Major
	None
Professional Degrees
	Juris Doctor (JD), Master of Laws (LLM) with a focus in international and comparative law, from the College of Law
Competitive Admission
Links
	Web Site Courses General Catalog Living-Learning Community

As an undergraduate student at The University of Iowa, you may declare a pre-law designation, which means that you intend eventually to apply to a law school. Law is a professional degree program at Iowa. It is not offered as an undergraduate major.

• Why Study Law at Iowa?
• Faculty
• Preprofessional Study
• Admission
• Course Work
• For More Details
• Facilities
• Careers

Why Study Law at Iowa?
The University of Iowa College of Law has a reputation for excellence. U.S. News & World Report consistently ranks the college in the top 10 public law schools.

The College of Law was founded in 1865. It was the first public law school established west of the Mississippi River. Its outstanding graduates and faculty include:

• Many distinguished members of the federal, state, and tribal judiciaries
• One of the first women to graduate from law school
• One of the first African American law school graduates
• The first United States attorney of Native American ancestry

Approximately 600 students are working toward JD and LLM degrees at Iowa’s College of Law.

Faculty
The college’s faculty is composed of 48 full-time professors, including six clinical professors. The dean and four associate deans split their time evenly between teaching and administration.

The faculty is diverse; 17 full-time faculty members are women, five are members of racial or ethnic minorities, and four hold PhD degrees in law-related disciplines in addition to their JD degrees. More than 30 adjunct faculty members offer specialty courses in their areas of expertise; most are judges and practicing attorneys.

Preprofessional Study
Lawyers perform such varied services and enter such broad and diverse fields that the College of Law considers applicants with any undergraduate major. If you declare a pre-law designation, you'll work with your pre-law advisor at the Academic Advising Center to develop an undergraduate program that explores and develops your particular interests.

Iowa strongly endorses the three basic objectives recommended by a committee of the Association of American Law Schools:

• Education for comprehension and expression in words
• Education for a critical understanding of the human institutions and values with which the law deals
• Education for greater power in thinking

Keep these objectives in mind while planning your undergraduate study. Don’t sacrifice a broad perspective in order to pursue detailed specialization right now.

Admission
Before you begin law school, you must complete all the requirements for your undergraduate degree. Admission to law is competitive; fulfillment of the basic admission requirements does not guarantee that you will be accepted.

Multiple admission criteria are used to determine which applicants’ admission will best advance the College of Law’s mission. Your undergraduate academic record and Law School Admission Test (LSAT) performance are two important criteria.

In the most recent entering class, the median grade-point average (GPA) was 3.59 and the median LSAT score was 161. The college recognizes that looking only at GPA and test scores may not provide a complete assessment of an applicant’s ability to succeed at studying law. So it has developed a “number-plus” admission policy in order to evaluate total suitability for admission. This policy allows the admission committee to consider additional factors, such as special academic or professional abilities, extracurricular activities, law-related employment experience, public service commitment, and leadership roles.

Course Work
The College of Law offers a broad and diverse curriculum with particular strengths in public law, international and comparative law, antitrust and economic regulation, intellectual property, and corporate law. Iowa features a nationally recognized emphasis on legal writing throughout all three years of study.

You’ll gain a solid foundation for a lifetime of professional growth, including a thorough familiarity with legal principles and the operation of legal institutions, fundamental lawyers’ skills (particularly writing), and an appreciation of the roles of law and lawyers in society.

The college cultivates student participation in the learning process and creates regular opportunities for individuals and small groups to engage challenging teachers who are genuinely interested in each student’s professional development.

First-year students take a defined curriculum in the fundamental workings of the law and legal principles.

In years two and three, students are exposed to a broad array of substantive areas of the law, along with a heavy dose of professional skills training in fact gathering, interviewing, counseling, drafting, transaction planning, negotiation, and litigation. They also concentrate course work on writing and research opportunities in their particular areas of interest.

In addition to course work and research opportunities, Iowa law students have numerous opportunities to develop and practice leadership skills.

For More Details
See College of Law in the UI General Catalog to learn more about the JD and LLM degrees and for detailed information about admission requirements.

Facilities
The college is housed in the Boyd Law Building, high above the western bank of the Iowa River. Small seminar rooms, a newly renovated clinic suite, and special-purpose learning areas are situated throughout the building, allowing students and faculty members to work together in close professional interaction. The largest classroom seats only 100 people. The student lounge, faculty lounge, and faculty offices are located on the same floor, encouraging interaction between students and faculty members.

The Iowa Law Library has one of the most comprehensive collections of legal materials in the country. As of July 2010, its collection contained approximately 1.3 million bound volumes and microform equivalents and 960,108 scholarly titles. According to a 2008 survey by the American Bar Association and Association of American Law Schools, the Iowa Law Library contains the second largest collection of volumes, volume equivalents, and unique individual titles among all law school libraries.

Particular strengths of the library’s collection include U.S. government documents; Iowa government documents; legal materials of Great Britain and the present and former British Commonwealth nations; and the law of Germany, France, and Mexico.

Careers
College of Law graduates build meaningful and significant lives by integrating rigorous legal training with rich professional and civic engagement. Overall, about half of the college’s living alumni work in private practice, while others use their law degrees to work in the judiciary and in health care, public policy and government, business, and education.

The college works with each student who is seeking employment. Individual and small-group counseling is available from the career services staff and from alumni. Each year about 97 percent of law graduates are employed nine months after graduation, and bar exam passage rates typically exceed 90 percent.

Employers view College of Law students and alumni as high-quality, hard-working, and engaged employees. Nearly 150 employers recruit students through on-campus and consortium-based interview programs annually. In addition, students create successful paths in judicial clerkships, public service, government, business, and education by networking with alumni and pursuing meaningful work during their first and second summers in law school.