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University of Pennsylvania Law School

The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School (also known as Penn Carey Law, or Penn Law) is the law school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[10] Penn Carey Law offers the degrees of Juris Doctor (J.D.), Master of Laws (LL.M.), Master of Comparative Laws (LL.C.M.), Master in Law (M.L.), and Doctor of the Science of Law (S.J.D.).

University of Pennsylvania
Carey Law School

1850 (1850) (first "full professor of Law" appointed in 1792)[1][2][3]

$20.7 billion (June 30, 2022)[4]

755[5]

103[6]

4th (tie) (2024)[7]

97% (2019)[8][9]

The entering class typically consists of approximately 250 students and admission is highly selective.[11] Penn Carey Law's 2020 weighted first-time bar passage rate was 98.5 percent.[9] For the class of 2024, 49 percent of students were women, 40 percent identified as persons of color, and 12 percent of students enrolled with an advanced degree.[11]


Among the school's alumni are a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, at least 76 judges of United States court system, 12 state Supreme Court Justices (with 6 serving as Chief Justice), 3 supreme court justices of foreign countries, at least 46 members of United States Congress as well as 9 Olympians, 5 of whom won 13 medals, several founders of law firms, university presidents and deans, business entrepreneurs, leaders in the public sector, and government officials.

,[52] one of the top 50 law journals in the United States based on citations and impact.[53]

University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law

, formerly known as Journal of International Economic Law, formerly known as Journal of International Business Law, formerly known as Journal of Comparative Business and Capital Market Law[54]

University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law

, formerly known as Journal of Business and Employment Law[55]

University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law

[56]

University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law and Social Change

, formerly known as East Asian Law Review, formerly known as Chinese Law and Policy Review[57]

Asian Law Review

Journal of Law & Public Affairs

[58]

U.S. Supreme Court clerkships[edit]

Since 2000, Penn has had seven alumni serve as judicial clerks at the United States Supreme Court. This record gives Penn a ranking of 10th among all law schools for supplying such law clerks for the period 2000-2019.[59] Penn has placed 48 clerks at the U.S. Supreme Court in its history, ranked 11th among law schools; this group includes Curtis R. Reitz, who is the Algernon Sydney Biddle Professor of Law, Emeritus at Penn.

Employment[edit]

According to ABA and NALP data, 99.6 percent of the Class of 2020 obtained full-time employment after graduation. The median salary for the Class of 2019 was $190,000, as 75.2 percent of students joined law firms and 11.6 percent obtained a judicial clerkship.[39] Penn combines a strong tradition in public service with being one of the top feeders of law students to the most prestigious law firms.[60] Penn Law was the first top-ranked law school to establish a mandatory pro bono requirement, and the first law school to win American Bar Association's Pro Bono Publico Award. Many students pursue public interest careers with the support of fellowship grants such as the Skadden Fellowship,[61] called by The Los Angeles Times "a legal Peace Corps."[62]


About 75 percent of each graduating class enters private practice, bringing with them the ethos of pro bono service. In 2020, the Law School placed more than 70 percent of its graduates into the United States' top law firms, maintaining Penn's rank as the number one law school in the nation for the percentage of students securing employment at these top law firms.[63][64] The Law School was ranked #4 of all law schools nationwide by Law.com in terms of sending the highest percentage of 2021 graduates to the largest 100 law firms in the U.S. (55 percent).


Based on student survey responses, ABA, and NALP data, 99.2% of the Class of 2018 obtained full-time employment after graduation, with a median salary of $180,000, as 76% of students joined law firms and 11% obtained judicial clerkships.[39] The law school was ranked # 2 of all law schools nationwide by the National Law Journal in terms of sending the highest percentage of 2018 graduates to the 100 largest law firms in the US (60%).[40]

Costs[edit]

The total cost of attendance (including tuition of $63,610, fees, living expenses, and other expenses), for J.D. students for the 2020-2021 academic year was estimated by the university to be $98,920.[65] The estimated cost of attendance increased by over 7% to $105,932 for the 2023-2024 academic year.[66]

U.S. Supreme Court Justice

Owen Roberts

Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law and professor of philosophy

Anita L. Allen

deputy dean and insurance law

Tom Baker

criminal law scholar, current judge for the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit

Stephanos Bibas

David Berger Professor for the Administration of Justice

Stephen B. Burbank

Edward B. Shils Professor of Law and professor of political science; director, Penn Program on Regulation

Cary Coglianese

Morris Shuster Practice Professor of Law, director of Mediation Clinic

Douglas Frenkel

Frank Carano Professor of Law

Leo Katz

Charles A. Heimbold, Jr. Professor of Law

Jonathan Klick

Theodore K. Warner Professor of Law & Professor of Real Estate; Co-Director, Center for Tax Law and Policy

Michael Knoll

Charles A. Heimbold, Jr. Professor of Law

Charles ("Chuck") Mooney Jr.

commercial law; Pennsylvania representative to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws

Curtis R. Reitz

George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology and Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights

Dorothy E. Roberts

David Berger Professor for the Administration of Justice

Kermit Roosevelt

civil rights and criminal defense

David Rudovsky

Samuel A. Blank Professor of Law, Business, and Public Policy; Co-Director, Center for Tax Law and Policy

Chris William Sanchirico

current judge, and former chief judge, of the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit[106]

Anthony Joseph Scirica

Beth Simmons, Andrea Mitchell University Professor in Law, Political Science, and Business Ethics

Robert Mundheim Professor of Law and neurologist

Amy Wax

Jefferson B. Fordham Professor of Law; Deputy Dean, Alumni Engagement and Inclusion

Tobias Barrington Wolff

John H. Chestnut Professor of Law, Communication, and Computer & Information Science; Director, Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition

Christopher Yoo

The law school's faculty is selected to match its inter-disciplinary orientation. Seventy percent of the standing faculty hold advanced degrees beyond the JD, and more than a third hold secondary appointments in other departments at the university. The law school is well known for its corporate law group, with professors Jill Fisch and David Skeel being regularly included among the best corporate and securities law scholars in the country.[105] The School has also built a strong reputation for its law and economics group (professors Tom Baker, Jon Klick, and Natasha Sarin), its criminal law group (professors Stephanos Bibas, Leo Katz, Stephen J. Morse, Paul H. Robinson, and David Rudovsky) and its legal history group (professors Sally Gordon, Sophia Lee, Serena Mayeri, Karen Tani). Some notable Penn Law faculty members include:


The School's faculty is complemented by renowned international visitors in the frames of the Bok Visiting International Professors Program. Past and present Bok professors include Helena Alviar (Dean of Faculty of Law, University of the Andes), Pratap Bhanu Mehta (President of the Centre for Policy Research in India), Armin von Bogdandy (Director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law), Radhika Coomaraswamy (Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Special Rapporteur for Children and Armed Conflict 2006-2012, Member of the UN Fact Finding Mission on Myanmar), Juan Guzmán Tapia (the first judge who prosecuted former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet), Indira Jaising (Former Additional Solicitor General of India), Maina Kiai (UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association 2011-2017), Akua Kuenyehia (Former Judge of the International Criminal Court; Former Law Dean of University of Ghana), Pratap Bhanu Mehta (President of the Centre for Policy Research in India), and Michael Trebilcock (Distinguished University Professor at the University of Toronto).


Some of Penn's former faculty members have continued their careers at other institutions (e.g., Bruce Ackerman (now at Yale), Lani Guinier (now at Harvard), Michael H. Schill (now at Oregon), Myron T. Steele (now at Virginia), and Elizabeth Warren (at Harvard until her election to the United States Senate).

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