Indiana University Maurer School of Law—Bloomington
The information on this page was provided by the law school.
Official Guide to ABA-Approved JD Programs
One of the nation’s oldest public law schools located in the heart of the Midwest, the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, offers an exceptional legal education in a supportive and collegial community. The school distinguishes itself with its global outlook, its deep commitment to public service and the local community, and its outstanding faculty and staff committed to our students and to advancing knowledge. The school is a charter member of the Association of American Law Schools, accredited by the American Bar Association, and a member of the Big 10 Academic Alliance.
Known for its academic rigor, the law school recruits and then launches the professional careers of some of the nation’s most promising students. The student body of about 500 is small, collegial and maintains a distinctive sense of community. Because of the law school’s national reputation and geographically diverse alumni network, career opportunities are available throughout the United States. Typically, around 60 percent of the incoming JD class comes from outside Indiana, and around 60-65 percent of graduates find jobs outside the state. At any given time, students from 20-25 countries are represented in the Graduate Legal Studies Program, and the law school has one of the longest-standing LLM programs in the United States, who interact and engage with JD students on a daily basis.
The school’s presence on the university’s flagship Bloomington campus enables students to take advantage of the academic and cultural resources of one of the nation’s leading teaching and research universities. The law school’s connections with IU Bloomington’s other schools— including the O’Neil School of Public and Environmental Affairs, the Kelley School of Business, the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, and the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, to name just a few—provide interdisciplinary and joint degree opportunities that few other schools can offer.
The law school has been a leader in innovative approaches to ensuring students succeed. Toward that end, upper-class mentors are assigned to each student to help them through their first year. A unique Practice/Peer Group Advisor Program provides exceptional support. The school’s award-winning Legal Profession courses (Legal Profession I and II) ensures that each student—whether they are from a family of lawyers or the first in their family to attend college—are positioned to succeed and understand the changing nature of the legal profession. Programs like the Stewart Global Fellows Program, the Rural Justice Initiative, the Bradley Fellows in Criminal Law and Procedure, the Summer Public Service Program, the Family Office Program, and summer externship programs in Washington, DC, New York, and Miami provides JD students with unique networking, job, and summer funding opportunities.
In addition to a well-rounded general legal education, the school offers many specialized areas of focus and opportunities to work closely with faculty who are pre-eminent in their fields. The law school offers programs in business/corporate law, civil rights, constitutional design, criminal justice, environmental law and conservation, information privacy and cybersecurity, intellectual property, international law, law and technology, and tax law and policy, among others. Live-client clinics, clinical practica, and pro bono projects, provide students not only exceptional experiential learning opportunities with live clients, but also ways to help low-income families, the poor, the elderly, and other underrepresented groups. Co-curricular opportunities are extensive, including five student-run journals; moot court, mock trial, negotiation, transnational drafting; and more than 30 student organizations. Four research centers of excellence provide other upper-division programs, speakers series, and community outreach initiatives. Other opportunities include a Semester in DC Program, as well as an array of semester exchange and joint degree programs with top law schools throughout the world.
The JD Program
As one of the nation’s leading public law schools, the Maurer School’s curriculum is strong in a range of fields with extensive offerings. The law school’s curriculum combines traditional doctrinal and analytical study with experiential learning and development of new approaches aimed at professional competencies. The school also emphasizes interdisciplinary opportunities and global experiences. The Law School provides students with unmatched opportunities to engage with world-recognized faculty, while gaining real-world lawyering experience by participating in clinics, practica, pro bono projects, externships, and simulations.
The Right Start: Our innovative approach begins in the first year. First-year students take the usual introductory courses, along with a rigorous legal writing and research program, and two courses on the legal profession. Unlike other legal ethics courses, the law school’s legal profession courses (Legal Profession I and II) teach the law of lawyering in context— by examining practice settings, law firm norms, and nondoctrinal skills that all successful lawyers need. In the Legal Profession I course, students meet with Career Services Office professionals, so that all students have a resume, cover letter, and other materials necessary to apply for summer jobs soon after beginning law school. A range of practitioners visit the school and talk about their careers and professional experiences, providing insight into the broad way alumni use their law degrees. From day one at Orientation, the school’s distinctive, community-supportive approach is evident.
Exceptional Experiential Opportunities: After the first year, students complement classroom study with a variety of clinics, externships, and skill-building courses. The school offers several live-client clinics, including the Community Legal Clinic, Conservation Law Clinic, Elmore Entrepreneurship Law Clinic, Intellectual Property Law Clinic, and the Viola J. Taliaferro Children and Mediation Clinic, in addition to several clinical practicums focused on Habeas Litigation, Student Legal Services, and practica related to law and film and music. The school also offers an Access to Justice pro bono program, which brings students and faculty together in alliances with public service agencies. Students take part in several projects, including immigration, protective orders, LGBTQ+ issues, incarcerated individuals legal assistance, wills assistance, and income tax preparation. In a typical year, more than 1,000 members of the Bloomington community are helped through real-life legal assistance from Indiana Law students.
The school also offers numerous externships—hands-on, on-site experiences offered for credit in various public- interest settings, including attorneys general, judges, legal services organizations, prosecutors, and other professionals. For third-year students, full-semester, onsite externships with public interest and public sector employers take place in Washington, DC. The full- semester externships are accompanied by a course on lawyering in the public interest. The school also offers skill- building courses in simulated environments, including litigation, estate planning, and negotiations. Summer externship programs are also run in Miami, New York, and Washington, D.C.
Collaborative Research and Emerging Areas: Upper-class students can also take advantage of research opportunities in the law school’s research centers, working with professors on timely, important issues such as constitutional democracy in post-conflict nations; cybersecurity and information privacy; the global legal profession; law, society and culture; and intellectual property. The research centers are internationally known and respected for their impact, and the inclusion of students in their work fortifies the school’s holistic approach toward its students’ professional competency. An extensive upper-division curriculum enables students to not only take foundation courses for subjects covered on the bar exam, but offerings on many of emerging areas of law and the most cutting-edge issues involving law and policy. Lawyers need to understand the basics and foundations of how social, political, technological, and environmental factors can affect the law, and the law school’s curriculum ensures that happens.
Wintersession: At no additional cost, second- and third-year students may participate in a Wintersession, an intensive one-week course offered just before the spring semester. Courses are focused on practical, hands-on subjects , such as depositions, ethics, pretrial litigation, and business operations.
Joint-Degree, Graduate, and PhD Programs
Formal joint-degree programs combine the award of a JD degree with a master’s degree in business, accounting, public affairs, communications, journalism, environmental science, library and information science, public health, East Asian studies, Latin American and Caribbean studies, or Russian and East European studies. The duration of most joint-degree programs is four years. The Maurer School of Law and the Kelley School of Business offer an intensive accelerated three-year JD/MBA program in addition to the four-year JD/MBA. Additional graduate study opportunities are available through Indiana University’s new School of Global and International Studies. The school also offers an LLM, MCL, SJD, and PhD, as well as a certificate in legal studies, mainly to graduate students from outside the United States.
Opportunities to Study Abroad
The IU Maurer School of Law provides students with a wide variety of international opportunities. The school’s unique Stewart Fellows program offers hands-on experience with law firms, businesses, and nonprofit organizations in Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Japan, Korea, and Thailand, working side-by-side with lawyers in those countries on real-time legal matters. The Stewart Fellows program is the only one in the country offering hands-on legal externships in foreign countries.
Students can also apply for more traditional study-abroad programs that don’t involve work experience. Semester- long opportunities are available to a limited number of second- and third-year students through exchange programs with:
Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris II), France ESADE Law School in Barcelona
Bucerius Law School in Hamburg
University of Warsaw
University of Auckland in New Zealand
University of Hong Kong
China University of Political Science and Law, Hangzhou, China
Peking University School of Transnational Law in Shenzhen, China
Jindal Global University in New Delhi, India
FGV Law School in Rio and São Paulo, Brazil
Trinity College Dublin School of Law
The Maurer School of Law offers all students the opportunity to participate in summer study-abroad programs hosted by the Institute on International and Comparative Law in England, France, Italy, and Spain in which all courses are taught in English.
Student Life
Location, Facilities, and Jerome Hall Law Library
The Maurer School of Law is in an idyllic location, enabling students to focus on their studies, professional development, and personal growth in a way that schools in more hectic urban areas struggle with. Located in south central Indiana, the Law School is just hours from major cities like Indianapolis, Chicago, and Cincinnati, and within a day’s drive of more than half of the U.S. population. The law school is also located on one of the nation’s most beautiful campuses. Next to inviting restaurants and cool shops on tree-lined streets, students experience what makes Bloomington great: the combination of a small-city feel, the vitality and culture of a larger city, and a sense of community that will keep graduates coming back long after they graduate. Miles of trails, 32 parks, and three lakes, including Indiana’s largest, are nearby. A packed arts calendar, including concerts and theatre, and vibrant Big 10 collegiate sports, means there’s always something to do when not studying or in class.
Four buildings comprise the law school. The largest is Baier Hall, a classic Indiana limestone building on the southwest corner of the IU campus. It features wireless access throughout, laptop-ready classrooms, and ample seating in the Jerome Hall Law Library, where students can enjoy spectacular views of the wooded campus as they study. Across the street, the Lewis Building houses additional classrooms and clinical space, including offices, student workspace, interview rooms, and more. Henderson House houses several of the law school’s research centers, small meeting areas, and places for students to gather. A final building, the Arthur M. Lotz Office of Alumni and Development is where advancement and alumni support operations can be found.
One of the law school’s distinguishing features is its award-winning law library. With a collection including more than 465,000 bound volumes, over 1.6 million microform pieces, and more than 200,000 electronic titles, the Jerome Hall Law Library is one of the finest in the country. The law library provides access to a vast number of electronic resources, including essential legal databases such as Lexis, Westlaw, and Bloomberg Law, as well as the rapidly expanding array of global information sources. The library is more than its collections; it serves as a hub for legal research for students, faculty, lawyers and scholars from all over the world. It’s also a core meeting area for our students, providing conference rooms, carrels, and open spaces for studying and gathering.
Student Activities
A variety of student organizations present opportunities for involvement in groups focused on specialized areas of the law and public service. Some of the most active groups include the Student Bar Association, the Black Law Student Association, Asian Pacific American Law Student Association, Federalist Society, American Constitution Society, Feminist Law Forum, Intellectual Property Association, Public Interest Law Foundation, Latinx Law Student Association, Outlaw, Women’s Law Caucus, and the Environmental Law Society.
Second- and third-year students are offered the opportunity to gain valuable writing, editing, and advocacy skills through participation in the school’s Sherman Minton Moot Court Competition, and various national moot court competitions. Students may participate in internal and external appellate advocacy, mock trial, negotiation, and transactional drafting competitions. Usually well more than two-thirds of the student body will participate in the internal Sherman Minton Appellate Advocacy Competition in their second year.
Students can also participate in one of five law journals:
- The Indiana Journal of Constitutional Design is the first and only journal devoted specifically to this emerging field. It is affiliated with the school’s Center for Constitutional Democracy.
- The Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies is a multidisciplinary journal that specializes in international and comparative law articles.
- The Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality serves as an online interdisciplinary forum on legal and policy issues concerning race, religion, gender, and socioeconomic status.
- The Indiana Law Journal publishes articles by legal scholars, practitioners, jurists, and Indiana University law students.
- IP Theory is a peer-edited online journal published by the law school’s Center for Intellectual Property Research.
These opportunities build on a range of other student opportunities overseen by the Office of Student Affairs.
Housing
The Bloomington area offers a variety of housing options. There are numerous apartments and houses available as off-campus rentals as well as on-campus housing. Information regarding off-campus housing options is provided to admitted students throughout the spring and summer. Most students live close to campus and take advantage of IU’s free bus system.
Career Placement and Bar Passage
Tuition and Aid
| Expense | Cost |
|---|---|
| Tuition |
$36,750.00
|
| Fees |
$1,435.00
|
| Expected Cost of Attendance |
$62,053.00
|
Admission Decisions: Beyond the Numbers
Generally, the quality and size of the applicant pool forces the Admissions Committee to rely heavily on the undergraduate grade-point average and the LSAT score. However, numerical indicators are not the only considerations used in evaluating applications. The committee considers the quality of the applicant’s undergraduate institution; level and rigor of coursework; letters of recommendation (particularly those from faculty); graduate work; employment during and after college; extracurricular activities; potential for service to the profession; educational, geographic, and socioeconomic diversity; and personal statement. Applicants are encouraged to explain matters that may have adversely affected their undergraduate performance. Applicants who feel they have been disadvantaged because of economic, educational, racial, or cultural factors are urged to bring this to the attention of the Admissions Committee.
Transfer Students
Indiana Law welcomes transfer applications from students who have successfully completed at least 24 units at an ABA-accredited law school. While transfer applicants are required to submit their undergraduate record and LSAT scores, the Admissions Committee places particular importance on the performance in law school, letters of recommendation, and reasons for transferring when making admission decisions.