Vanderbilt Law School | |
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Established | 1874 |
School type | Private |
Endowment | $100 Million |
Parent endowment | $4.1 Billion |
Dean | Chris Guthrie |
Location |
Nashville, Tennessee, United States 36°08′53″N 86°48′01″W / 36.1480°N 86.8003°WCoordinates: 36°08′53″N 86°48′01″W / 36.1480°N 86.8003°W |
Enrollment | 640 |
Faculty | 100 |
USNWR ranking | 17 |
Bar pass rate | 92.5% |
Website | law.vanderbilt.edu |
Vanderbilt University Law School (also known as Vanderbilt Law School or VLS) is a graduate school of Vanderbilt University. Established in 1874, it is one of the oldest law schools in the southern United States. Vanderbilt Law has consistently ranked among the top 20 law schools in the nation, and is currently ranked 17th in the 2018 edition of U.S. News & World Report. Vanderbilt Law School enrolls approximately 640 students, with each entering Juris Doctor class consisting of approximately 175 students.
The dean of the law school is Chris Guthrie, who began his second five-year appointment as dean on July 1, 2014.
According to Vanderbilt Law School's 2013 ABA-required disclosures, 85.9% of the Class of 2013 obtained full-time, long-term, bar examination passage-required employment nine months after graduation, excluding solo practitioners.
The total enrollment of students pursuing either a Juris Doctor (J.D) or LL.M. is approximately 640. The program usually admits no more than 175 students to the J.D. class, and approximately 50 students to the LL.M class each year. VLS has more than 45 student organizations, which support many lectures, presentations and social events throughout the year. Students are also encouraged to form new organizations tailored to their personal interests, which has most recently produced Law Students for Social Justice (LSSJ), a new organization within the Social Justice Program that aims to facilitate an increasing number of students interested in pursuing public interest careers or hearing from legal practitioners on various ways to implement social justice values into their practice.
Vanderbilt Law School was established in 1874, and was the first professional school to open (Vanderbilt University itself did not start its undergraduate classes until 1875). The law school's first class consisted of only seven students and eight professors, with a two-year course of study comprising the school's curriculum. William V. Sullivan was the school's first graduate and would eventually represent Mississippi in the United States Senate. William Frierson Cooper, who had been nominated by Jefferson Davis to serve on the Supreme Court of the Confederate States of America, served as the first dean from 1874 to 1875. He was succeeded by Thomas H. Malone, a veteran of the Confederate States Army, who served as dean from 1875 to 1904.