The information on these pages was provided by the law school.
Brooklyn Law School
250 Joralemon Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201-9846
Phone: 718.780.7906; Fax: 718.780.0395
E-mail: admitq@brooklaw.edu; Website: www.brooklaw.edu
n The Law Campus n Our Faculty: Diverse, Brilliant, and User-friendly
Situated at the junction of the Brooklyn Heights Historic Our 66 full-time faculty members comprise one of the largest
District, the Brooklyn Civic Center, and downtown Brooklyn, faculties in New York. They are joined by nearly 130 adjuncts,
our school boasts a location unrivaled for its legal, cultural, and including many distinguished judges, practitioners, and
historical character. Students share their environs with federal corporate counsel. They are extraordinarily talented and, above
and state judges, government officials, and lawyers in private all, superb teachers. Shaping public policy and making law in
practice, many of them alumni. Within a few-block radius are the community at large, they are also prolific authors. They are
the US District Court; US Bankruptcy Court; US Attorney’s recognized nationally and globally for their scholarship in
Office; the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division; such areas as Commercial and Bankruptcy Law, Corporate and
Family Court; the Brooklyn District Attorney; the Kings Securities Law, Evidence, Health Care, Information Privacy
County Surrogate’s Court; the New York City Civil and and Internet Law, Intellectual Property, International Business
Criminal Courts; The Legal Aid Society; and numerous law Law, Human Rights, and Women’s Rights. BLS offers a
firms. These are our laboratories, a backdrop for learning few congenial community. Its learning environment, while rigorous
schools can replicate. and challenging, remains supportive and nurturing. A
desirable student-faculty ratio facilitates this dynamic. Faculty
n Renaissance Brooklyn members are accessible to students in a way that few faculties
are. There is a strong correlation between the priority we assign
Multibillion-dollar construction projects have recast downtown to teaching and mentoring and the fact that in the past three
Brooklyn as the city’s third business hub, after Wall Street years, our average passing rate of over 84 percent was more
and midtown Manhattan. Here, moreover, is Brooklyn’s most than 7 percent ahead of the state-wide rate for first-time takers
charming neighborhood, Brooklyn Heights. Overlooking of the New York State Bar examination.
New York Harbor and lower Manhattan, the Heights is where
you will find much of our campus. Brooklyn Heights is the n Our Students: The Best and the Brightest
first New York City neighborhood designated as a historic
district. Many of its original townhouses, brownstone The fall 2006 entering class included students from 32 states
mansions, carriage houses, churches, and public buildings and DC and 12 foreign countries, who earned degrees from
survive, some registered as national historic landmarks. Many nearly 160 universities and colleges, including many of the
of our students and faculty live here in residence halls or in nation’s most prestigious. Seventy-three percent completed
private apartments and homes. Nearby neighborhoods— undergraduate work at least one year before enrolling here.
Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, and Park Slope—also offer Sixty-four percent had LSAT scores in the top 10 percent
convenient, affordable housing. nationwide. Minorities represented 28.4 percent of that class;
about half of the students were women.
n Manhattan at Our Doorstep
n Our Alumni: Accomplished and Accessible
Minutes away is the financial, legal, business, and cultural
crossroads of the world: Manhattan. Proximity to Wall Street One of our great strengths is the size, stature, and loyalty of our
gives students easy access to school-year externships and more than 18,000 graduates in 49 states and DC, 2 US territories,
summer jobs with major law firms and financial institutions. and 23 foreign countries—among the largest alumni families of
Students enjoy a great campus in a dynamic urban any law school.
environment, softened by a small-neighborhood feel.
This is New York City on a human scale—Manhattan without n The Career Center
the hassle.
Our Career Center is staffed by seven attorney-counselors and
n Building for Your Future an attorney dedicated to job development/employer relations.
Job listings are readily available to students and graduates via
In recent years, Brooklyn Law School (BLS) has undertaken the Internet. In the most recently reported year, 98 percent of
$132 million in capital improvements to serve its needs our students were employed nine months after graduation,
well into the twenty-first century. Ten residences—including placing us among the top law schools nationwide. For current
our largest, the 21-story high-rise, Feil Hall—allow us to salary information, see www.brooklaw.edu/career/empstats/.
guarantee housing to all first-year students, engendering a
strong sense of campus community. A 78,000-square-foot n First-year Program of Study
library, one of the largest and most modern in the city, includes
more than 544,000 volumes, 5 computer labs, 26 group-study Day students take one core course in a seminar section of about
rooms, and seating for nearly 700. We also provide about 90 40 students, allowing for significant individualized skills training.
computer workstations and over 2,400 other student-accessible Our goal is to help students cultivate the ability to think clearly,
network connections throughout our academic and residential analyze problems thoroughly and carefully, and recognize that
buildings, as well as over 2,000 wi-fi connections. no “legal” issue exists in a social, philosophical, economic, or
political vacuum. Students participate in a Legal Writing
Program structured to fully develop their writing abilities. An
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Brooklyn Law School
Academic Success Program, combining an early-start summer nearly 375 students in a wide array of summer internships at
course with a series of support workshops, helps students leading public interest organizations nationwide and abroad.
reach their potential. This contributes to our exceptionally high Our International Business Law Fellowship Program is a
retention rate between the first and second year. rewarding educational experience for those pursuing careers in
that field. We sponsor four student-edited journals: the
n Upper-class Program of Study: The Art and Craft Brooklyn Law Review, the Journal of Law and Policy, the Brooklyn
of Lawyering Journal of International Law, and the Brooklyn Journal of Corporate,
Financial, and Commercial Law. Barry L. Zaretsky Fellowships
Our upper-class curriculum bridges the gap between law school are awarded to students based on demonstrated academic
and law practice, making law school something students enjoy, achievement and commitment to bankruptcy and/or
not merely endure. Students create individualized programs, commercial law. Our Moot Court Program, one of the nation’s
choosing from among 240 electives in 19 concentrations and finest, garnered 60 top honors—including 17 national
areas of interest. Some 75 percent of full-time and 60 percent of championships—in recent competitions. Our Center for the
all students participate in one or more of our 21 clinics, including Study of Law, Language, and Cognition explores how
more than 150 enrolled this year in one of our in-house clinics developments in the cognitive sciences—including
and over 400 students participating in externships in legal neuroscience, psychology, and linguistics—have dramatic
departments and judicial chambers, experiencing the law in real implications for the theory and practice of law. A Center for
time. Simulation courses enroll over 925 students annually. Health, Science, and Public Policy engages students in the
legal issues and public policy concerns confronting health care
n Beyond the Core Curriculum organizations. A joint-degree option allows students to earn
master’s degrees in business administration, city and regional
We are consistently recognized as among the country’s top law planning, urban planning, political science, or library and
schools in supporting public interest law. Our Edward V. information science. Finally, we offer study-abroad programs
Sparer Public Interest Law Fellowship Program has placed in China, Germany, and Italy.
Applicant Profile
Admission to Brooklyn Law School is based on an appraisal of To be sure, candidates with high test scores and
each applicant’s character, academic achievements, aptitude for commensurate grades are more likely to gain admission than
the study of law, life experience, and other indications of those with lower grades and scores. Nevertheless, no
professional promise. combination of grades and scores guarantees admission.
BLS does not offer an LSAT/GPA admission profile, for Nonquantifiable factors also significantly influence our
numbers alone cannot provide a comprehensive assessment of decisions. A partial list includes the quality of schools
a candidate’s potential for law school success. While matrices attended, the strength of the program of study, grade trends,
may be helpful to some, too often they needlessly discourage the content of faculty letters of evaluation, the cogency of the
others—those with profiles slightly below our published candidate’s writing, campus leadership, significant service to
numerical benchmarks who may still be competitive for the community, the nature and quality of any work experience
admission here. Moreover, such profiles tend to reduce the or foreign study/travel, awards and honors, and military
selection process to a two-dimensional matrix, one which fails service. We have a century-long tradition of offering
to portray accurately our admission practices. opportunities to members of underrepresented groups.
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