Paul M. Hebert Law Center

The Paul M. Hebert Law Center, often styled "LSU Law", is a public law school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It is part of the Louisiana State University System and located on the main campus of Louisiana State University. Because Louisiana is a civil law state, unlike its 49 common law sister states, the curriculum includes both civil law and common law courses, requiring 94 hours for graduation, the most in the United States. In the Fall of 2002, the LSU Law Center became the sole United States law school, and only one of two law schools in the Western Hemisphere, offering a course of study leading to the simultaneous conferring of a J.D. (Juris Doctor), which is the normal first degree in American law schools, and a D.C.L. (Diploma in Comparative Law), which recognizes the training its students receive in both the common and the civil law. Until voting in April 2015 to realign itself as an academic unit of Louisiana State University, the Paul M. Hebert Law Center was an autonomous school. Its designation as a Law Center, rather than Law School, derives not only from its formerly independent campus status but also from the centralization on its campus of J.D. and post-J.D. programs, foreign and graduate programs, including European programs at the Jean Moulin University Lyon 3 School of Law, France, and the University of Louvain, Belgium, and the direction of the Louisiana Law Institute and the Louisiana Judicial College, among other initiatives. According to the school's 2017 ABA-required disclosures, 81.3% of the Class of 2017 obtained full-time, long-term, bar passage-required employment nine months after graduation, excluding solo practitioners.