schools.^[22] Columbia Law and NYU Law also play a basketball game every spring, the Deans' Cup, to raise money for their public interest and community service organizations.

Career planning

Graduates of the law school routinely obtain employment in elite public and private-sector positions.^[23] NYU Law ranks 2nd among all law schools in terms of the number of alumni working in the nation's top 50 law firms, and 6th in Supreme Court clerkship placement.^[24][25]

According to New York University School of Law's 2013 ABA-required disclosures, 93.7% of the Class of 2013 obtained full-time, long-term, JD-required employment nine months after graduation.^[26]

Admissions

More than 7,000 applicants compete for 450 seats at the law school.^[24] The latest edition of University of Chicago Professor Brian Leiter's ranking of the top law schools by student quality places NYU Law 4th out of the 144 accredited schools in the United States.^[27]

Admission to the New York University School of Law is highly competitive. For the class entering in the fall of 2012, 28% of applicants (1,783 out of 6,392) were offered admission, with 451 matriculating for a yield of 25%. The 25th and 75th LSAT percentiles for the 2012 entering class were 169 and 173, respectively, with a median of 171. The 25th and 75th undergraduate GPA percentiles were 3.54 and 3.84, respectively, with a median of 3.69.^[28]

Facilities

Vanderbilt Hall

Mercer Street Residence

NYU School of Law Halls

NYU Law School facilities at the school's Washington Square Campus include:

Furman Hall

Located on West Third Street between Sullivan and Thompson, Furman Hall opened on January 22, 2004 and is named for alumnus and donor Jay Furman. It connects to Vanderbilt Hall through the law library, part of which is underneath Sullivan street. The underground level also hosts the Lawyering faculty. Floors one-three have classrooms, lounges, and study space. The fourth floor hosts the career counseling program, and the fifth and sixth floors house the legal practice clinics. The highest floors, generally inaccessible to non-residents, are luxury apartments for faculty and their families. The ninth floor is accessible to students and hosts the Lester Pollack Colloquium room.

Vanderbilt Hall

The Law School's Main Building, named after Arthur T. Vanderbilt, occupies the entire block between West Third and Washington Square South (West Fourth) and between Macdougal and Sullivan Streets. Part of the first floor as well as the underground floors host the library, which it shares with Furman Hall. The first floor also holds the auditorium, student center, and main banquet hall. The second floor is mostly classrooms, while the third and fourth floors are mostly faculty and dean offices.^[29]

Mercer Street Residence

Located at 240 Mercer Street, on the southern side of West Third street, adjacent to Broadway, and a couple blocks east of D'Agostino Hall, Wilf Hall, Furman Hall and Vanderbilt Hall, the Mercer Residence houses approximately 500 Law students and faculty. Its rooms are quite a bit more spacious than those in D'Agostino Hall. The seventh floor enjoys a terrace and two computer rooms and the 8th floor provides four small study rooms. The lobby level houses a game room (pool table, foos ball, dart board, ping pong table) and the basement is home to "Mercer Pub" (a room with couches, tables, and a small kitchen that can also be reserved by student groups for social events) and several student run organizations. Mercer Residence is available for summer housing for non-NYU Law students through its Summer Living in New York program.

D'Agostino Residence Hall

Located at the intersection of West Third Street and MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village, D'Agostino Residence Hall houses approximately 300 law students and faculty.It is across the street from the backside of the main building of the law school, Vanderbilt Hall, and less than 1 block from Wilf Hall and Furman Hall. The building has two terraces - one on the 12th floor and one on the 14th floor- that offer beautiful views of Washington Square Park and the Empire State Building.^[30]

The lobby is a double-split-level. Elevators to the apartments are on the highest level, the Front Desk is on the street level, and The Commons (residents' lounge with computers and printers) is on the lower level. One floor beneath The Commons is the sub-basement, home to most of NYU's legal journals. The second (above-ground) floor, houses numerous administrative offices (Development, Alumni Relations, Special Events, Communications, Human Resources and Financial Services). Two large function rooms - Lipton Hall and the Faculty Club - are also located in the building.^[31]

The law building is named after Filomen D'Agostino, one of the first woman lawyers, who graduated in 1920. Later in life, Ms. D'Agostino donated $4 million to support residential scholarship and faculty research; the school responded by naming their new apartment building after her.^[32]

D'Agostino Hall is also available for summer housing for non-NYU Law students through its Summer Living in New York program.

22 Washington Square North

22 Washington Square North, located in a historic 1830's townhouse on the north side of Washington Square Park in "The Row", houses the Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law & Justice, the Jean Monnet Center for International and Regional Economic Law & Justice, and the Tikvah Center for Law & Jewish Civilization. This building was renovated in 2009 by Morris Adjmi Architects, has a green wall, and should meet silver LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards.

Wilf Hall

Wilf Hall, at 139 Macdougal Street, houses approximately a dozen of the schools centers, programs and institutes as well as the admissions offices (Graduate and JD). Per the NYU Law Magazine, it is a "campus destination for faculty, students, and research scholars from an array of disciplines to exchange ideas and, through their work, shape the public discourse around the leading social and political issues of the day." Wilf Hall is hoped to be one of a small number of buildings in New York City to achieve a platinum rating in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System. Among numerous environmental features, Wilf Hall has a green roof and terraces and a bicycle storage room and showers for commuting riders.

Wilf Hall also contains the Provincetown Playhouse. The playhouse opened in the 1920s and premiered many Eugene O'Neil plays. The theatre is run by NYU's Steinhardt School of Education.

Wilf Hall was designed by Morris Adjmi Architects.

Centers and Institutes

NYU Law is home to many centers and institutes, specializing in various areas of law.^[33]

• The Brennan Center for Justice is a progressive, non-partisan public policy and law institute that focuses on issues involving democracy and justice.^[34]
• The Center for Law, Economics and Organization promotes interdisciplinary research and teaching in law and economics. It is directed by Jennifer Arlen, Oren Bar-Gill, John Ferejohn, Mark Geistfeld, Lewis Kornhauser, and Geoffrey Miller.^[35]
• The Center on Law and Security is an independent, non-partisan, global center of expertise designed to promote an informed understanding of the major legal and security issues that define the post-9/11 environment. Towards that end, the Center brings together policymakers, practitioners, scholars, journalists and other experts who might not otherwise meet to address major issues and gaps in policy discourse and to provide concrete policy recommendations. Its fellows include: Peter Bergen, Sidney Blumenthal, Peter Clarke, Roger Cressey, Joshua Dratel, Carol Dysinger, Barton Gellman, Bernard Haykel, Thomas Hegghammer, Brian Palmer, Michael Sheehan, Alexandra Starr, Robert Windrem, and Lawrence Wright.^[36] Its former fellows included: Paul Cruickshank, Amos Elon, Baltasar Garzón, Tara McKelvey, Dana Priest, and Nir Rosen.^[36][37] Through its many activities, the Center generates local, national, and international awareness of the legal dimension of security issues, including the Terrorist Trial Report Card, a comprehensive study on every terrorism prosecution in the United States since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.^[38]
• The Center on the Administration of Criminal Law is a think-tank dedicated to the promotion of good government and prosecution practices in criminal matters. The Center analyzes important issues in criminal law or having implications for the administration criminal law. In particular, the Center focuses on the exercise of power and discretion by prosecutors. The Center accomplishes its mission in three areas: academia, litigation, and participating in public policy and media debates.^[39] The Center's academic component gathers empirical research, publishes scholarship, and organizes and hosts conferences and symposia. The Center's litigation component uses the Center's research, experience, and expertise to litigate criminal cases or cases having implications for the administration of criminal law, particularly in cases in which the exercise of power and discretion by prosecutors raises substantive legal issues. The Center's public policy and media component seeks to improve public dialogue on criminal justice matters in various ways, including testifying before public officials and the publishing of op-ed pieces.^[40]
• The Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy is a joint venture between the law school and NYU's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. It is an academic research center devoted to the public policy aspects of land use, real estate development and housing.^[41]
• The Hauser Global Law School Program, launched in 1994, has moved NYU School of Law beyond the traditional study of comparative and international law to systematic examination of transnational issues and the development of new ways to train 21st-century lawyers. The Program incorporates non-U.S. and transnational legal perspectives into the Law School’s curriculum, promotes scholarship on comparative and global law, and brings together faculty, scholars, and students from around the world.^[42]
• The Institute for Executive Education offers focused training for professionals and integrates key elements of law, business, and public policy into its programming.^[43] Led by Faculty Director Gerald Rosenfeld and Executive Director Erin O’Brien, the institute provides open enrollment classes for individuals and custom programs for organizations.^[44]
• The Institute for International Law and Justice integrates the law school’s scholarly excellence in international law into the policy activities of the United Nations, non-governmental organizations, law firms, and industry.^[45]
• The Institute for Law & Society is a joint venture between the law school and the NYU Graduate School of Arts and Science. It serves as an intellectual center for faculty, graduate students, and law students interested in studying law and legal institutions from an interdisciplinary social science perspective. It offers an opportunity to earn a J.D.-Ph.D or J.D.-M.A. dual degree in law and society.^[46]
• The Institute for Policy Integrity is headed by Richard Revesz and Michael Livermore. It advocates for sound cost-benefit analysis at the state, national, and global levels.^[47]
• The Pollack Center for Law and Business is a joint venture between the law school and the New York University Stern School of Business. The Center is designed to enrich the professional education of students of law and business and to facilitate joint teaching to involve leaders in banking, business, and law in the intellectual life of the University through sponsorship of meetings, conferences and dinners. The Pollack Center also offers a program for students to earn the Advanced Professional Certificate in Law and Business.^[48] The director is William T. Allen, a professor at the law school and former Chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery.^[49]
• The Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law & Justice brings in as Fellows each year approximately 14 leading scholars from different disciplines and cultures. Each year the Straus Institute defines an annual theme that serves as the overarching subject around which the annual fora, colloquia and conference are set. The faculty director is Joseph H. H. Weiler.^[50]
• The Tikvah Center for Law & Jewish Civilization is headed by Moshe Halbertal and Joseph H. H. Weiler. The foundational premise of the Center is 1) that the study of Jewish law can profit immensely from insights gained from general jurisprudence; and 2) that Jewish law and Jewish civilization can provide illuminating perspectives both on the general study of law as a per se academic discipline, and on the reflection of law as a central social institution refracting the most important issues in our society.^[51]
• The U.S.-Asia Law Institute serves as a resource and partner to various Asian countries as they reform and further develop their legal systems and institutions. It also works to improve the understanding of Asian legal systems by lawyers, academics, policy makers and the public. The faculty director is Jerome A. Cohen.^[52]
• The Marron Institute is an interdisciplinary and international effort to advance new research and teaching on cities and the urban environment with a focus on enabling cities globally to become more livable, sustainable, and equitable. The Marron Institute seeks to foster collaboration among faculty and researchers university-wide, bringing together the social sciences, humanities and professional schools on new research. The Institute also aims to create a vibrant learning community for scholars and students who lead and study urban research.^[53]

Employment

According to New York University School of Law's official 2013 ABA-required disclosures, 93.7% of the Class of 2013 obtained full-time, long-term, JD-required employment nine months after graduation.^[26] NYU Law's Law School Transparency under-employment score is 3%, indicating the percentage of the Class of 2013 unemployed, pursuing an additional degree, or working in a non-professional, short-term, or part-time job nine months after graduation.^[54]

Costs

The total cost of attendance (indicating the cost of tuition, fees, and living expenses) at NYU Law for the 2014-2015 academic year is $83,722.^[55] The Law School Transparency estimated debt-financed cost of attendance for three years is $309,177.^[56]

Faculty

NYU Law has the second highest number of faculty who are members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences with 19 inductees, behind only Harvard.^[57]

Some of NYU's notable professors include:

Notable alumni

Famous alumni include Governor and Democratic presidential candidate Samuel J. Tilden; former New York City mayors Fiorello La Guardia, Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani; New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly; the four founders of the prominent law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; Evan Chesler, the current Chairman at Cravath, Swaine & Moore; comedian Demetri Martin; Republic of China president Ma Ying-Jeou; former President of Panama Guillermo Endara; former Director of the FBI Louis Freeh; U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander, Rudy Boschwitz and Jacob Javits; suffragette and college founding president Jessica Garretson Finch; sportscaster Howard Cosell; Former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue; NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman; John F. Kennedy, Jr.; Special Inspector General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program Neil Barofsky; many U.S. Representatives, including Mitchell Jenkins, Jefferson Monroe Levy and Isaac Siegel; former Chairman of Paramount Pictures Jonathan Dolgen; Hollywood and Broadway producer Marc E. Platt; Hollywood producer and former Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment Peter Guber; journalist Glenn Greenwald; several corporate leaders including Interpublic Group of Companies Chairman and CEO Michael I. Roth; ConocoPhillips President and COO John A. Carrig; Robert Half International Chairman and CEO Harold Max Messner; and Southwest Airlines founder Herb Kelleher; Marvel Entertainment Vice President John Turitzin; as well as Nobel Peace Prize laureates Elihu Root and Mohamed ElBaradei.

Among judges, Judith Kaye, former Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, is an alumna; Dennis G. Jacobs, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is an alumnus. Judge Pauline Newman of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit also graduated from NYU Law.^[58] NYU Law alumni have served as judges of the International Court of Justice, which is popularly known as the World Court,^[59] and of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

See also

• Law of New York

References

External links

• Official website