Northeastern University School of Law

Northeastern University School of Law
Established	1898
Type	Private
Endowment	$8,905,474 in 2003
Dean	Emily Spieler
Students	600
Location	Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Campus	Urban
Website	www.northeastern.edu/law/

Northeastern University School of Law is a law school in Boston, Massachusetts. From the time of its founding in 1898, the law school's mission has focused on addressing the needs of students and of society.

The law school flourished throughout the early 20th century, but limited resources forced the school to close in 1956. It reopened in 1968 organized around a cooperative education program, which stressed practical experience in legal settings as the best way to learn the art and craft of lawyering. This experience-based approach to legal education is increasingly seen as the best way to educate lawyers.

The school has a positive reputation for its graduates' ability to perform and handle significant legal work early in their career. Due to its practice-based approach to legal education, the school is able to select from a pool of highly qualified applicants. For the class of 2014, the school received 3,674 applications and enrolled 218 students with a median LSAT score of 162 and a median GPA of 3.48. More than half of the student body are women and more than 25 percent are minorities.

The school's ranking in U.S. News and World Report has increased from 94th in 2009 to 71st in 2011.

History

The Northeastern University School of Law was founded by the Boston Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in 1898. It started as a series of evening law courses, the first in Boston, and was incorporated as an LL.B.-granting law school, the Evening School of Law of the Boston YMCA, in 1904. Additional campuses were opened in Worcester (1917), Springfield (1917), and Providence, Rhode Island (1920). It was renamed the Northeastern University School of Law in 1922 and started admitting women. The school closed in 1953 due to declining enrollment and financial difficulties. It reopened in 1966 as a four-year day-time program awarding a J.D.

Cooperative education program

The School of Law offers a Cooperative Legal Education Program. This program provides all students with a full year of hands-on legal experience gained through four, three-month internships in law offices, judge’s chambers and other organizations throughout the world. More than 800 employers participate in the School of Law's program. By completing work placements with four different legal employers, students have the opportunity to experience the actual practice of law and to integrate practical experience with a theoretical foundation of in-depth classroom study. On average, 40 percent of Northeastern law students accept post-graduate employment with one of their former co-op employers.

Other notable features

The School of Law is recognized for its emphasis on public interest aspirations—it is currently ranked the eleventh best public interest law school in the country in the Winter 2011 edition of National Jurist and preLaw Magazine, after CUNY, Yale, Rutgers-Newark, Stanford, Berkeley, Arizona State University, University of Maryland, Loyola Los Angeles, Lewis and Clark, and Ohio State University. The 2010 edition of The Princeton Review's book, “The Best 172 Law Schools,” ranks Northeastern #2 among all the law schools for both providing the “best environment” for minority students and for having the “most liberal” students. [4].

All students are required to complete a public interest co-op, and many students participate in the school's clinics and institutes, which are dedicated to challenging existing boundaries of law in pursuit of economic and social justice. Graduates of the School of Law enter public interest careers at a rate three to five times the national average for all law school graduates.

The law school publishes the magazine, Northeastern Law Magazine.

Alumni

• Janet Bond Arterton, Judge on the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut
• Margot Botsford, Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
• Nonnie S. Burnes, Insurance Commissioner, Massachusetts
• Mary L. Bonauto, Civil Rights Project Director, Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders; lead counsel in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health
• Marie-Therese Connolly, elder rights lawyer, winner of 2011 Macarthur Fellowship
• Martha Davis, feminist, human rights activist, and author of Brutal Need. Davis is a current faculty member.
• Martín Espada, poet
• Dana Fabe, Justice, Alaska Supreme Court
• Peter Franchot, Comptroller of Maryland
• Kumiki Gibson, chief counsel to former Vice President Al Gore
• Courtney Hunt, Best Picture Academy Award-nominated film director/screenwriter in 2009 for Frozen River
• Robin Kniech, Denver City Counsel Woman
• Sharon McPhail, candidate for mayor of Detroit
• Francis J. Quirico, Justice (deceased), Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
• Delissa A. Ridgway, Judge, U.S. Court of International Trade
• Rishi Reddi, short story writer
• Victoria A. Roberts, Judge, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan
• Dorothy Samuels, New York Times editorialist
• Judith A. Scott, General Counsel, Service Employees International Union SEIU
• Mary T. Sullivan, Justice, Massachusetts Appeals Court
• Urvashi Vaid, LGBT rights activist
• Leslie Winner, North Carolina state senator and foundation head

External links

• Northeastern University School of Law
• Northeastern University Law Journal
• The Emma Jean Lang Avery papers, ca. 1916-1931 are located in the Northeastern University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Department, Boston, MA.
• The Samuel H. Becker papers, 1925-1962 are located in the Northeastern University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Department, Boston, MA.