Overview

Stanford Law School is one of the nation’s leading institutions for legal scholarship and education. The Dean's Office handles official communications from the Dean on behalf of the law school. The Dean oversees the effective operations of the law school relating to faculty, staff and students and acts as liaison between the law school and the central university administration. The Dean holds regular office hours for law school students.

Letter from the Dean

The practice of law has changed dramatically in recent years, and legal education must change to keep pace. Globalization, the new economy, and the information revolution have transformed commercial and corporate reality-altering and enlarging the sorts of knowledge and training needed to understand and practice law. Still more dramatic changes have occurred at the transnational level. From the Constitution to the criminal justice system, from intellectual property rights to human rights, from the environment to the corporate boardroom, those who practice and study law have to negotiate increasingly blurred lines between domestic and international legal orders. And, as we have seen, the efforts of non-state actors to topple or remodel states foreshadow new global perils. At no other time in our history has it been so critical to examine our Constitution and its meaning in light of international developments, nor have we seen so many nations at once revise or create their constitutions anew.

I became the dean of Stanford Law School because I believe no law school in the nation is better suited to prepare students for the fundamental changes that are underway. Your generation will be the one that has to re-mold institutions of the judiciary, of government, and of business, and doing so will require both scholars and practitioners capable of employing new forms of integrated legal analysis.

Stanford is unrivaled in its ability to pioneer these developments. Our faculty have written casebooks that dominate the teaching of the classic curriculum in law schools across the country. More, they have identified and defined the boundaries of new fields, like cyberlaw. Stanford professors have set the standard in ethics and public policy for emerging industries such as the biosciences; and they've revitalized clinical training by, for example, creating the only Supreme Court Litigation Clinic in the country where students work on live cases before the High Court.

When you come to Stanford you will learn to integrate legal analysis with the newest developments in other disciplines, from economics, statistics, and finance, to history, psychology, and cultural theory. You will learn law not only from casebooks, but from case studies, simulated negotiations, and clinical fieldwork. You will learn about law's interaction with the worlds of business and public policy. In short, you will prepare for a rich and varied professional life in an era of great excitement and rapid change.

Yet for all we do at Stanford, we remain a small law school. Here you'll encounter open doors and a level of accessibility and intimacy that is the envy of larger schools. You will get to know and learn greatly from all your teachers and all your classmates, rather than be lost in a crowd. And you'll experience the entrepreneurial spirit that made Stanford the engine that drove the development of Silicon Valley. Stanford's culture has always emphasized the importance of work across disciplines and out-of-the-box thinking. Our students take this cross-disciplinary, problem-solving approach out of the classroom and into careers in every state of the nation and around the world.

Stanford has also long been committed to providing the finest legal education to the most talented students in the nation, regardless of financial need. And, for those whose goal is to enter public interest practice, we help make that dream a reality through the most generous Loan Repayment Assistance Program of any law school in the country.

Recently, the law school's classrooms and library were fully renovated to offer state-of-the-art teaching and research tools, including wireless connectivity and access to countless legal resources. But as much as we value technology to facilitate and enliven teaching, research, and collaboration, we still revel in face-to-face interaction. We've taken great care to nurture a community of faculty, students, staff, and alumni who interact and know each other well. Ask any of our students and they'll tell you that, while their classmates are among the brightest and most ambitious law students in the country, they also share a civility and decency that makes it possible to thrive, collaborate, and celebrate the full vibrant range of our diverse school. Ask our alumni-including Chief Justice of the United States William H. Rehnquist '52, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor '52, former U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher '49, Chief Justice of California Ronald M. George '64, and Office of Management and Budget Director Joshua Bolten '80-and they will tell you that the bonds they forged with their classmates have flowered into lifelong professional relationships.

I know I made the right choice when I chose to come to Stanford Law School. I hope that, should you apply and be admitted, you'll make that choice, as well.

Sincerely,
Larry Kramer
Richard E. Lang Professor of Law and Dean

Dean's statements

• Statement by Members of the SLS Community in Support of the Pakistani Legal Community (March 2007)
• Law Deans Respond to Charles Stimson Remarks Regarding Lawyers for Detainees (January 2007)

Office Contacts

Larry Kramer

Richard E. Lang Professor of Law and Dean

lkramer@stanford.edu

650 723.4455

Patsie Gray

Executive Assistant to Larry Kramer

pgray@law.stanford.edu

650 725.9480