November 30, 2009

A Look Inside: New York University School of Law Guide

In the fourth installment of this series examining our new Clear Admit Law School Guides, we are pleased to offer a glimpse of our New York University School of Law Guide!

The NYU guide contains in-depth information about NYU’s J.D. and graduate programs, and also compares the school to other leading programs.  It’s a great tool that makes background research easy for busy prospective applicants and, further along in the process, allows applicants the opportunity to tailor a personal statement or optional essay to highlight particular aspects of NYU School of Law’s program that fit with the applicant’s story.

One such point of comparison distinguishing NYU from peer programs is the comprehensive instruction in  practical legal skills provided to NYU School of Law students through its 1L Lawyering course, which we describe in part as such:

“NYU’s professional skills course, simply called Lawyering, is one of the most rigorous and innovative of any offered by a comparable school, standing out from peer schools’ courses in a number of ways. The most obvious difference is that Lawyering demands a great deal of time; it is held during both semesters and meets three times per week for a total of 4.5 hours each week.

Lawyering professors present a hypothetical situation that focuses on a common intellectual question that practicing lawyers deal with on a daily basis, and assign texts, such as court cases, that present varying interpretations. Then, students discuss the case in small groups and complete a series of mini-exercises that require them to create legal arguments, conduct informal trials and devise appeals to test their arguments. Following these mini-exercises, each student writes a memo or brief articulating their argument in detail, incorporating the nuanced legal reasoning gleaned from the small group discussions. The exercise is concluded with a critique, in which the small group that has collaborated for the mini-exercises meets with the Lawyering professor to review each student’s work.”

Apart from a discussion of NYU’s J.D. and various LL.M. curriculums, our NYU guide touches on life on the Greenwich Village campus, financial aid data and information on the School of Law’s international law offerings, among other topics.  For example, we explore NYU’s international legal scholarship reputation, based on the Hauser Global Law School Program (HGLSP).  Here is a segment of our HGLSP discussion:

“Like many other law schools, NYU seeks to be at the cutting edge of international legal scholarship. However, NYU has taken a more aggressive tactic than many of its peers, which have thus far simply added international scholars to their permanent and temporary faculties and broadened their selection of courses on international legal systems. The HGLSP’s scope and ambition has led its leaders to pursue the goal of fully integrating the study of foreign legal systems into all aspects of the law school curriculum, so that every NYU student develops an understanding of the interplay between legal systems in a fully globalized environment.”

For other preview posts, please see the previous series entries covering the University of Chicago Law School Guide, the Columbia Law School Guide and the Harvard Law School Guide.

The New York University School of Law Guide is on sale now at the Clear Admit Shop, along with law school guides from Chicago, Columbia, Harvard and Yale.  Please visit us again next Monday for our final “look inside” of this first quintet of guides!

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