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Tulane University Law School

Coordinates: 29°56′07″N 90°07′22″W / 29.935344°N 90.122687°W / 29.935344; -90.122687
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Tulane University Law School
Tulane University Shield
TypePrivate
Established1847
DeanLawrence Ponoroff
Students814
Location
New Orleans
,
Louisiana
,
USA
CampusUrban
Websitelaw.tulane.edu

Tulane University Law School is the law school of Tulane University. It is located at Tulane's Uptown campus in New Orleans, Louisiana. Established in 1847, it is the 12th oldest law school in the United States.

The law school curriculum offers a complete selection of common law and federal subjects. In addition, Tulane offers electives in the civil law, giving students the opportunity to pursue comparative education of the world's two major legal systems. (Louisiana is the only U.S. state to have a civil law, rather than common law, system). Students are permitted to survey a broad range of subject areas or to concentrate in one or more. Specifically, Tulane Law School's environmental law and sports law programs are among the strongest nationwide, and its maritime law program is among the best in the world.[1] For more than 20 years, the school has hosted the Tulane Corporate Law Institute, a preeminent mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and corporate law forum.[2][3]

Campus

The law school was located in Jones Hall from 1969 until 1995, where scenes for The Pelican Brief were filmed.

The law school's 160,000 square-foot building, John Giffen Weinmann Hall, was completed in 1995. Designed to integrate classrooms, a student lounge, a computer lab, faculty offices, and a law library that contains both national and international collections, the building is centrally located on Tulane’s Uptown campus. The law school has been on the Uptown campus since 1906, and has been housed in several buildings since then, until the completion of Weinmann Hall. The law school was located in Jones Hall from 1969 until 1995, where scenes for The Pelican Brief were filmed.

Next to Weinmann Hall on the 6300 block of Freret Street is the Law Annex, a light gray cobblestone building that houses the Career Development Office (CDO). The Law Annex was a faculty residence before being was converted to its current use.[4] Nearby is the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane's main library; the Lavin-Bernick Center, which houses university dining facilities and the university bookstore; the Reily Student Recreation Center (a gym with indoor and outdoor swimming pools, and basketball, squash, and tennis courts); the Freeman School of Business; the Newcomb Art Gallery; and various other buildings venues.

The Uptown campus is marked by many large live oak trees and historically significant buildings. Architectural styles include Richardsonian Romanesque, Elizabethan, Renaissance, Brutalist, and Modern architecture. The front-of-campus buildings use white Indiana Limestone or orange brick for exteriors, while the middle-of-campus buildings are mostly adorned in red St. Joe brick. In all, Tulane's Uptown campus occupies more than 110 acres (0.4 km²), facing St. Charles Avenue directly opposite Audubon Park, which features the Audubon Zoo, and a 1.8-mile pedestrian trail around a public golf course. The campus is also a short bicycle ride from the Mississippi River and a 25+ mile bicycling/jogging trail that runs along it. The St. Charles Avenue Streetcar Line makes the campus accessible via public transit. Loyola University is directly adjacent to Tulane, on the downriver side.

Planned improvements

In late November 2008, the university announced that donors are funding elimination of the street between the law school and the the cafeteria/bookstore, to transform the center of campus "into a vibrant, pedestrian environment."[5] The street will be replaced with a crushed-granite surface adorned with Japanese magnolias and irises.[5] The project is scheduled for completion in October 2009.[5] The project's blueprint can be viewed here. Coincidentally, in late November 2008 the City of New Orleans announced plans to add bicycle lanes to the St. Charles Avenue corridor that runs in front of campus.[6]

Academic program

The 2010 U.S. News & World Report law school rankings place Tulane Law as 45th in the nation overall and 11th in environmental law.[7] The global financial crisis of 2007-2009 reportedly led to an increase in student selectivity for the class of 2012, as applications to law schools across the nation were estimated to have risen by 5% between 2008 and 2009, including a 15% increase at Tulane Law alone.[8]

Six semesters in residence, completion of 88 credits with at least a "C" average, and fulfillment of an upper-level writing requirement and a 30-hour community service obligation are required for graduation from the Juris Doctor(J.D.) degree program. The first-year curriculum comprises eight required courses. The first-year legal research and writing program is taught by instructors with significant experience as lawyers and writers, each assisted by senior fellows.

After the first year, all courses are elective, except for a required legal profession course. All first-year and many upper-class courses are taught in multiple sections to allow for smaller classes. The upper-class curriculum includes introductory as well as advanced courses in a broad range of subject areas, including international and comparative law, business and corporate law, environmental law, maritime law, criminal law, intellectual property, taxation, and litigation and procedure, among others.

Tulane Law offers six optional concentration programs for J.D. students that wish to receive one certificate of completion in an area. The six are European legal studies, environmental law, international and comparative law, maritime law, sports law, or civil law.

Tulane’s Eason-Weinmann Center for Comparative Law, its Maritime Law Center, and its Institute for Water Policy & Law add depth to the curriculum.

Tulane conducts an annual summer school in New Orleans and offers summer-study programs abroad. Tulane also offers semester-long exchange programs with select law schools in a number of countries throughout the world.

In addition to the J.D., the school offers two graduate degrees in law: The Master of Laws (LL.M.) the Doctor of Laws(S.J.D.) program. The LL.M. programs are in maritime law, energy and environmental law, American business law, and international and comparative law.

The law school offers six live-client clinical programs: civil litigation, criminal defense, juvenile litigation, domestic violence[4][5], environmental law (the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic), and legislative and administrative advocacy. In addition, there is a trial advocacy program, and third-year students may engage in externships with federal and state judges, with a local death penalty project, or with certain administrative agencies. The school was the first in the country to institute a pro bono program requiring that each student complete community service work prior to graduation. For the next few years, students will engage in community service work related to the rebuilding of New Orleans subsequent to Hurricane Katrina.[9]

Strategic plan

In May 2007, Tulane Law announced a Strategic Plan to improve its academic mission.[10] Most notably, the school decided to increase student selectivity by gradually reducing the incoming JD class size from a historical average of 350 students per year to a target of 250 students per year within several years.[11]

Summer study abroad

Tulane Law School was one of the first-five schools in the United States to offer a foreign summer law program.[12] As of 2008, over 4,000 law students from approximately 140 U.S. law schools have attended Tulane Law's summer abroad programs, taught by faculty from Tulane, other U.S. law schools, and universities abroad.[13] Through the years, prominent scholars and federal judges have highlighted Tulane's summer faculty, including Supreme Court justices Harry Blackmun, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, and William Rehnquist.[13] In the past, the law school's summer programs have taken place in Amsterdam in the Netherlands; Berlin in Germany; Cambridge and London in England; Paris and Grenoble in France; Rhodes and Spetses in Greece; and Siena in Italy.

JD/MBA program

Photo taken on 2009 New Orleans port tour for Tulane JD/MBA students.

Tulane benefits from having a top law school and a top business school located immediately next to one another, both of which consistently rank among the top 50 in the nation, according to the U.S. News & World Report and the Financial Times[14] (the Finance department in particular has been ranked among the top 10 in the world on several occasions[15][16]). This close proximity has facilitated the growth of Tulane's JD/MBA program. In the '06-'07 school year, Tulane boasted of having 25 joint JD/MBA candidates.[17] In March 2007, Tulane announced that it had hired a new business law professor, whose objectives would include "maximiz[ing]...the growth of the Law School's JD/MBA joint degree," and strengthening ties between the law school and Freeman School of Business.[18] In January 2008, the Tulane JD/MBA Club held a networking event in New York City with the creator of jdmba.com, an interschool JD/MBA networking website.

Recent JD/MBA graduates have gone on to work for law firms, management consulting firms, investment banks, and in-house legal departments in New York, Houston, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and other cities. The program does not require highly qualified applicants to have significant full-time work experience.

In March 2009, the university announced the designation of a $1.5 million donation to support in perpetuity a JD/MBA professor of national stature at Tulane.[19]

Student activities

A Barristers' Ball is held annually at venues such as the Aquarium of the Americas and the National World War II Museum. The law school also periodically hosts social events with the Tulane University School of Medicine and the Freeman School of Business.

An active moot court program holds trial and appellate competitions within the school and fields teams for a variety of interschool competitions. The Law School has a chapter of the Order of the Coif. The Student Bar Association functions as the student government and recommends students for appointment to faculty committees. Over 40 student organizations are active at Tulane, including Tulane Law Women, Black Law Students Association, La Alianza, Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, Environmental Law Society, and several legal fraternities. The Tulane Public Interest Law Foundation raises funds, matched by the Law School, to support as many as 30 students each summer in public interest fellowships with a variety of organizations.[9]

Journals published or edited at Tulane Law School include:

Notable professors

See also: Category: Tulane University Law School faculty and Category: Deans of Tulane University Law School

Current

Former

Notable alumni

See also: Category: Tulane University Law School alumni and List of Tulane University people

Business leaders

Governmental leaders

File:HueyPLong.jpg
Huey Long, served as the Governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932.

Governors

U.S. Senators

U.S. Representatives

Mayors

Judges (Federal Appeals and State Supreme Court level)

Other political figures

Partners at Vault 100 Law Firms

Atlanta

Bangkok

Boston

Charlotte

Chicago

Cleveland

Dallas

Ft. Lauderdale

Germany

Houston

Hong Kong

Los Angeles

Miami

Moscow

New Orleans File:New Orleans, Louisiana flag.svg

New York

Norfolk

Paris

Philadelphia

Phoenix

Richmond

San Diego

San Francisco Bay Area

Seattle

  • Trilby C. E. Robinson-Dorn, JD-1997, K&L Gates

Taipei

Tokyo

Washington, D.C.

See also: List of Tulane University in literature and media

References

  1. ^ "Tulane Law School Program Academic Description". Tulane. 2007.
  2. ^ "20th Annual Tulane Corporate Law Institute Brochure" (PDF). Tulane. 2008.
  3. ^ "From Tulane, Top Deal Makers on M&A". New York Times. 2008.
  4. ^ http://tulane.edu/tulane/about/maps/law-annex.cfm
  5. ^ a b c "McAllister Place to be Car Free". Tulane Hullabaloo. 2008-11-25.
  6. ^ "Repaved Streets Will Have Lanes for Bicycling". The Times-Picayune. 2008-11-22.
  7. ^ "Best Law Schools". usnews.com. 2010. Retrieved 2009-05-08.
  8. ^ http://thehullabaloo.com/?p=5494&cpage=1
  9. ^ a b "ABA School Description" (PDF). LSAC. 2007.
  10. ^ http://www.law.tulane.edu/uploadedFiles/Strategic%20Plan%20May%202007.pdf
  11. ^ http://www.law.tulane.edu/uploadedFiles/Strategic%20Plan%20May%202007.pdf
  12. ^ "Tulane University Law School Summer Abroad". Tulane University Law School website. 2008-11-30.
  13. ^ a b c "Tulane University Law School Summer Abroad". Tulane University Law School website. 4/5/08. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  14. ^ "Financial Times 2008 MBA ranking" (PDF). Financial Times. 2008. Retrieved 2008. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  15. ^ "Freeman School @ Tulane - Rankings". freeman.tulane.edu. 2005. Retrieved 2007-06-07.
  16. ^ "Financial Times Names Tulane University Among World's Top 10 Schools for Finance - Rankings". freeman.tulane.edu. 2008. Retrieved 2008-04-19.
  17. ^ "Tulane to Maximize JD/MBA". jointdegree.com. 2007-03-31.
  18. ^ "Prestigious Business Law Scholar Joins Tulane Faculty". Tulane University Law School website. 2007-03-23.
  19. ^ http://www.law.tulane.edu/tlsNews/newsItem.aspx?id=9010
  20. ^ http://jonathanturley.org/about/
  21. ^ [1]Jonathan Hensleigh New York Times Filmography, 24 April 2008. {{citation}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  22. ^ [2]"style", Eleo Kaemmerer Marries a Writer, New York, New York: New York Times, 21 August 1988. {{citation}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  23. ^ [3]IMDb Mini Biography, 24 April 2008. {{citation}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  24. ^ http://www.entergy.com/about_entergy/leadership/west.aspx

See also

29°56′07″N 90°07′22″W / 29.935344°N 90.122687°W / 29.935344; -90.122687

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