| Duke University School of Law | |
|---|---|
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| Parent school | Duke University |
| Established | 1868; 157 years ago (1868) |
| School type | Privatelaw school |
| Parent endowment | $8.5 billion |
| Dean | Kerry Abrams |
| Location | Durham,North Carolina, U.S. |
| USNWR ranking | 6th (tie) (2025) |
| Bar pass rate | 98% (2019)[1] |
| Website | law |
| ABA profile | Standard 509 Report |
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TheDuke University School of Law is thelaw school ofDuke University, aprivate university inDurham, North Carolina.
The school is a constituent academic unit that began in 1868 as the Trinity College School of Law. In 1924, following the renaming ofTrinity College to Duke University, the school was renamed Duke University School of Law.
The date of founding is generally considered to be 1868 or 1924.
However, in 1855Trinity College, the precursor to Duke University,[2] began offering lectures on, but not degrees in, Constitutional and International Law. During this time, Trinity was located inRandolph County, North Carolina.[3]
In 1865, Trinity's Law Department was officially founded, while 1868 marked the official chartering of the School of Law. After a ten-year hiatus from 1894 to 1904,James B. Duke andBenjamin Newton Duke provided the endowment to reopen the school, with Samuel Fox Mordecai as its senior professor (by this time, Trinity College had relocated to Durham, North Carolina). When Trinity College became part of the newly created Duke University upon the establishment of the Duke Endowment in 1924, the School of Law continued as the Duke University School of Law. In 1930, the law school moved from the Carr Building on Duke's East Campus to a new location on the mainquad of West Campus. During the three years preceding this move, the size of the law library tripled. Among other well-known alumni, President Richard Nixon graduated from the school in 1937. In 1963, the school moved to its present location on Science Drive in West Campus.
Law students at Duke University established the first U.S. Chapter of theInternational Criminal Court Student Network (ICCSN) in 2009.[4]
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For the class entering in the fall of 2023, 244 students enrolled out of 6,205 applicants. The 25th and 75thLSAT percentiles for the 2023 entering class were 168 and 172, respectively, with a median of 170 (top three percent of test takers worldwide). The 25th and 75th undergraduateGPA percentiles were 3.78 and 3.96, respectively, with a median of 3.87.[5] The school has approximately 750JD students and 100 students in theLLM andSJD programs.
Duke Law School is ranked sixth, tied withHarvard Law School, in the 2025 U.S. News' Best Law Schools ranking.[6] It is currently ranked number one in the Above the Law Rankings.[7] The Law School is consistently ranked within the top 14 law schools in the country, and is a member of the "T-14" law schools; it has never been ranked lower than 12th by U.S. News, or lower than 7th by Above the Law.[8] Duke Law is one of three T14 law schools to have graduated a President of the United States (Richard Nixon). Duke Law was ranked byForbes as having graduated lawyers with the 2nd highest median mid-career salary amount.[9][10] In 2017, TheTimes Higher Education World University Rankings listed Duke Law as the number one ranked law school in the world.[11]
Other rankings include:
The Trinity College School of Law was located in the Carr Building prior to the renaming of Trinity to Duke University in 1924. The Duke University Law School was originally housed in what is now the Languages Building, built in 1929 on Duke's West Campus quad.
The law school is presently located at the corner of Science Drive and Towerview Road and was constructed in the mid-1960s.
The first addition to the law school was completed in 1994, and a dark polishedgranite façade was added to the rear exterior of the building, enclosing the interior courtyard.
In 2004, Duke Law School broke ground on a building construction project officially completed in fall 2008. The renovation and addition offers larger and more technologically advanced classrooms, expanded community areas and eating facilities, known as the Star Commons, improved library facilities, and more study options for students.[16]
Center for the Study of the Public Domain is a university center, aiming to redress the balance of academic study ofintellectual property. In their analysis, academic focus has been too great on the incentives created by these rights, rather than the contribution to creativity from information which is not subject to them and also opposing the fair use,[17] as they're focusing onCopyright Act of 1909 rather thanCopyright Act of 1976[18]
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Duke Law School publishes eightacademic journals orlaw reviews, which are, in order of their founding:
Law and Contemporary Problems is a quarterly, interdisciplinary, faculty-edited publication of the law school. Unlike traditional law reviews,L&CP uses a symposium format, generally publishing one symposium per issue on a topic of contemporary concern.L&CP hosts an annual conference at the law school featuring the authors of one of the year’s four symposia.[19] Established in 1933, it is the oldest journal published at the law school.
TheDuke Law Journal was the first student-edited publication at Duke Law and publishes articles from leading scholars on topics of general legal interest.
Duke publishes theAlaska Law Review in a special agreement with the Alaska Bar Association, as the state of Alaska has no law school.
TheDuke Journal of Gender Law & Policy (DJGLP) is the preeminent journal for its subject matter in the world.[citation needed]
TheDuke Law & Technology Review has been published since 2001 and is devoted to examining the evolving intersection of law and technology.
TheDuke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy was founded by members of the Class of 2006. ProfessorsErwin Chemerinsky andChristopher H. Schroeder served as the ConLaw journal's inaugural faculty advisors. Mikkelsen was the firsteditor-in-chief; the current editor-in-chief is Daniel Browning.[20] The journal intends to fill a gap inlaw journal scholarship with a publication that could "coverconstitutional developments andlitigation, and their intersection withpublic policy". To ensure that the journal would remain timely, it established a partnership with the Duke Program in Public Law to produce "Supreme Court Commentaries" summarizing and explaining the impact recent cases could have on current issues. The journal publishes continually online and annually in print. It has sponsored speaker series and conferences that explore various issues in constitutional law and public policy.
The law school provides free online access to all of its academic journals, including the complete text of each journal issue dating back to January 1996 in a fully searchable HTML format and in Adobe Acrobat format (PDF). New issues are posted on the web simultaneously with print publication.
In 2005, the law school was featured in the June 6 unveiling of the Open Access Law Program, an initiative ofCreative Commons, for its work in pioneering open access to legal scholarship.
The School offers joint-degree programs with the Duke UniversityGraduate School, theDuke Divinity School,Fuqua School of Business, theMedical School, theNicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, thePratt School of Engineering, and theSanford School of Public Policy; and a JD/LLM dual degree program in International and Comparative Law. Approximately 25 percent of students are enrolled in joint-degree programs.
According to Duke's 2017 ABA-required disclosures, 93.8 percent of the class of 2017 obtained full-time, long-term, JD-required employment nine months after graduation and not funded by the school – the highest number for any law school in the country.[21] According to the NLJ, Duke ranks third among all law schools in the percentage of 2017 graduates working in federal clerkships or jobs at firms of 100 or more lawyers, a category NLJ terms "elite jobs". Duke also ranks fourth in federal clerkships.[21]
Law School Transparency gave Duke Law the highest "Employment Score" in the country at 93.8 percent and lowest "Under-Employment Score" of 0.4 percent in 2017.[22]
Notable faculty include a sitting Supreme Court Justice, a former United States Senator, 14 former Supreme Court clerks, a former federal judge and a former Judge Advocate General.
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36°00′05″N78°56′41″W / 36.0013°N 78.9447°W /36.0013; -78.9447
