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Office: Law School, Room 244
Telephone: (516) 463-5916
Fax: (516) 463-6091
E-mail: lawadmissions@hofstra.edu

Aaron D. Twerski, Dean
Marshall E. Tracht, Vice Dean for Planning, Administration
Nora V. Demleitner, Vice Dean for Academic Affairs
Gerard Anderson, Director of Financial Aid
Elliott Dawes, Assistant Dean for Multicultural Affairs
Caroline Levy, Senior Assistant Dean for Career Services
Deborah M. Martin, Assistant Dean for Enrollment Management
Gary Moore, Assistant Dean for Information Systems
Fay L. Rosenfeld, Senior Assistant Dean for Student Affairs
Michelle Wu, Director of the Deane Law Library

The School of Law, founded in 1970, has approximately 1,000 students enrolled in Juris Doctor and Master of Laws programs. These students hold degrees from more than 150 undergraduate institutions throughout the United States and from more than a dozen foreign countries.

The first 35 years in the life of the School of Law presents a story of vision, commitment to excellence and extraordinary success. The Law School was founded to create a unique environment – a place which provides a superb legal education, in the broadest sense, to generations of competent and ethical attorneys; a place which makes meaningful contributions to the dialogue on pressing social issues of national and local importance and which brings together a diversity of students, faculty, judges, lawyers, scholars and professionals from a variety of disciplines in an effort to broaden the perspectives of all. The Law School has developed a number of institutes that sponsor research, advanced courses, and lectures and conferences in specialized areas. These include the Institute for the Study of Legal Ethics, the Center for Legal Advocacy,  and Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation. The Law School has also established an interdisciplinary Center for Children, Families and the Law in which professionals from law, medicine and mental health collaborate in a clinical program, conferences and training to improve the welfare of children and their families. The result is a law school community that is constantly engaged in intellectual discussion and debate as faculty and students critically examine the law, the legal profession and legal education itself.

The Law School is located in a three-level building, designed to be in harmony with the brick neoclassic buildings on the South Campus. A state-of-the-art building was added in the late 1990s for the Law School’s clinical programs and Career Services Offices. In the Law School’s newly constructed trial courtroom/classroom, students view and criticize their own trial practice through the use of advanced audio-visual equipment. The new moot courtroom is an attractively designed amphitheater, with a professional judge’s and jury box, and sophisticated computer and video equipment. The Deane Law Library contains approximately 539,000 volumes or equivalents. The library has two computer labs and additional workstations throughout the library. A wireless network has been installed throughout the Law School, which allows laptop access to the network (Internet, e-mail, LEXIS and WESTLAW) from any site in the building.

In achieving a national reputation for academic excellence, the Law School has always emphasized teaching as well as research and publication. The faculty are individuals of academic distinction, and many of them are recognized as national authorities in their fields. They are also committed to excellence in teaching. The faculty care deeply about legal education in general and about their students in particular. They make it a point to be accessible to students outside of the traditional classroom setting.

The curriculum at Hofstra is designed to provide a broad-based legal education that will equip students to practice law in every state and federal court in the nation. The emphasis is primarily on the teaching of legal analysis, lawyering skills and professional responsibility. The first-year curriculum includes a course on “Lawmaking Institutions in Context” which explores the process of lawmaking through an examination of recent legislation. The Law School takes special care to provide the rigorous first-year legal training in as personal an atmosphere as possible. For example, each first-year student has one class in a section of fewer than 30 students; this experience enables a closer relationship between students and faculty in a seminar-like environment. In the second and third years, the Law School provides the opportunity for interested students to develop expertise in a number of particular areas of the law. For example, extensive offerings in litigation and trial practice consist of a mix of classroom, simulation, skills training and strategy sessions. Other areas of possible concentration include corporate, constitutional, criminal, family, health, international, labor and tax law as well as alternative dispute resolution.

Learning takes place not only in the classroom and clinical settings, but also at frequent special lectures when prominent judges, scholars and practitioners address students and faculty and during more informal exchanges among faculty and students in faculty offices and student lounges. This intellectually challenging atmosphere makes Hofstra a very special place at which to obtain a high quality and rigorous legal education in a diverse and nurturing atmosphere.

The Law School is home to four different student edited publications: Hofstra Law Review, Hofstra Labor and Employment Law Journal, Family Court Review, and The Journal of International Business and Law. It is also home to more than thirty student organizations, ranging from the Black Law Students Association to the International Law Society to OWLS (“Older and Wiser Law Students”). The Law School has its own Bulletin. For further information or an application, call or write to the School of Law.

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