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Pioneering Legal Minds

Stanford Law School (SLS) has pioneered new areas of law and spearheaded innovations in legal education, including interdisciplinary study and experiential learning. Students can create their own joint degrees, take one or more of eleven legal clinics and 20+ policy practicums or initiate their own projects—charting paths to the seat of government, the boardroom, courtrooms, corporations, law firms and other places of influence. Leland Stanford, himself a lawyer, drafted in 1885 the university’s Founding Grant, declaring a central role for a legal education. What started as Stanford’s law program in 1893, has since become a leading law school. SLS is headquartered here on a street named after Nathan Abbott, one of Stanford Law’s first two professors who also served as program head. The other professor was former U.S. President Benjamin Harrison. SLS was at the forefront of efforts to institute the California Bar exam, which was added to the requirements to practice law in California in 1919.

Judicial Excellence

Stanford Law School’s Class of 1952 is the only law school class in history to have produced two U.S. Supreme Court justices – former Chief Justice William Rehnquist and former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman appointed to the nation’s high court. More than 50 other alumni have served as chief or associate justices on state supreme courts, or as appellate and district court judges.

Student Impact

As a policy incubator, the Law and Policy Lab deepens the law school’s immersive learning environment, challenging students to tackle timely issues through two dozen practicums. In one case, a multidisciplinary student team saw their proposed solutions to mitigate elephant slaughter for ivory tusks adopted by federal regulators. In another, students streamlined an international bone marrow donor process for quicker matches.

“Those of you who will use your talent and training to very directly advance rule of law where it is most threatened will remind us all… of that noble heart of the law.”

– M. Elizabeth Magill, Richard E. Lang Professor of Law and Dean, Stanford Law School, Commencement 2013

Kiosk 19 location highlighting Stanford Law School