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Office of Enrollment Management: Law School, Second Floor
Telephone: (516) 463-5916, Fax: (516) 463-6264,
E-mail: lawadmissions@hofstra.edu

Nora V. Demleitner, Dean
Michelle M. Wu, Interim Senior Vice Dean for Academic Affairs
Miriam R. Albert, Vice Dean for Administration
Kimberly A. Arias, Assistant Dean for Student Affairs
Lisa Berman, Assistant Dean for External Relations
Elaine M. Bourne, Senior Assistant Dean for Enrollment Management and Student Services
Rosann Kelly, Assistant Dean for Academic Records
Gary Moore, Assistant Dean for Law School Information Systems
Lisa Spar, Acting Director of the Deane Law Library

The School of Law, founded in 1970, has approximately 1,150 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.

Hofstra Law School’s history is one of vision, commitment to excellence and extraordinary success. The Law School was founded to create a unique environment, a place that provides a superb legal education, in the broadest sense, to generations of competent and ethical attorneys. The School 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. Our distinguished faculty make meaningful contributions to the dialogue on pressing issues of national and local importance.

Under the leadership of its eighth dean, Nora V. Demleitner, a distinguished faculty member and internationally-renowned scholar, Hofstra Law School is poised for extraordinary growth and development. The foundation for any school is its faculty, and Hofstra Law School can proudly boast true leaders in a variety of fields. Our faculty is dedicated to both student success and scholarship. From its inception, Hofstra Law School has provided an education that is rich in theory and in teaching the skills needed to groom effective lawyers.  

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 audiovisual 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 555,000 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.

Hofstra was one of the first schools in the country to adopt clinical education and has served for many years as the regional center for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy. Hofstra’s cutting-edge skills programs focus on training students to become outstanding lawyers and allow students to study and practice alongside experienced attorneys. The current Law School student body is approximately 1,200 students. There are more than 8,500 Hofstra Law alumni. The Law School sponsors approximately 40 active student organizations, including the Health Law Club, Older Wiser Law Students Association (OWLS), and the Corporate Law Society. The Law School offers study-abroad opportunities, including summer programs in Italy and Australia, and a winter program in the Netherlands Antilles.  All of these programs emphasize international and comparative law. In addition, Hofstra Law School students can take advantage of exchange programs with the University of Ghent in Belgium and Erasmus University in the Netherlands.

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 Transnational Law. 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 smaller section; 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 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”). For further information or an application, call or write to the School of Law.

The School is located on the campus of Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. In addition to its full-time Juris Doctor (J.D.) program, Hofstra Law School offers part-time day and evening J.D. programs, as well as graduate degree programs, including an LL.M. program in American Legal  Studies (for foreign law graduates), and LL.M. programs in International Law and Family Law.

DEGREES OFFERED
Juris Doctor (J.D.)
Master of Law (L.L.M.)

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