lawyer

Sargent Hall, the main law school building, is across from Boston Common and Granary Burying Ground

Suffolk University Law School is a private law school in downtown Boston, Massachusetts. United States. The fourth oldest law school in New England in continuous existence (after Harvard. Yale. and Boston University ), Suffolk was founded in 1906 by Gleason Archer, Sr. to provide a legal education for those who traditionally lacked the opportunity to study law because of socio-economic or racial discrimination.

Suffolk's old building in the early twentieth century, featuring a neon sign on the roof

Suffolk Law School has a 3-year day program and a 4-year evening program offering a broad selection of courses. The law school maintains a traditional first-year juris doctor curriculum which includes the year-long courses of Civil Procedure, Contracts, Property, Torts, and Legal Writing, in addition to the semester-long Constitutional Law and Criminal Law courses. A course in Professional Responsibility is required, and each student must also fulfill legal writing and legal skills requirements prior to graduation. Until Fiduciary Relations, a class concentrating on the law of Agency and Trusts, was required. Upon completion of the required curriculum, students at Suffolk choose from over 200 upper-level courses, many of which focus on learning practical skills, including several legal clinics. [ 6 ] Students may also receive credit for diverse internships and clerkships. including those at various courts in the Boston area. Academic concentrations are available in Civil Litigation, Financial Services, Health/Biomedical, and Intellectual Property. [ 7 ]

In addition to the J.D.. Suffolk offers an advanced LL.M. in Global Law and Technology. Suffolk University Law School also offers joint degrees with Suffolk's Sawyer Business School (J.D./M.B.A.. J.D./M.S.F. J.D./M.P.A. ), and the Suffolk University College of Arts and Sciences (J.D./M.S.C.J. J.D./M.S.I.E.). [ 8 ]

The average faculty to student ratio at Suffolk is 16.5 students per faculty member. [ 9 ] Tuition for the - academic year is $39,550 for the day division and $29,664 for the evening division. [ 10 ]

In , the median GPA for incoming Suffolk Law students was 3.3, and the median LSAT score was 157. [ 11 ] The admission rate in 2007 was 49.8%. [ 12 ] A breakdown of the various degree programs reveals that for certain programs the selectivity can dramatically increase, such as the LL.M. program. [ 13 ]

Suffolk had a first time bar passage rate of 94.3% in ; third of nine ABA accredited law schools in Massachusetts [ 14 ]

The median full-time starting salaries for Suffolk graduates who had secured employment was $77,000 in the private sector, and $45,000 in the public sector. [ 15 ] [ 16 ]

Entryway of Sargent Hall.

Suffolk is ranked annually in several lists of top law schools in the United States, including the U.S. News and Princeton Review. and other rankings. The school has been ranked in the third or fourth tier overall in the past two years. [ 17 ] In , U.S. News ranked Suffolk 13th overall in the United States for its evening program. [ 18 ] In U.S. News ranked Suffolk 20th in the United States for its legal clinics. 13th for its Alternative Dispute Resolution Program, and 17th for its Legal Writing above Harvard and BU. [ 6 ] The edition of Judging the Law Schools ranked Suffolk 35th overall in the United States ahead of Cornell Law School based upon ABA data. [ 19 ] In the 2004 edition of The Best 117 Law Schools, Princeton Review ranked Suffolk 5th in the United States in "most competitive students." [ 20 ] In National Jurist ranked Suffolk in the top sixty law schools in the country for public interest law. [ 21 ]