lawyer

Harvard Law School (also known as Harvard Law or HLS ) is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. located in Cambridge. Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. [ 3 ] [ 4 ] The law school is generally considered one of the most prestigious in the world. [ 5 ] [ 6 ]

HLS is large for a law school – each class in the three-year J.D. program has approximately 560 students, the largest of the top 150 ranked law schools in the United States. [ 7 ] The first-year (1L) class is broken into seven sections of approximately 80 students who take most first-year classes together. Harvard's large class size and its prestige have led the law school to graduate a great many distinguished alumni in the judiciary, government, and the business world.

According to Harvard Law's ABA-required disclosures, 86.9% of the Class of obtained full-time, long-term, JD-required employment nine months after graduation. [ 8 ] Harvard Law School graduates have accounted for 568 judicial clerkships in the past three years, [when? ] including one-quarter of all Supreme Court clerkships. [ 9 ]

Harvard Law was founded by the estate of wealthy slaveholder Isaac Royal. Royal's coat-of-arms, with its three stacked wheat sheaves, remains the school's crest to this day. The current Dean of Harvard Law School is Martha Minow. who assumed the role on July 1, . The law school has 234 faculty members. [ 10 ]