Overview

Each year Stanford Law receives more than 4,500 applications from potential students and some 170 join our vibrant community. Students come from across the United States and around the globe—from diverse careers in the public and private sector, small liberal arts colleges and institutes of technology, military academies and academies of art, theological seminaries and medical schools, distinguished state universities and centuries-old private universities.

JD Application Procedure

Transfer Application Procedure

Visiting Student Application Procedure

Letter from the Dean

The practice of law has changed dramatically in recent years, and legal education must change to keep pace. Globalization, the new economy, and the information revolution have transformed what people know and how they do things-altering and enlarging the sorts of knowledge and training needed to understand and practice law. Equally dramatic changes have occurred at the transnational level. From the Constitution to the criminal justice system, from intellectual property rights to human rights, from the environment to the corporate boardroom, those who practice and study law have to negotiate increasingly blurred lines between domestic and international legal orders. And, now, economic pressures have accelerated changes that were emerging slowly and brought about new changes in how the legal industry is organized, how law is practiced, and how today's lawyers operate.

I became the dean of Stanford Law School because I believe no law school in the nation is better suited to prepare students for the fundamental changes that are underway. Your generation will be the one that has to re-mold institutions in both the public and private sectors, and doing so will require scholars and practitioners capable of employing new forms of integrated legal analysis.

Stanford is unrivaled in its ability to pioneer these developments. Our faculty have written casebooks that dominate the teaching of the classic curriculum in law schools across the country. More, they have identified and defined the boundaries of new fields, like cyberlaw or law and the biosciences. Stanford professors have set the standard in ethics and public policy for emerging industries such as clean tech, and they've revitalized clinical training by, for example, creating the only Supreme Court Litigation Clinic in the country where students work on live cases before the High Court. When you come to Stanford you will learn to integrate legal analysis with the newest developments in other disciplines, from economics, statistics, and finance, to history, psychology, and cultural theory. You will learn law not only from casebooks, but also from case studies, simulated negotiations, and clinical fieldwork. You will learn about law's interaction with the worlds of business and public policy. In short, you will prepare for a rich and varied professional life in an era of great excitement and rapid change.

Yet for all we do at Stanford, we remain a small law school. Here you'll encounter open doors and a level of accessibility and intimacy that is the envy of larger schools. You will get to know and learn from all your teachers and all your classmates, rather than be lost in a crowd. And you'll experience the entrepreneurial spirit that made Stanford the engine that drove the development of Silicon Valley. Stanford's culture has always emphasized the importance of work across disciplines and out-of-the-box thinking. Our students take this cross-disciplinary, problem-solving approach out of the classroom and into careers in every state of the nation and around the world. Stanford has also long been committed to providing the finest legal education to the most talented students in the nation, regardless of financial need. And, for those whose goal is to enter public interest practice, we help make that dream a reality through the most generous Loan Repayment Assistance Program of any law school in the country. The law school's classrooms and library offer state-of-the-art teaching and research tools, including wireless connectivity and access to countless legal resources.

As much as we value technology to facilitate and enliven teaching, research, and collaboration, we still revel in face-to-face interaction. We've taken great care to nurture a community of faculty, students, staff, and alumni who interact and know each other well. This extends beyond the classroom and library to living accommodations, for the best student housing in the nation is now available to Stanford law students, who can be part of a living, thriving community of graduate students from multiple disciplines-law, business, engineering, medicine, economics, public policy, and more. Ask any of our students and they'll tell you that, while their classmates are among the brightest and most ambitious law students in the country, they also share a civility and decency that makes it possible to enjoy, engage, and celebrate the full vibrant range of our diverse school.

I know I made the right choice when I chose to come to Stanford Law School. I hope that, should you apply and be admitted, you'll make that choice as well.

Sincerely,
Larry Kramer
Richard E. Lang Professor of Law and Dean