University of Pittsburgh School of Law

History

The law department was founded in 1843 and is one of 17 schools constituting the University of Pittsburgh. The first four law degrees were conferred in 1847. Classes were held in a stone building at Third Street until the building was destroyed in the fire of 1845 and were then held in the university's building on Duquesne Way until that building was burned in 1849. Classes were continued after the second fire in the basement of the Third Presbyterian Church until the universities first law professor, Walter H. Lowrie, was elected to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in 1851 and forced him to abandon his teaching at the school. This, along with the fires that destroyed many of the university's facilities and resources, disrupted the development of the School of Law.

Although various attempts were made to reestablish law instruction beginning in 1862, a permanent law school was not established until 1895. The university at that time was named the Western University of Pennsylvania, but despite this, the law school was originally named the Pittsburgh Law School, a name it held until 1918. The Pittsburgh Law School became a charter member of the Association of American Law Schools in 1900.

The first classes in the permanently established school were conducted in the orphans' court rooms in the old Allegheny County courthouse. In 1897, the school moved into the old university building at Ross and Diamond streets that had been sold to the county in 1882. The school moved again in 1919-20 to the tenth floor of the Chamber of Commerce building. In 1936 the School of Law moved in its entirety to the 14-16 floors of the Cathedral of Learning on the main campus of the university located in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. The School of Law moved into their own dedicated facility, the Barco Law Building, upon its opening on the university's main campus in 1976.

Today, Pitt's Law School faculty has been ranked 21st in the nation based on a standard objective measure of scholarly impact.[2] Pitt Law is currently ranked 78th out of 184 in U.S. News & World Report's rankings of America's top law schools and is listed among the "Best Law Schools" by The Princeton Review. Pitt Law is also one of 80 law schools with membership in the Order of the Coif.

Facilities

Deans of the Law School

Academics

The University of Pittsburgh School of Law offers four degrees. The J.D. (Juris Doctor) is the required degree to practice law in most of the United States, thus J.D. students make up most of the school's student body. The following degrees are offered by Pitt Law:

Joint Degrees

In addition, the School of Law offers joint degrees with several other programs within the university, and the Pittsburgh Council on Higher Education.

Academic programs

Pitt Law Center for International Legal Education

Pitt Law offers area studies in the following international legal systems:

These area studies serve to supplement the study of International Law, in addition to providing Pitt Law students with the opportunity to pursue careers abroad.

Clinics

The University of Pittsburgh School of Law has several clinical programs, which allow law students to gain practical experience as lawyers before graduating from law school. The following clinics are currently offered by the School of Law:

Lawyering Skills Competitions

The law school also hosts and facilitates multiple moot court and lawyering skills competitions for law students. The law school's Moot Court Board administers three intramural competitions each year: the Appellate Moot Court Competition, the Murray S. Love Trial Moot Court Competition, and the Negotiations Competition. The school also assembles teams to compete at multiple interscholastic and international moot court competitions covering specialized areas such as Energy Law, Environmental Law, Health Law, International Arbitration and International Law, Workers' Compensation Law, Client Counseling, and Intellectual Property. The school's Mock Trial Program recruits adjunct coaches from the local practicing bar to assemble law student teams to participate in mock trial competitions throughout the country. In 2014-2015, more than 20% of second- and third-year students participated in an interscholastic competition.

Practicums

The law school has several practicum courses, which aim to combine traditional coursework and instruction with experiential learning under supervising attorneys in various specific interest areas:

Semester in D.C. Program

The law school's Semester in D.C. Program allows spring semester second- and third-year students to pursue a full-time externship for an employer in Washington, D.C.. The Semester in D.C. combines full-time work for academic credit with a small seminar class held at the law school's dedicated Washington Center to fulfill a full semester credit load. Students can also pursue a Public Policy Concentration, taking additional courses to learn to apply legal advocacy, research, and writing skills in the policy context.

Journals

Pitt Law is home to two law reviews and several student-edited legal journals, including the Pittsburgh Law Review, which is one of the 40 most-cited law reviews in the country, according to Chicago-Kent Law Review's 1996 Faculty Scholarship Survey [4]. The following law reviews are all publications of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law:

The following journals are all publications of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law:

JURIST

JURIST is the world's only law school-based comprehensive legal news and research service. Its professionally trained staff of law faculty and law students report and research the latest legal developments in real time for members of the legal community and the public at large. JURIST covers legal news stories based on their substantive importance rather than on their mass-market or commercial appeal.

Admissions

Admissions to the University of Pittsburgh School of Law are conducted on a rolling basis, with an acceptance rate of slightly less than 30%. For the entering class of 2013, the median LSAT score was 158 (25th - 154, 75th - 161) and the median GPA was 3.42 (25th - 3.16, 75th - 3.61). There were 174 entering students out of nearly 1,500 applications.

Admissions Statistics for the University of Pittsburgh School of Law

Costs and Financial Aid

The estimated cost of attendance (includes tuition, fees, books, and living expenses) at Pitt Law for the 2014-15 academic year is $50,008 for a Pennsylvania resident and $57,492 for a non-resident. The average law school debt for the graduating Class of 2012 was $94,879, well below the national average. Pitt Law was one of only 53 law schools out of over 200 nationally (and one of only three in Pennsylvania) to be ranked as a 2014 Best Value by The National Jurist. The survey took into account multiple factors, with success in job placement weighted most heavily at 35%, followed by tuition (25%), average indebtedness (15%), bar passage rates (15%), and cost of living (10%).

Employment

The overall employment rate of the members of the Pitt Law Class of 2015 (including part-time/short-term jobs, or those which do not require JDs) was 82.6%. Among the members of the Class of 2015, 53.57% obtained a full-time, long-term job requiring bar passage. 12.2% of the members of the class obtained jobs at law firms with 100 or more attorneys, and 1.5% accepted federal clerkships. An additional 10.7% of Pitt Law’s graduates of the Class of 2014 accepted state or local judicial clerkships.

Rankings and Honors

Notable alumni