Stanford Law School

Stanford Law School (SLS) is the law school of Stanford University, a private research university near Palo Alto, California. Established in 1893, Stanford Law had an acceptance rate of 6.28% in 2021, the second-lowest of any law school in the country. Since October 2023, Robert Weisberg has served as its dean. Stanford Law School employs more than 90 full-time and part-time faculty members and enrolls over 550 students who are working toward their Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree. Stanford Law also confers four advanced legal degrees: a Master of Laws (LL.M.), a Master of Studies in Law (M.S.L.), a Master of the Science of Law (J.S.M.), and a Doctor of the Science of Law (J.S.D.). Each fall, Stanford Law enrolls a J.D. class of approximately 180 students, giving Stanford the smallest student body of any law school ranked in the top fourteen (T14). Stanford also maintains eleven full-time legal clinics, including the nation's first and most active Supreme Court litigation clinic, and offers 27 formal joint degree programs. The law school's alumni include several of the first women to occupy Chief Justice or Associate Justice posts on supreme courts: former Chief Justice of New Zealand Sian Elias, retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, and the late Chief Justice of Washington Barbara Durham. Other justices of supreme courts who graduated from Stanford Law include the late Chief Justice of the United States William Rehnquist, retired Chief Justice of California Ronald M. George, retired California Supreme Court Justice Carlos R. Moreno, and the late California Supreme Court Justice Frank K. Richardson. History Stanford first offered a curriculum in legal studies in 1893, when the university hired its first two law professors: former U.S. president Benjamin Harrison and Nathan Abbott - who attended Boston University School of Law. Abbott headed the new program and assembled a small faculty over the next few years. The law department primarily enrolled undergraduate majors at this time and included a large number of students who might not have been welcome at more traditional law schools at the time, including women and students of color, especially Hispanic, Chinese and Japanese students.