The University of Georgia School of Law (also referred to as Georgia Law) is a professional graduate school and the second-oldest school or college at the University of Georgia, located in Athens, Georgia. Founded in 1859, it is among the oldest law schools in the United States.
Admissions, curriculum and degrees
Georgia Law Admissions Online Open House - November 18, 2015.
Students from the Class of 2019 had an acceptance rate of 29.5 percent, with a median LSAT and GPA of 162 and 3.73, respectively.
Nearly 170 courses are offered, including business-related law, property-related law, personal rights and public interest law, trial and appellate practice, and global practice preparation. Degrees awarded include the Juris Doctor (J.D.), the Master of Laws (LL.M.) for foreign-trained lawyers, and the Master in the Study of Law (M.S.L.) for those who wish to gain an understanding of legal principles and perspectives in order to advance their careers. Students also may choose to pursue interdisciplinary coursework in other University schools and colleges, or to earn joint degrees including, without limitation, a J.D./M.B.A. or LL.M./M.B.A. in partnership with the University's Terry College of Business.
History and facilities
The law school was founded in 1859 by Joseph Henry Lumpkin, William Hope Hull, and Thomas R.R. Cobb. Classes of the Lumpkin Law School, as it was originally designated, were held until 1873 at the law offices of Lumpkin and Cobb. It was housed in various University of Georgia buildings until 1932 when the law school moved into the new Harold Hirsch Hall, located on North Campus. This is now designated as a National Historic Landmark District and is within walking distance of downtown Athens.
Expanded over the years with connected buildings and upgrades, the Hirsch Hall complex remains the site of law school classrooms and offices, as well as the Alexander Campbell King Law Library, a multi-use auditorium, and the elegant Hatton-Lovejoy Courtroom. A 2012 renovation created almost 4,000 square feet of additional space, including a cafe and enclosed two story courtyard.
The law school's additional building, Dean Rusk Hall, opened in 1996 adjacent to Hirsch Hall and the main University of Georgia Library. Named for Dean Rusk, the former U.S. Secretary of State who was a Georgia Law professor, this building became the new home of the Dean Rusk International Law Center. This was founded in 1977 as the international law and policy nucleus for education, scholarship, and other collaborations among faculty, students and diverse local and global partners. Dean Rusk Hall also houses classrooms, faculty offices, additional library space, and a second law school courtroom, the James E. Butler Courtroom.
The law school is a member of the Association of American Law Schools, has a chapter of the Order of the Coif, and is host to two advocacy inns: the Lumpkin Inn of Court, one of the earliest American inns of court, and E. Wycliffe Orr Sr. American Inn of Court, both modeled after the English inns of court. It is an Academic Partner of the American Society of International Law.
Alexander Campbell King Law Library
The Alexander Campbell King Law Library has been designated a Federal Depository Library, whose primary purpose is to support the U.S. government legal information needs of the faculty and students. The library is also one of the United States' Specialized European Documentation Centres, houses the Faculty Writings Collection, the Phillips Nuremberg Trials Collection, the Rare Book Collection, and the J. Alton Hosch Collection, which includes the extensive personal library of Dean Hosch, a member of the law school faculty from 1935 to 1964. Also featured is the Louis B. Sohn Library on International Relations, located in the Dean Rusk International Law Center in the law school's Dean Rusk Hall.
Law review and journals
Georgia Law students publish three legal journals: Georgia Law Review, the Journal of Intellectual Property Law, and the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law. In addition to the Georgia Law Review, the students publish the online component, the Georgia Law Review Online, which features essays by practitioners, judges and professors focused primarily on timely legal issues in the U.S. Courts of Appeals. These journals have frequently been cited by federal and state courts, as well as textbooks and law reviews. Membership on the journals is limited to students in their second and third years of law school.
Students in the Appellate Litigation Clinic have briefed and argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth, Eleventh, and D.C. Circuits. Other offerings include the Business Law Clinic, Civil Externships, the Corporate Counsel Externship, the Environmental Practicum, the Washington D.C. Semester in Practice, the Atlanta Semester in Practice, the Family Violence Clinic, the Mediation Clinic, the Community Health Law Partnership (HeLP) Clinic, the Public Interest Practicum and Fellowships, the Wilbanks Child Endangerment and Sexual Exploitation Clinic, the Criminal Defense Practicum, the Prosecutorial Justice Program, moot court, mock trial and negotiation programs, and the Capital Assistance Project. The Global Externship initiative provides global practice preparation for many students each summer.
Costs
Tuition for one year at Georgia Law is $17,218 for Georgia residents and $35,266 for non-residents. The total cost of attendance (including the cost of tuition, fees and off-campus living expenses) for the 2015â€"2016 academic year is estimated to be $36,496 for Georgia residents and $55,240 for non-residents. Non-residents are able to obtain residency after one year. U.S. News & World Report ranked Georgia Law as a top ten law school in having the 4th best salary to debt ratio.
Employment
According to Georgia Law's official 2014 ABA-required disclosures, 87.4% of the 2015 graduating class was employed within nine months after graduation, and 72.0% held full-time, long-term, JD-required positions at that point. These percentages do not include graduates who chose to open their own practices, those choosing not to practice (using their degree in previous employment in business, hospital administration, etc. for example), or those using their degrees for other purposes. Of the 191 students who graduated in 2015, 54 went to law firms of up to 50 attorneys, 23 to law firms of 51 to 501+ attorneys, 15 to business and industry, 31 to government and public interest organizations (this number does not include federal or state/local judicial clerkships, which 23 graduates obtained), and 3 to academia.
Georgia Law has had six alumni serve as judicial clerks at the U.S. Supreme Court since 2005. Based on the 2012 graduating class, Georgia Law was ranked 10th among all law schools in the country for the total number of federal court clerks. For the class of 2014, Georgia Law placed 26 graduates in federal and state court clerkships.
For the 2016 Top 50 Law School Rankings, Georgia Law was ranked tied for number 23, up four places from the 2015 rankings. However, the law school has been ranked 13th of the top 80 best law schools by The National Jurist, and U.S. News & World Report effectively ranks Georgia law in the top 15% of all ABA approved law schools and is additionally individually ranked in Trial Advocacy & International Law.
Some notable alumni and alumnae of Georgia Law
- Luis A. Aguilar (J.D. 1979), attorney, former Commissioner, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
- Maurice Neil Andrews (LL.B. 1916), Chief Judge, U.S. District Court
- Ellis Arnall (LL.B. 1931), attorney, former Governor
- Roy Barnes (J.D. 1972) former Governor, attorney
- Timothy C. Batten, Sr. (J.D. 1984), Judge, U.S. District Court
- Robert Benham (J.D. 1970), first African-American to serve as Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia; a namesake of Georgia Law's Davenport-Benham Chapter of the National Black Law Students Association
- Mike Bowers (J.D. 1974), past Attorney General
- Clara Bryant (J.D. 2012), attorney, former actress including Under Wraps and Tru Confessions star
- George Busbee (J.D. 1952), attorney, former Governor
- Valerie E. Caproni (J.D. 1979), Judge, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York; formerly, General Counsel, Federal Bureau of Investigation
- Julie E. Carnes (J.D. 1975), Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals
- Christopher M. Carr (J.D. 1999), state Attorney General
- Thomas Alonzo Clark (LL.B. 1949), Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals
- Ertharin Cousin (J.D. 1982), former Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme, named to the TIME 100 most influential people in the world list
- George W. Darden III (J.D. 1967), former Member U.S. House of Representatives; presidential appointee to the Board of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation; Advisor on behalf of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs
- Bertis Downs IV (J.D. 1981), entertainment attorney
- James Larry Edmondson (J.D. 1971), Senior Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals
- Randy Evans (J.D. 1983), attorney, member Dentons law firm U.S. board of directors, former general counsel to Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
- Duross Fitzpatrick (LL.B. 1966), Chief Judge, U.S. District Court
- Norman S. Fletcher (J.D. 1958), Chief Judge, Supreme Court of Georgia
- Daisy Hurst Floyd (J.D.1980), attorney, law professor, and law school Dean
- James Randal Hall (J.D. 1982), Chief Judge, U.S. District Court
- Frank Hanna III (J.D. 1986), corporate attorney
- C. Donald Johnson, Jr. (J. D. 1973), attorney, academic, former Congressman U.S. House of Representatives; former ambassador at the Office of the United States Trade Representative
- Steve C. Jones (J.D. 1987), Judge, U.S. District Court
- Clay D. Land (J.D. 1985), Chief Judge, U.S. District Court
- Edward H. Lindsey Jr. (J.D. 1984), attorney, former state representative
- Beverly B. Martin (J.D. 1981), Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals
- Peter Meldrim (LL.B. 1869), judge, President of the American Bar Association, Commissioner of the Uniform Law Commission
- Harold Melton (J.D. 1991), Presiding Justice, Supreme Court of Georgia
- Patrick N. Millsaps (J.D. 2000), attorney and American film producer
- William Theodore Moore, Jr. (J. D. 1964), Chief Judge, U.S. District Court
- Lewis Render Morgan (J. D. 1935), Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals
- Thomas B. Murphy (J.D. 1949), attorney, Georgia Speaker of House of Representatives from 1973 to 2002.
- Harold Lloyd Murphy (J. D. 1949), Judge, U. S. District Court
- Wilbur Dawson Owens Jr. (J.D. 1952), Chief Judge, U.S. District Court
- Charles A. Pannell Jr. (J.D. 1970), Senior Judge, U.S. District Court
- William Porter Payne (J.D. 1973), Managing director at Gleacher & Company; president and CEO of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, responsible for bringing the 1996 Summer Olympics to Atlanta
- David Ralston (J.D. 1980), attorney, former member of the Georgia Senate, Speaker, Georgia House of Representatives
- Jack L. Rives (J.D. 1977), Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer, American Bar Association
- C. Ashley Royal (J.D. 1974), Judge, U. S. District Court
- Richard B. Russell, Jr. (LL.B. 1918), U.S. Senator, former President Pro Tempore of the Senate
- Carl Sanders (J. D. 1947), former Governor, founder and chairman of the law firm of Troutman Sanders LLP
- Frank W. "Sonny" Seiler (J.D. 1957), trial attorney, leading role in the longest-standing New York Times Best-Seller, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
- Marvin Herman Shoob (J.D. 1948), Senior Judge, U.S. District Court
- Samuel Hale Sibley (LL.B. 1933), Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals
- Sidney Oslin Smith Jr. (J.D. 1949), Chief Judge, U.S. District Court
- George T. Smith (J. D. 1948), Speaker of the House of Representatives; Justice, Supreme Court of Georgia
- Richard W. Story (J.D. 1978), Judge, U.S. District Court
- Herman E. Talmadge (J.D. 1936), Governor, U.S. Senator
- Joe D. Whitley (J.D. 1975), first General Counsel for the United States Department of Homeland Security, corporate attorney
- Robert Whitlow (J.D. 1979), North Carolina attorney, author, and filmmaker
- Lisa Godbey Wood (J.D. 1990), Chief Judge, U.S. District Court
- William Robert Woodall III (J.D. 1997), member, U.S. House of Representatives
- Sally Quillian Yates (J.D. 1986), former United States Deputy Attorney General and acting United States Attorney General
References
