Cornell Law School in Ithaca, NY - The Dream Began in 1887

Cornell Law School is a small school in numbers. The school enrolls only 190-195 JD students to ensure that there is a small community feeling in the academic surroundings. Students classes are also small in number with the student to faculty ratios averaging 11 to 1. In 2007 the tuition was about $43,000 and room and board was estimated at about $10,000. Graduates from Cornell are among the best and 99% are employed within six months after graduation.

Since there is a small class of students entering every year, this means there is stiff competition for the available spaces in the law school. There are about 1000 applicants each year just for the LL.M program and only 65 of the applicants get accepted. Total applications for the Cornell Law School this year were just under 4000 and 199 students are currently enrolled in all three degree programs offered. The staff is very observant over choosing the best applicants fairly and Cornell looks for intellectual potential, strength of character, and a love of learning.


The school is strong in International Law and every year students who have completed one year of law school have the opportunity to take a class from June to August in Paris. Earned credits go towards the student's law degree and two of the courses studied are International Commercial Arbitration and International Criminal Law. The Paris Institute was established by Cornell and 130 students attend every summer from the law school and other parts of the world. It enriches the law program's breadth for students attending Cornell Law School.

Students are acclimated to the court room through work in campus clinics or externships before graduating.

The law student gets legal practice in clinics as they appear before administrative tribunals or courts. In these situations they use pre-trial and trail skills in real cases. Other students who choose externships get involved in representing real clients which can include deposition work and negotiation. These law students get the opportunity to observe their mentors and ask questions about the profession to find out how things operate in the real world. Of course, students in clinics on campus get similar opportunities. Their conclusion about the clinic experiences is that they are the highlight of their education at Cornell.

''Lawyers in best sense.'' This is the motto of Cornell Law School, to produce well-rounded lawyers and successfully completed practitioners cut from a different cloth. Law students thrive in an intellectual atmosphere at Cornell that is rich in forward thinking and a renowned professional faculty. Not only in the U.S., but also reaching out to foreign locations where students can go for short stays to study law in different countries. Enrollment is competitive, but the law school is open to accepting any candidate with lawyering potential regardless of their economic need. Cornell Law School will work to get the loans and scholarships to make the program available to the most competent candidates. The historic Cornell Law School truly looks to produce lawyers in the best sense.