Georgetown University Law Center

Introduction

Georgetown Law, founded in 1870, is a dynamic and diverse intellectual community in which to study law. Not only does its curriculum include a staggering number of courses and seminars, but its distinguished full-time faculty is one of the nation’s largest and is augmented by the experience and perspective of outstanding members of the bench and bar. The goal is education in its fullest sense—not only mastery of law, but a sense of the philosophical, political, and ethical dimensions of law. Preeminent in the fields of constitutional, international, and tax law, as well as clinical legal education, Georgetown Law’s faculty is also known for its expertise in civil rights, corporate law, environmental law, family law, feminist jurisprudence, health law, human rights, immigration and refugee law, intellectual property law, legal history, and securities law. The Supreme Court, the United States Congress, and the Library of Congress are within walking distance of the campus, forming a unique environment for creative legal thought and learning.

The Law Center Campus

Georgetown Law’s campus is the culmination of a longtime goal to create a campus that will nurture students in mind, body, and spirit. McDonough Hall, with its lecture halls, seminar rooms, faculty offices, student dining area, and lounges, is the academic center of the campus.

The Hotung Building brings all the major components of Georgetown Law’s international programs under one roof and includes the John Wolff International and Comparative Law Library. The Scott K. Ginsburg Sport and Fitness Center features a four-lane lap pool, basketball and racquetball courts, and a café and lounge with wireless network connectivity.

The Law Center’s Edward Bennett Williams Law Library houses one of the largest academic law library collections in the nation. The library also provides students with access to web-based services, providing the most advanced research support available.

The campus features a vibrant residential program, with housing for approximately 300 students in the Gewirz Student Center. The building offers a variety of apartment styles with one, two, and three bedrooms with full kitchens and baths in each suite. Apartments designed for students with disabilities are also available. Resident Fellows offer programming to the 1L residents throughout the academic year, ranging from talent shows, a professionalism in law school series focusing on interactions with legal professionals, advice on dressing the part, and guidance on taking the steps toward getting the job that is right for you.

Curriculum

Georgetown Law offers full-time and part-time programs leading to the JD degree. Entry to both programs is in the fall. First-year students in the full-time program choose either the A or B curriculum. Curriculum A is the traditional first-year curriculum, which parallels those at all other major law schools, and includes one elective course in the spring semester. Curriculum B includes courses that emphasize the sources of law in history, philosophy, political theory, and economics. It also seeks to reflect the increasingly public nature of contemporary law. Rather than an elective, Curriculum B students take a fall seminar in legal theory.

The curriculum includes an innovative elective program for first-year students titled “Week One: Law in a Global Context.” Involving an intensive week of study of complex problems of international and transnational law, the purpose is to deepen students’ understanding of how legal problems increasingly transcend national boundaries and involve more than one legal system. The skills-based format of Week One also introduces students to Georgetown Law’s extensive experiential curriculum, where students may choose from problem-solving, simulation, externship, and other experiential learning courses, up to and including our nationally and internationally recognized clinics.

Georgetown Law offers a large and wide-ranging upper-level curriculum. Of the more than 450 courses and seminars offered to upper-class students, a majority of those classes have enrollments of under 25 students. The only upper-class course requirements are a course in professional responsibility and a seminar or approved supervised research project meeting the upper-class legal writing requirement.

Joint Degrees

Georgetown Law offers 18 joint-degree programs:

• JD/Master of Public Policy
• JD/Master of Business Administration
• JD/Master of Science in Foreign Service
• JD/Master of Public Health (with Johns Hopkins School of Public Health)
• JD/Master of Arts in Security Studies
• JD/Master of Arts in Arab Studies
• JD/Master of Arts in German and European Studies
• JD/Master of Arts in Latin American Studies
• JD/Master of Arts in Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies
• JD/Master of Arts or Doctorate in Philosophy
• JD/Doctorate in Government (Master of Arts En Passant)
• JD/LLM in Taxation
• JD/LLM in Securities and Financial Regulation
• JD/LLM in International Business and Economic Law
• JD/LLM in National Security Law
• JD/LLM in Environmental Law
• JD/LLM in Global Health Law

Transnational, International, and Comparative Law Programs

Georgetown Law has many highly regarded programs dealing with different aspects of cross-border law.

Students have the unique opportunity to study for a semester in London at the Center for Transnational Legal Studies, a Georgetown-led partnership of over 20 leading schools from five continents. Distinguished faculty, drawn from around the world, teach a transnational curriculum to a global student body in a context where there is no host school, majority nationality, or domestic legal system.

The Global Law Scholars Program, which combines language skills with directed legal training, provides an opportunity for a limited number of full-time JD students to prepare for a law practice involving more than one legal system.

Georgetown Law also offers a summer law program in London with distinguished professors from Europe and the United States, as well as the opportunity to study abroad for a semester at prestigious institutions in Europe, Asia, India, Israel, Latin America, and Australia.

The Law Center’s International Summer Internship Program offers opportunities to work abroad in law firms, corporations, and government organizations. There are also several institutes and centers that offer specialized programs, such as the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, the Georgetown Climate Center, the Supreme Court Institute, the Institute of International Economic Law, the Human Rights Institute, and the Center on National Security and the Law.

Journals

Georgetown Law publishes 13 legal journals annually. The Georgetown Law Journal, our main journal, addresses issues of general legal concern.

Twelve journals address specific areas of law:

• American Criminal Law Review
• Food and Drug Law Journal
• Georgetown Environmental Law Review
• Georgetown Immigration Law Journal
• Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law
• Georgetown Journal of International Law
• Georgetown Journal of Modern Critical Race Perspectives
• Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy
• Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics
• Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy
• Journal of National Security Law & Policy
• The Tax Lawyer

Clinical Programs

Georgetown Law, a pioneer in clinical legal education, offers an unmatched clinical program. Our 16 clinics offer approximately 270 students per year an opportunity to represent actual clients facing real legal challenges. In clinic, students serve as the lead lawyer on cases or projects and learn about the practical art of lawyering while providing quality legal representation to underrepresented individuals and organizations.

Public Interest Law

Georgetown Law’s unparalleled public interest offerings include a Loan Repayment Assistance Program, a stand-alone public interest career office, guaranteed summer funding for public interest and government internships, a comprehensive student pro bono program, an extensive and diverse public interest curriculum, and public interest scholarships and a public interest fellowship program.

Student Activities

Law Center cocurricular life centers around the more than 100 law student organizations that support students’ personal, social, spiritual, political, and professional interests. The largest of these organizations, the student-led Barristers’ Council, fields dozens of teams in appellate advocacy, trial advocacy, and alternative dispute resolution divisions, and competes successfully in national and international advocacy competitions. Students also share in the governance of the Law Center through the Student Bar Association and more than a dozen student/faculty committees, and supplement their academic pursuits by editing and publishing 12 scholarly journals and the Law Weekly, the award-winning school newspaper.

Career Services

The Office of Career Services (OCS) and the Office of Public Interest and Community Service (OPICS) offer a wide range of counseling and related programming on private sector, government, and public interest careers. OPICS provides specialist career advising on government and nonprofit internships and employment, oversees student and student group volunteer activities, and serves as the student liaison to the faculty and administration. First-year students work closely with OCS and OPICS advisors who counsel them individually throughout law school. In addition, the offices host one of the largest fall recruiting programs in the country and sponsor a robust judicial clerkship application process.

Admission

Georgetown Law evaluates candidates on two scales: academic or objective criteria and personal criteria. Academic information includes undergraduate and graduate records and LSAT or GRE scores. Personal factors include extracurricular activities, recommendations, work experience, and diversity of background. Georgetown Law does not use numerical cutoffs. Early application is encouraged since Georgetown Law employs a rolling admission process.

Financial Aid

Georgetown Law offers need-based, three-year financial aid grants to approximately one-third of the entering full-time class. Federal and commercial loans, along with work-study opportunities, are also available. Approximately 80 percent of Georgetown Law’s JD students obtain financial aid.

Acknowledged as one of the nation’s top programs by Equal Justice Works, Georgetown Law’s Loan Repayment Assistance Program assists JD graduates in pursuing careers in public service.

APPLICANT PROFILE

Since the Georgetown Law Admissions Committee takes into consideration a number of factors in evaluating whether a candidate would be suitable for admission, we cannot provide an applicant profile based solely on GPA and LSAT scores. In making such determinations, the committee focuses on various aspects of a candidate’s background and experience that, in combination with a candidate’s academic record and LSAT score or scores, give insight into a candidate's suitability for admission.