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88-673: The Antonin Scalia Law School is the law school of George Mason University , Virginia 's largest public research university . It is located in Arlington, Virginia , roughly 4 miles (6.4 km) west of Washington, D.C. , and 15 miles (24 km) east-northeast of George Mason University's main campus in Fairfax, Virginia . The law school is accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA) . The school

176-508: A carefully structured three-year graduate program leading to a postbaccalaureate degree. It was also Harvard under Langdell which developed the modern concept of the American law professor, starting with the 1873 hiring of Ames: a career academic with limited practice experience "who was appointed for his scholarly and teaching potential". Before Ames, law school faculty members were either practicing lawyers who did some part-time teaching on

264-583: A college degree for admission, but they also exempted undergraduates enrolled at the same university from that requirement. The underlying obstacle was that at the turn of the 20th century, public education was still in its infancy in most of the United States—a defect which the country was belatedly struggling to correct in what is now known as the Progressive Era . In most areas, there were simply not enough high school or college graduates to fill

352-421: A curve . In most law schools, the first year curve (1L) is considerably lower than courses taken after the first year of law school. Many schools use a "median" grading system, that can range from "B-plus medians" to "C-minus medians". Some professors are obliged to determine which exam or paper was the exact median in terms of quality (e.g., the 26th best out of 51), give that paper the relevant grade depending on

440-469: A depository library, or it may be stripped of its depository status by the Superintendent of Documents if it does not carry out its responsibilities as enumerated in the U.S. Code. In either case, the library must properly dispose of the government documents it acquired while part of the program as these publications are the property of the U.S. Government. The documents would generally be returned to

528-652: A few years following the American Revolution, some universities such as the College of William and Mary and the University of Pennsylvania established a "Chair in Law". Columbia College appointed its first Professor of Law, James Kent, in 1793. Those who held these positions were the sole purveyors of legal education (per se) for their institutions—though law was, of course, discussed in other academic areas as

616-473: A final exam in essay form. Most schools impose a mandatory grade curve (see below). After the first year, law students are generally free to pursue different fields of legal study. All law schools offer (or try to offer) a broad array of upper-division courses in areas of substantive law like administrative law , corporate law , international law , admiralty law , intellectual property law , and tax law , and in areas of procedural law not normally covered in

704-446: A forced grading distribution, where a predetermined percentage of students must receive certain grades. For instance, such a system could oblige professors to award a minimum and maximum number of "A's" and "F's" (e.g., 3.5%/7% A's and 4.5%/10% F's). Many professors chafe against the lack of discretion provided by such systems, especially the required failing of a certain number of students whose performance may have been sub-par but not, in

792-511: A law school and encouraged a merger with ISL instead. Later that year, the Council advised against allowing that merger, but the Virginia state legislature nonetheless approved the merger in early March 1979. The law school became fully accredited by the American Bar Association in 1980. Since then, its rankings amongst U.S. law schools has risen rapidly over the decades, being ranked 32nd in

880-464: A law school entering class. In 1899, Cornell University forced its law school to require a high school diploma for admission, like the rest of the university, and the law school saw the size of its entering class crash from 125 to 62. In 1909, Minnesota started to require a single year of college-level work as a prerequisite for law school admission and saw its entering class drop from 203 to 69. Women were not allowed in most law schools during

968-423: A manner similar to hornbooks ) to a problem-solving method tightly focused on the application of legal rules to specific hypothetical fact patterns (which eventually resulted in a common exam response format known as IRAC ). It is this choice of Langdell's which explains why American law took "the atomistic rather than the unitary approach that distinguishes it from other common-law systems today". The genius of

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1056-681: A matter of course—and gave lectures designed to supplement, rather than replace, an apprenticeship. The first institution established for the sole purpose of teaching law was the Litchfield Law School , set up by Judge Tapping Reeve in 1784 to organize the large number of would-be apprentices or lecture attendees that he attracted. Despite the success of that institution, and of similar programs set up thereafter at Harvard University (1817), Dickinson College (1834), Yale University (1843), Albany Law School (1851), and Columbia University (1858), law school attendance would remain

1144-466: A new name: Antonin Scalia Law School, a decision ratified by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia on May 17, 2016. In 2022, ProPublica reported that the anonymous donation made in 2016 was allegedly from Barre Seid , a businessman and philanthropist known for his donations to conservative causes. In 2019, the law school received a gift of $ 50 million, the largest ever received by

1232-507: A rare exception in the profession. Apprenticeship would be the norm until the 1890s, when the American Bar Association (which had been formed in 1878) began pressing states to limit admission to the bar to those who had satisfactorily completed several years of post-graduate instruction. In 1906, the Association of American Law Schools adopted a requirement that law school consist of a three-year course of study. Another key evolution

1320-538: A satisfactory score on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) as prerequisites for admission. Some states that have non-ABA-approved schools or state-accredited schools have equivalency requirements that usually equal 90 credits toward a bachelor's degree. Globally, the requirement of a bachelor's degree is one of the most distinctive features of the American law school. Elsewhere, it is routine to award law degrees to undergraduates. In contrast,

1408-519: A school operated by the United States Army that conducts a post-J.D. program for military attorneys , is also ABA-accredited. Non-ABA approved law schools have much lower bar passage rates than ABA-approved law schools, and do not submit or disclose employment outcome data to the ABA. In addition, individual state legislatures or bar examiners may maintain a separate approval system, which

1496-436: A typical American lawyer must first complete seven years of postsecondary education before they become eligible for a license to practice law. Another significant distinction is that, unlike many other countries where law professors usually hold doctorates, most American law professors have earned only the exact same J.D. degree which will be awarded to the students they are teaching. Though undergraduate GPA and LSAT score are

1584-492: Is a government program created to make U.S. federal government publications available to the public at no cost. As of April 2021, there are 1,114 depository libraries in the United States and its territories . A "government publication" is defined in the U.S. Code as "informational matter which is published as an individual document at Government expense, or as required by law" ( 44 U.S.C. 1901). The groundwork for

1672-516: Is an upper-level course; most students take it in the 2L year. This requirement was added after the Watergate scandal , which seriously damaged the public image of the profession because President Richard Nixon and most of his alleged co-conspirators were lawyers. The ABA desired to demonstrate that the legal profession could regulate itself , wished to reassert and maintain its position of leadership, and hoped to prevent direct federal regulation of

1760-541: Is intended to counter bias by the grader. Each semester students are assigned random numbers, usually by the Registrar's Office, which students must include on their exams. Professors then grade the exams on an anonymous basis, only discovering student names after grades have been submitted to the Registrar's Office. General adoption of blind grading followed admission of significant numbers of minority students to law schools. An Accelerated JD program may refer to one of

1848-850: Is known for its conservative ideological leaning in law and economics. It is named after former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia . George Mason University School of Law was authorized by the Virginia General Assembly in March 1979 and was founded on July 1, 1979. The school started as the International School of Law (ISL), which opened in 1972 in a classroom at the Federal Bar Building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC. In 1973, it moved into

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1936-837: Is often disorienting to first-year law students who are more accustomed to taking notes from professors' lectures . Most casebooks do not clearly outline the law; instead, they force the student to interpret the cases and derive the basic legal concepts from the cases themselves. As a result, many publishers market law school outlines that concisely summarize the basic concepts of each area of law, and good outlines are highly sought after by many students, although some professors discourage their use . Legal pedagogy has also been criticized by scholars like Alan Watson in his book, The Shame of Legal Education . Some law schools, such as Savannah Law School , have changed direction and created collaborative learning environments to allow students to work directly with each other and professors in order to model

2024-418: Is open to non-ABA accredited schools. If that is the case, graduates of these schools may generally sit for the bar exam only in the state in which their school is accredited. California is the most famous example of state-specific approval. The State Bar of California 's Committee of Bar Examiners approves many schools that may not qualify for or request ABA accreditation. Graduates of such schools can sit for

2112-449: Is the assured outcome for the majority of students who pay their tuition on time, behave honorably and responsibly, maintain a minimum per-semester unit count and grade point average, take required upper-division courses, and successfully complete a certain number of units by the end of their sixth semester. The ABA also requires that all students at ABA-approved schools take an ethics course in professional responsibility . Typically, this

2200-448: The American Bar Association (ABA) at that time included one of five generic identifiers: "school of law" (118), "college of law" (38), "law school" (28), "law center" (7), and "faculty of law" (1). However, in ordinary speech, "law school" is universally preferred for its "brevity and clarity". In the United States, law schools require a bachelor's degree in any discipline, a satisfactory undergraduate grade point average (GPA), and

2288-489: The Ford Foundation began disbursing $ 12 million to persuade law schools to make "law school clinics" part of their curriculum. Clinics were intended to give practical experience in law practice while providing pro bono representation to the poor. However, conservative critics charge that the clinics have been used instead as an avenue for the professors to engage in left-wing political activism. Critics cite

2376-533: The Master of Laws (LL.M.) and the Doctor of Juridical Science (J.S.D. or S.J.D.) degrees, which can be more international in scope. Most law schools are colleges , schools or other units within a larger post-secondary institution, such as a university . Legal education is very different in the United States than in many other parts of the world. A 2006 study found that the names of the 192 law schools approved by

2464-574: The Republican -appointed U.S. Supreme Court justices. The author described the school as "a Yale or Harvard of conservative legal scholarship and influence". The law school is also home to the National Security Institute (NSI), a think tank dedicated to research in national security , especially the relevance of legal issues pertaining to national security issues in the global context. Antonin Scalia Law School also houses

2552-519: The 1870s. Professors lead in-class debates over the issues in selected court cases, compiled into " casebooks " for each course. Under the Harvard approach, law professors do not deliver lengthy lectures and instead use the Socratic method to force students to teach one another, based on their individual understanding of legal theory and the facts of the case at hand. Many law schools continue to use

2640-442: The 204 approved ABA law schools. A decade later, in 2023, J.D. programs enrolled 116,897 students at the 196 institutions then approved by the ABA. As of 2016 , women enrolled in American law schools have outnumbered men. In 2023, over 50 percent of JD students enrolled at ABA -accredited schools were women. To sit for the bar exam , the vast majority of state bar associations require accreditation of an applicant's law school by

2728-476: The 92 American law schools then in existence were already using the Harvard approach, and by 1907, that number was over 30. Langdell's vision that law programs ought to be offered only at the graduate level and result in a postbaccalaureate degree took much longer to spread to all other American law schools. As of 1914, only Harvard and Penn were adhering to that principle. By 1921, the law schools at Stanford, Columbia, Western Reserve , and Yale were requiring

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2816-610: The ABA or approved by state bar examiners, and the eligibility of their graduates to sit for the bar exam may vary from state to state. Even in California, for instance, the State Bar deems certain online schools as "registered", meaning their graduates may take the bar exam, but also specifically says the "Committee of Bar Examiners does not approve nor accredit correspondence schools." Kentucky goes further by specifically disqualifying correspondence school graduates from admission to

2904-633: The American Bar Association. The ABA has promulgated detailed requirements covering every aspect of a law school, down to the precise contents of the law library and the minimum number of minutes of instruction required to receive a law degree. As of 2020 , there are 203 ABA-accredited law schools that award the J.D., divided between 202 with full accreditation and one with provisional accreditation. The Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School in Charlottesville, Virginia ,

2992-619: The FDLP was established by an 1813 Congressional Joint Resolution ordering that certain publications be distributed to libraries outside of the federal government. Initially, the Librarian of Congress was responsible for running this program, but the responsibility shifted to the Secretary of the Interior in the 1850s. The Printing Act of 1895 revised public printing laws and established

3080-460: The FDLP website was hacked and defaced with pro-Iranian/anti-US messaging in response to the American airstrike that killed Qasem Soleimani , the commander of Iran's Quds Force . The FDLP site was taken offline, then restored the next day following a security analysis . The Government Publishing Office (GPO) is responsible for printing and distributing government documents and overseeing

3168-490: The FDLP. There are several important individuals in charge of maintaining the link between GPO and the FDLP: There are two types of depository libraries: There are two ways in which a library may qualify for FDLP status: Libraries with depository status are required to provide the documents received at no cost to their patrons. Though they receive the publications free of charge, depository libraries are responsible for

3256-627: The Global Antitrust Institute (GAI), a think tank mainly concerned with antitrust and competition policy . In 2021, Bloomberg reported on the "revolving door" between members of the GAI's faculty who later held positions at the Federal Trade Commission , a government agency tasked with regulating many of the companies that make significant donations to the GAI and the law school at large. Law school in

3344-461: The Harvard approach to teaching law was its financial cost-effectiveness: it was "both cheaper and more exciting for both teacher and student". Law schools could get away with a much higher ratio of students to professors than under the old system, where the professor would first deliver a lecture dryly summarizing a legal topic, and then try to verify whether students had actually absorbed any information through quizzes and recitations. By 1902, 12 of

3432-459: The Socratic method—consisting of calling on a student at random, asking about an argument made in an assigned case, asking the student whether they agree with the argument, and then using a series of questions to carefully expose logical flaws in the student's analysis of the argument. Examinations usually entail interpreting the facts of a hypothetical case, determining how legal theories apply to

3520-475: The U.S. Code, requires the Superintendent of Documents to maintain an electronic directory of federal electronic information, provide online access to the Congressional Record , Federal Register and other select publications, and operate an electronic storage facility. The electronic service now includes over 2,200 databases and is available via http://www.govinfo.gov . On January 4, 2020,

3608-529: The U.S. Code. The DLA allowed two depository libraries in each Congressional district , eliminated postage charges to depository libraries receiving material, provided for the distribution of non-GPO documents, permitted independent federal agencies to be eligible for depository designation, and created regional depository libraries. The Government Printing Office Electronic Information Access Enhancement Act of 1993 (P.L. 103-40), codified in Title 44, Chapter 41 of

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3696-574: The United States Law schools in the U.S. confer the degree of Juris Doctor (J.D.), which is a professional doctorate . It is the degree usually required to practice law in the United States, and the final degree obtained by most practitioners in the field. Juris Doctor programs at law schools are usually three-year programs if done full-time, or four-year programs if done via evening classes. Some U.S. law schools include an Accelerated JD program . Other degrees that are awarded include

3784-428: The United States in 2023, according to US News and World Report . In 2016, the school received $ 30 million to rename itself for Antonin Scalia , the late United States Supreme Court justice. The Charles Koch Foundation provided $ 10 million of the donation, with the remaining $ 20 million coming from an anonymous donor. On March 31, 2016, Mason's Board of Visitors approved the renaming. School officials soon announced

3872-466: The ancestor of its College of Arts and Sciences, but he got into its law school . Langdell's deanship from 1870 to 1895 transformed Harvard Law School into the "preeminent law school" in the United States, created the template for the modern American law school, and also established the modern expectation that "institutionalized legal training" was essential for "leaders of the profession". From 1870 to 1920, Harvard Law School proceeded "to overwhelm all

3960-414: The approach." Ames refined the approach further by contributing the ideas that casebooks should focus on cases selected for their "striking facts and vivid opinions", and group them together by subject. Langdell had simply printed cases chronologically. Finally, Langdell shifted law school examinations from the systematic exposition of rules (before him, students regurgitated legal rules in exam answers in

4048-470: The bar exam in California, and once they have passed that exam, a large number of states allow those students to sit for their bars (after practicing for a certain number of years in California). California is also the first state to allow graduates of distance legal education (online and correspondence) to take its bar exam. However, online and correspondence law schools are generally not accredited by

4136-402: The bar. The law school is known for its conservative ideological leaning in law and economics. In addition, the school is known for tilting towards conservative principles, a perception that increased with the renaming in 2016 to honor U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia , a constitutional originalist. A 2023 New York Times report detailed the school's effort to cultivate ties to

4224-413: The bar. This applies even if the graduate has gained admission in another jurisdiction. Law students are referred to as 1L s, 2L s, and 3L s based on their year of study . In the United States, the American Bar Association does not mandate a particular curriculum for 1L s. ABA Standard 302(a)(1) requires only the study of "substantive law" that will lead to "effective and responsible participation in

4312-439: The case, and then writing an essay. This process is intended to train students in the reasoning methods necessary to interpret theories, statutes , and precedents correctly, and argue their validity, both orally and in writing. In contrast, most civil law countries base their legal education on professorial lectures and oral examinations, which are more suited for the mastery of complicated civil codes . This style of teaching

4400-408: The costs of processing the items and making them available. All depository libraries must make their collections of these documents available to the general public, and the services provided for government documents must be on par with the services offered to the primary users of a library. Circulation policies for government documents, however, are established by each library itself. Libraries may house

4488-409: The course to first-year students. Some schools combine legal research and legal writing into a single year-long "lawyering skills" course, which may also include a small oral argument component. Because the first year curriculum is always fixed, most schools do not allow 1L students to select their own course schedules, and instead hand them their schedules at new student orientation. At most schools,

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4576-551: The disposal of depository publications. After 1996, government publications increasingly shifted to online formats; in addition, most Federal publications now originate online. Regional libraries still continue to collect information in a wide variety of formats, but many government documents are now published exclusively online. Electronic documents positively impact issues such as storage, length of retention, and access, which can be enhanced with library networking. Libraries may substitute electronic documents for tangible documents as

4664-470: The financial involvement of the Ford Foundation as the turning point when such clinics began to change from giving practical experience to engaging in advocacy. Law schools that offer accelerated JD programs have unique curricula for such programs. Nonetheless, ABA-approved law schools with Accelerated JD programs must meet ABA rules. Finally, the emphasis in law schools is rarely on the law of

4752-688: The first class at Hastings Law School , one of whom was Clara S. Foltz . When the University of California established a second law program in 1894, this time on the Berkeley campus, it was open to women and men on an equal basis. Ellen Spencer Mussey and Emma Gillett founded the Washington Law School for women and men in 1898 (now known as, American University Washington College of Law ). Federal Depository Library Program The Federal Depository Library Program ( FDLP )

4840-478: The first year, like criminal procedure and remedies . Many law schools also offer upper-division practical training courses in client counseling, trial advocacy , appellate advocacy, and alternative dispute resolution . Depending upon the law school, practical training courses may involve fictional exercises in which students interact with each other or with volunteer actors playing clients, witnesses, and judges, or real-world cases at legal clinics . Graduation

4928-467: The following: As a result of student concerns about the time and cost (both in terms of tuition and the opportunity cost associated with foregoing a salary for three years) required to complete a law degree, there has been an emerging trend to develop accelerated JD programs. Most law school education in the United States is traditionally based on an approach developed by Christopher Columbus Langdell and James Barr Ames at Harvard Law School during

5016-537: The former are considered by law schools to be a more uniform standard than the latter for judging academic performance. Many law schools offer substantial scholarships and grants to many of their students, dramatically reducing the actual cost of attending law school compared to sticker tuition. Some law schools condition scholarships on maintaining a certain GPA. As of 2013 , there were 128,641 students enrolled in JD programs at

5104-476: The grade for an entire course depends upon the outcome of only one or two examinations, usually in essay form, which are administered via students' laptop computers in the classroom with the assistance of specialized software. Some professors may use multiple choice exams in part or in full if the course material is suitable for it (e.g., professional responsibility ). Legal research and writing courses tend to have several major projects (some graded, some not) and

5192-549: The home of former United States Chief Justice Edward Douglass White on Rhode Island Avenue, and in 1975 purchased the old Kann's Department Store in Arlington. Despite the growth, ISL could never obtain accreditation. In 1976, ISL discussed a merger with George Mason University, which expressed interest in setting up a law school. In 1978, the Virginia State Council of Education denied GMU's proposal to start

5280-1004: The late 1800s and the early 1900s. In 1869, two newly opened law schools permitted women to enroll: Washington University School of Law became the first chartered law school in America to admit women, and Howard University School of Law was founded with an open admissions policy accepting Black and White men and women to enroll. The "first woman on record to have received a law degree was Ada Kepley from Union College of Law in Illinois (Northwestern)" in 1870. Some law schools that allowed women before most others were Buffalo Law School which "begun in 1887 ... and open to women and immigrant groups"; University of Iowa College of Law which "admitted women as law students" since at least 1869; University of Michigan Law School ; and Boston University School of Law which started admitting women in 1872. In 1878, two women successfully sued to be admitted to

5368-461: The law school building. It has 14 study rooms, 70 carrel seats, and 196 table seats wired with electrical and network connections, and a wireless network is available. The library also operates two computer labs with a variety of software. The library employs 16 full-time staff members, including 6 librarians with degrees in law and library science and 3 technology specialists. Access is limited to university faculty, students, staff, alumni and members of

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5456-507: The legal profession through reading law , a form of independent study or apprenticeship , often under the supervision of an experienced attorney. This practice usually consisted of reading classic legal texts, such as Edward Coke 's Institutes of the Lawes of England and William Blackstone 's Commentaries on the Laws of England . In colonial America law schools did not exist. Within

5544-449: The legal profession." However, most law schools have their own mandatory curriculum for 1L s, which typically includes: These basic courses are intended to provide an overview of the broad study of law. Not all ABA-approved law schools offer all of these courses in the 1L year; for example, many schools do not offer constitutional law and/or criminal law until the second and third years. Most schools also require Evidence but rarely offer

5632-502: The materials however they like; for example, they may separate the government documents from the rest of their collection or they may integrate them. A library cannot filter Internet search results at public access stations as access to health or biological science articles may not be infringed upon. Depository libraries must maintain collections of at least 10,000 books , not including the collection of government documents. A depository library may voluntarily resign from its position as

5720-473: The most important factors considered by law school admissions committees, individual factors are also somewhat important.personal factors are evaluated through essays, short-answer questions, letters of recommendation, and other application materials. The standards for grades and LSAT scores vary by school. Interviews—either in person or via video chat —may be optional, or invitational, application components. Many law schools actively seek applicants from outside

5808-432: The ones at Harvard and Yale, were in competition for those same undergraduates. Students at the time chose law school or college, but not both. Law schools were technical schools with "second-class status" which usually had lower admissions standards than the colleges they were competing against for undergraduates. For example, in 1904, Hugo Black was denied admission to the University of Alabama 's Academic Department,

5896-630: The only copy of the item in the collection, as long as the electronic document is complete, official, and permanently accessible. Access to electronic documents is provided through Persistent Uniform Resources Locators (PURL) and is facilitated by GovInfo and the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP). Recently, federal agencies have been bypassing the GPO in lieu of publishing documents directly online. These documents, known as "fugitive documents", are not published through GPO, and hence are not part of

5984-436: The others" in every way imaginable, to the point that one critic, Gleason Archer Sr. , wrote an entire self-published book harshly attacking Harvard as the "educational octopus" whose tentacles (i.e., Langdell's students) reached into every corner of the American legal community. Langdell turned the law program at Harvard from a disorganized two-year undergraduate program―which undergraduates could wander into at any point―into

6072-412: The particular state in which the law school sits, but on the law generally throughout the country. Although this makes studying for the bar exam more difficult since one must learn state-specific law, the emphasis on legal skills over legal knowledge can benefit law students not intending to practice in the same state they attend law school. Grades in law school are very competitive. Most schools grade on

6160-469: The profession. As of 2004, to ensure that students' research and writing skills do not deteriorate, the ABA has added an upper division writing requirement. Law students must take at least one course, or complete an independent study project, as a 2L or 3L that requires the writing of a paper for credit. Most law courses are less about doctrine and more about learning how to analyze legal problems, read cases, distill facts and apply law to facts. In 1968,

6248-486: The professor's estimation, worthy of a failing grade. The "median" system seeks to provide some parity among teachers' grading scales while giving the teacher discretion to award a grade below the median only when deserved. Fairness and equity are the primary reasons for required curves and required grade distributions. Some faculty tend to give higher grades and others lower grades, with a mandatory curve balancing both extremes. Also, at law schools with multiple sections of

6336-464: The program and their associated item numbers. Each item with an item number is available through the FDLP program. Because of the large number of documents published by the government each year, the documents are arranged into categories of related classes from which to choose. By selecting a class, the library receives all of the documents within that class. Selections made during the year take effect on October 1. The Union List of Item Selections updates

6424-453: The regional, then to other depositories ( 44 U.S.C.   § 1912 ). All depository libraries, including regional libraries, may dispose of items that have been superseded or issued later in bound form ( 44 U.S.C.   § 1911 ). If an item has been deselected, the library must still retain the publications it possesses from that item number for five years before they may be discarded. Libraries may not financially benefit from

6512-488: The roles of the FDLP and the Government Printing Office (GPO) in distributing government information. This act also assigned leadership of the program to the Superintendent of Public Documents, who would be under the control of the GPO and added executive documents to the distribution list. The Depository Library Act of 1962 (DLA) created the present-day FDLP as codified in Title 44, Chapter 19 of

6600-418: The same class, it minimizes the problem that one section will have an unfair advantage over another section when applying for Law Review or Moot Court. Even with curved grading, some law schools such as Syracuse University College of Law still have a policy of "Dismissal for Academic Deficiency", in which students failing to meet a minimum GPA are dismissed from the school. One school that has deviated from

6688-527: The school offers in-residence and online LLMs that specialize in subjects such as cybersecurity, global antitrust, and intellectual property. In 2024, U.S. News & World Report ranked the George Mason University School of Law (Scalia) at 28th in the United States. The total cost of attendance (tuition, fees, and living expenses) for the 2023–24 academic year at Mason Law is $ 62,196 for in-state students attending full-time;

6776-573: The side, or full-time teachers who had moved into academia only after extensive experience practicing law. Harvard's dominance was most rapidly established through the wild popularity of its teaching approach: the casebook method combined with the Socratic method. The transition from traditional lectures to the interactive examination of cases became "the law schools' apparent passport to academic respectability". Langdell actually did not invent that approach to teaching law, but it "became known as his by virtue of his determined and systematic application of

6864-601: The state regional library and then redistributed to selected libraries within the state. Libraries are required to maintain a series of titles known as the FDLP Basic Collection. Beyond this, libraries order the materials that best suit the needs of their patrons; there is no selection percentage criterion that must be met. The FDLP offers the opportunity to order several kinds of material for libraries' collections, including maps, Braille, large print documents, foreign language items, and audio. The Core Collection

6952-399: The system of competitive grading common to most American law schools is Northeastern University School of Law . Northeastern does not have any system of grade point averages or class rank , Instead, the school uses a system of narrative evaluations to measure student performance. A system of anonymous grading known as blind grading is used in many law schools in the United States. It

7040-430: The system used, and then grade the other exams based on how much better or worse they are than the median. A few schools, such as Yale Law School , Stanford Law School , Harvard Law School , University of California, Berkeley School of Law , and Northeastern University School of Law have alternate grading systems that put less emphasis (or no emphasis) on rank. Other schools, such as New York's Fordham Law School , use

7128-407: The teamwork of attorneys working on a case. For purposes of passing state bar examinations, some law school graduates find law school instruction inadequate , and resort to specialized bar review courses from private course providers. These bar reviews typically consist of lectures, often video recorded. Until the late 19th century, law schools were uncommon in the United States. Most people entered

7216-491: The titles in the List of Classes on a semiannual basis. Unlike adding items, selections may be removed at any time; the library stops receiving the documents within 72 hours. Selective depository libraries must keep government documents in their collections for five years minimum, after which time the items may be removed from the collection with the approval of a regional library. Items marked for disposal must be offered first to

7304-643: The total cost of attendance for non-resident students attending full-time is $ 78,044. The George Mason Law Library has a collection of electronic and print materials providing access to legal treatises, journals, and databases. Non-legal materials are available through the GMU University Libraries. It is a selective depository for U.S. Government documents, and it provides inter-library lending services with other academic libraries, which enables students and faculty to borrow materials from major academic libraries. The library occupies four levels of

7392-555: The traditional pool to boost racial, economic, and experiential diversity on campus. Most law schools now factor in extracurricular activities, work experience, and unique courses of study in their evaluation of applicants. A growing number of law school applicants have several years of work experience, and correspondingly fewer law students enter immediately after completing their undergraduate education. However, law schools generally only consider undergraduate and not post-collegiate transcripts when considering an applicant for admission;

7480-596: The university, from the estate of Allison and Dorothy Rouse to "fund a chair or chairs that will promote the conservative principles of governance, statesmanship, high morals, civil and religious freedom and the study of the United States Constitution". For the Juris Doctor (J.D.) class entering in 2023, the law school received 2,303 applications and admitted 14%, of which 97 law students enrolled. The total enrollment of all J.D. students in 2023

7568-571: Was 546 law students. The median LSAT score among incoming J.D. students in 2024 was 168, and the median GPA was 3.92. The passage rate for first-time takers of the Virginia bar exam in July 2023 was 90.7%, third among Virginia's eight law schools. The school also offers various Master of Laws (LLM) programs such as the Flex-LLM program which focuses on training and qualifying foreign law graduates to take bar exams in various U.S. states. In addition,

7656-543: Was established in 1977. Every depository library is required to have certain publications available for use. These include, among others: Libraries select the documents they wish to receive from the List of Classes of United States Government Publications Available for Selection by Depository Libraries and the Union List of Item Selections . This is a document listing all of the classes of items available for selection through

7744-402: Was from law school as an alternative to undergraduate education to law school as a form of graduate professional education. Before 1870, there was nothing like a modern university in America, only a number of glorified liberal arts colleges which taught Greek, Latin, moral philosophy, and mathematics to undergraduates. The early law departments attached to these purported universities, such as

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