JD/MBA
My classmates in both law and business schools have exceeded my highest expectations. At Stanford, you find people with a variety of backgrounds, but a common desire to learn from each other, even across disciplines. – Keia Cole, JD/MBA '09
The intersection of law and business offers opportunities with unprecedented intellectual and practical implications. In transactional space, knowledge of legal and business regimes provides a significant advantage in structuring private equity investments, negotiating international business transactions, arranging mergers and acquisitions, and designing new financial instruments. In litigation, counsel who have a sophisticated appreciation of a client's business operations and of underlying industry practices also have a significant advantage in developing trial strategy and in negotiating effective settlements of "bet-your-company" lawsuits.
Business leaders with legal expertise and lawyers with business expertise are, unsurprisingly, increasingly central to the high-level functioning of many of the world's largest business enterprises. Indeed, the entire notion of "corporate governance" exists at the intersection of the legal and business regimes. Intellectually, the rapid pace of innovation in financial markets, in business structuring, in regulatory regimes, and in the internationalization of capital flows creates a rich laboratory for empirical research and for the development of more robust theoretical frameworks capable of explaining increasingly diverse observable phenomena. As significant as these opportunities are in today's world, they are certain to become even more robust in the future—and a JD/MBA from Stanford prepares students to seize them.
Stanford's JD/MBA program is among the nation's oldest and most successful joint degree programs. It prepares students to function at the highest level either as business executives, investors, transactional counsel, litigators, or scholars. The program's expertise spans a broad range of subject matter and integrates practical knowledge with advanced theory. The program also offers many opportunities to explore entrepreneurial activity, venture capital, private equity investment, international business transactions, intellectual property, securities and corporate litigation, and other subjects that are of particular significance to the local Silicon Valley business community. Stanford's close links to major international corporations, investors, and law firms helps enrich the JD/MBA curriculum and provide a broad array of individualized educational opportunities.
To learn more about programs, centers, resources, and opportunities available to JD/MBA students, please see:
During the first year in the program, students must take courses in the law school. During the second year, students must take courses in the business school. During third and fourth years, students may mix courses from the law school and the business school. In some cases, students may spend two years in law, followed by two years in business, or may begin in business for their first year.
You must complete 75 semester units (Stanford Law School follows semesters rather than quarters) after the first year at the law school. To qualify for the MBA degree, you must complete 84 quarter units in business at the Graduate School of Business. You cannot apply courses taken outside the law school or the business school for credit toward either degree.