Law School Facts

The School

  • Law Department is established: 1893
  • Law School is established: 1908
  • Type of school: Private
  • Term division: Semester
  • 2008-2009 Tuition: $40,880
  • Library: More than 500,000 books, 360,000 microform and audiovisual items, and approximately 8,000 periodicals

Faculty and Classes

  • Faculty student ratio: 8.3-to-1
  • Full-time faculty: 47
  • Senior lecturers: 5
  • Visiting faculty: 8
  • Affiliated faculty: 6
  • Lecturers: 76
  • Endowed chairs: 38
  • Typical size of first year small section course: 28 students
  • Percentage of courses that students can take pass/fail their first term: 100%
  • Percentage of classes with 20 students or fewer: 66%
  • Percentage of classes with 30 students or more (counting first-years): 16%
  • First top – tier law school to have wireless classrooms

Student Activities

  • Number of student publications and law reviews: 8
  • Number of student organizations: 57
  • Percentage of students working on law reviews and journals: 70%
  • Total number of Skadden Fellows: 46
  • Number of U.S. Supreme Court cases that Stanford law students have worked on since spring 2004: 63

Degrees and Admissions

Class of 2007 Degrees Awarded

  • 176 Doctor of Jurisprudence (JD)
  • 20 Master of Laws (LLM) — 10 concentrating in the area of corporate governance and practice and 10 in law, science and technology
  • 13 Master of the Science of Law (JSM)
  • 11 Doctor of the Science of Law (JSD)

  • Number of applications Stanford Law receives every year: 4,000
  • Location of applicants: all 50 states and more than 65 countries
  • Entering admits: Fall only
  • JD Application deadline: February 1
  • JD Application fee: $70
  • Financial Aid deadline: March 15
  • Number of formal joint degree programs: 20
  • Number of customized joint degrees that students can propose: virtually limitless
  • Percent of student body receiving tuition fellowship or loan assistance: 80%
  • Average fellowship portion per recipient: $20,000
  • Percentage of Students who participate in the May Housing Lottery who are Guaranteed Housing in their First Year: 100%

Class of 2010 statistics (admitted in 2007)

  • Total students: 170 students
  • Women: 86
  • Men: 84
  • Students of color: 33.3%
  • Average age: 24.7
  • GPA range: 3.13-4.22
  • LSAT range: 160-180
  • Received their undergraduate degree in 2004 or earlier: 35.3%
  • Students with an advanced degree: 21%
  • Percentage of students who come to law school


    • directly from college: 30%
    • 1-2 years after college: 43%
    • 3 or more years after college: 27%

Student Body Profile

as reported in the 2008 ABA, LSAC Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools

  Men Women
  # % # %
African-American 20 6.6 17 7.3
American Indian 3 1 3 1.3
Asian-American 25 8.3 41 17.7
Mexican-American 31 10.3 21 9.1
Puerto Rican 0 0 4 1.7
Hispanic 1 0.3 2 0.9
TOTAL MINORITIES 80 26.5 88 37.9
Foreign National 9 3 6 2.6
Caucasian 172 57 123 53
Unknown 41 13.6 15 6.5
TOTAL 302 56.6 232 43.4

Graduates

  • The median starting salary for a Stanford Law graduate in the class of 2007: $160,000
  • Percentage of Stanford Law graduates who take jobs outside California at graduation: 58%
  • Percentage of students placed in jobs within 9 months of graduation: 100%
  • For graduates seeking public interest careers, percentage by which Stanford Law's average award exceeds peer loan forgiveness programs: 30%
  • Number of peer schools with higher average loan forgiveness awards for those working in the public sector: 0
  • Number of consecutive years Stanford Law graduates have clerked for justices on the U.S. Supreme Court: 35
  • Number of law school alumni sitting on U.S. courts: 72
  • AM Law 100 firms employing Stanford alumni as attorneys: 95
  • AM Law 100 firms with Stanford alumni as partners: 88

Alumni

  • Alumni population: 9,202 (approximate)
  • Total alumni residing outside the United States: 381
  • Locations where Stanford law graduates can be found: 55 countries, 49 states, Washington DC, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Marshall Islands, and Guam

Notable Stanford Law Alumni

  • Riley Bechtel: Bechtel Corp. CEO and Chairman
  • Josh Bolten: White House Chief of Staff
  • Brooksley Born: first woman named to the ABA's Standing Committee on Federal Judiciary
  • Peter Bouckaert: Senior emergencies researcher for Human Rights Watch
  • Warren Christopher: United States Secretary of State
  • Robert Paul Cochran: Emmy-winning TV creator and writer of "24"
  • LaDoris Cordell: first African American female judge in Northern California and first African American Superior Court judge in Santa Clara County. Current Vice Provost and Special Counselor to the President for Campus Relations, Stanford University
  • Mary Cranston: first female chair of a large national firm (Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP)
  • David Drummond: Senior Vice President for Corporate Development, Google, Inc
  • Sian Elias: first female chief justice of New Zealand
  • Lou Friedman: Managing Partner, PSAM, LLC
  • Shirley Hufstedler: the nation's first Secretary of Education and the first woman named to the Hewlett-Packard board of directors. Currently Senior of Counsel at Morrison & Forrestor, LLP
  • Mi-Hyung Kim: Managing Director and General Counsel of South Korea's tenth largest conglomerate, Kumho Asiana Group
  • Fred von Lohmann: Senior staff attorney at Electronic Frontier Foundation
  • Cheryl Mills: Deputy White House counsel for President Clinton. Currently the Senior Vice President and Counselor of Operations at New York University.
  • Bill Neukom: former Microsoft general counsel, partner, K & L Gates, and current president of the ABA
  • Ronald Noble: Secretary General of Interpol
  • Sandra Day O'Connor: first female appointed to U.S. Supreme Court
  • Penny Pritzker: President and CEO of Pritzker Realty Group and board chairman for TransUnion
  • William Rehnquist: Chief Justice of the United States (1986-2005)
  • Anthony Romero: Executive Director of ACLU
  • J. Alexander Thier: Legal advisor to Afghanistan's Constitutional and Judicial Reform Commissions
  • Phoebe Yang: Vice President, New Media Development and Operations, Discovery Communications, Inc.

Stanford University Wellspring of Innovation

Stanford's entrepreneurial spirit, the result of its location in California and the legacy created by Leland and Jane Stanford, has helped spawn an estimated 1,200 companies in high technology and other fields. Stanford's Office of Technology Licensing (OTL) works to bring technology created at Stanford to market. In 2004-05, OTL earned revenue from 428 technologies, with royalties ranging from $7.44 to $25 million. Forty-three inventions generated $100,000 or more in royalties. OTL concluded 84 new licenses.

Among the companies Stanford faculty and alumni have helped create are:

  • BEA Systems
  • Charles Schwab & Company
  • Cisco Systems
  • Cypress Semiconductor
  • DNAX Research Institute
  • Dolby Laboratories
  • eBay
  • E*Trade
  • Electronic Arts
  • Gap
  • Google
  • Hewlett-Packard Company
  • IDEO
  • Intuit
  • Logitech
  • Mathworks
  • McCaw Cellular Communications
  • MIPS Technologies
  • Netflix
  • Nike
  • NVIDIA
  • Octel Communication
  • Odwalla
  • Rambus
  • Rational Software
  • Silicon Graphics
  • Sun Microsystems
  • Taiwan Semiconductor
  • Tandem Computers
  • Tensilica
  • Trilogy
  • Varian Associates
  • Whole Earth Catalog
  • Windham Hill Records
  • Yahoo!