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Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, is one of the oldest and most prestigious law schools in the United States. A member of the Ivy League, Columbia Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Columbia University in New York City. It offers the J.D., LL.M., and J.S.D. degrees in law. Ever since U.S. News & World Report began ranking law schools in 1987, Columbia Law has appeared in the Top 5 every single year, an honor shared only with Yale, Harvard, and Stanford. U.S. News & World Report consistently places Columbia Law among the top four most prestigious and selective law schools (ranking it #4 for both academic reputation and overall national standing). Recently, Columbia ranked #4 in the 2011 U.S. News Law Firm Recruiters' Ranking of Best Law Schools and is ranked #3 for highest earning law graduates in the nation, ahead of both Harvard and Yale. [http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2009/04/2009-reputational-scores-from-us-news-surveys-of-academics-and-practitioners.html Columbia has graduated more Supreme Court Justices than any other institution except Yale and Harvard law schools. More current members of the Forbes 400 attended Columbia than any other law school. Admission to Columbia Law is among the most selective in the U.S., with only 12% of applicants being accepted in 2010. The law school also ranked #2 in the 2011 U.S. News report of "Law Schools that Receive the Most Applications." Columbia is historically the highest ranked law school in its home state of New York and also has the highest average pass rate for the New York bar (95.6%). Columbia ranked #1 in The National Law Journal survey of "Go-To Law Schools" two years in a row (2007, 2008) for having the highest percentage of graduates hired by the nation's top 250 law firms (#2 in 2009). Professor Brian Leiter's law school rankings (the respected alternative to the U.S. News survey) also ranked Columbia #1 (for the years 2006 through 2009) for job placement at the nation's "most prestigious" law firms and, for the past several years (2005 � 2010), #3 for student numerical quality (average LSAT/GPA), surpassed only by Yale and Harvard. Columbia has produced a large number of distinguished alumni including, among others: two Presidents of the United States (Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt); nine Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States (three of whom were Chief Justices); numerous U.S. Cabinet members and Presidential advisers; U.S. Senators, Representatives, and Governors; members of the federal trial and appellate courts; academicians and diplomats, and civil rights and human rights activists. Alumni of the Law School have been the president or founder of more than thirty colleges and universities in the nation. For its teaching and scholarship, Columbia is lauded in corporate and securities law, international and comparative law, intellectual property, public interest and human rights law, and legal history and legal theory - administrative law, constitutional law, criminal law and procedure, critical race theory, and gender studies and family law, among others, are also exceptionally strong. Columbia, well known for corporate law, has a storied job placement rate at the nation's top law firms. |
