lawyer

#Harvard University

U.S. News Rankings

Law School Overview

The law school at Harvard University has an application deadline of February 1. The full-time program application fee at the law school at Harvard University is $85. Its tuition is full-time: $55,842 per year. The student-faculty ratio is 11.8:1. The law school at Harvard University has 172 full- and part-time faculty on staff.

Opportunities to put classroom lessons to work start early at Harvard Law School. Through the school s Student Practice Organizations, first-year students can test their legal skills by helping local musicians understand copyright laws or representing state prison inmates at disciplinary hearings, among other opportunities. Older students can partake in HLS legal clinics, the largest offering of any school in the world. All students must complete at least 40 hours of pro bono, or volunteer, work before graduating.

HLS is unique in its grading procedures; instead of traditional letter grades, students receive a distinction of honors, pass, low pass or fail. The HLS buildings are folded into the university campus in Harvard Square, a hub of student life with restaurants, bars and shops in Cambridge, Mass. Students can live in on-campus dormitories, suites and apartments, though more than 60 percent find housing off campus. To give legal education a global slant, students can check out the joint J.D./LL.M. program between HLS and the U.K. s University of Cambridge or can study abroad for a three-week winter term or a semester.

For those prospective students worried about law school debt, HLS offers the Low Income Protection Plan to help graduates with minimal salaries manage their student loans. Among the school s most prominent alumni are President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama, as well as more than a dozen current and former Supreme Court Justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts.

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