Saturday, January 5, 2008

International Law - Law Schools

I have been applying to enter the Foreign Service for some time now, but I've come to realize that I can't place all of my hopes on that one goal. Instead, I have begun to put some effort into my backup plan: to become an international lawyer. I've already begun studying for the law school application exam, but admissions deadline for many law schools is February 1st.

In order to decide which law schools I would like to apply, I found a list of International Law journals and crossreferenced it with US News & World Report's list of the Top 100 Law Schools (and the US News' International Law Speciality list). This left thirty-eight possible options, which was a little more than I was expecting. Of course I can't apply to them all so I made a spreadsheet and tried to give additional pros and cons to each of them, and then sorted them by total number of "stars" and by their admission deadlines.

Does anyone have any ideas about other good law schools in international law or think I should reconsider any of these? My spreadsheet of schools can be found online here.

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Update:
I started school at one of my top choices, American University - Washington College of Law!  Hurray!  The paid version of USNews rankings (which I recommend) ranks it as:

#2 in Clinical Training
#5 in International Law
#9 in Trial Advocacy
#21 in Intellectual Property Law
#39 in Legal Writing
#46 overall ("Tier 1")
What it doesn't take into account is location. Washington DC and New York are really the only two locations that should be considered for anyone interested in International Law... and DC is also a top location for anyone interested in working for a government agency. 

Of these five programs, as a first year student, I've only had the chance to participate in the Legal Writing program, but so far it has been excellent.  As it turns out, I really like Legal Writing, in its best form it's well researched, logical and concise... which I'll grant you aren't exactly new concepts to me, but it's nice to have prospective employment where I will get to use these skills on a regular basis.  I'm really looking forward to putting them into practice in a mock court setting next semester, I think that will be even more fun. 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Look man, I think it comes down to two things, money or location. You can go to El Cheapo (FSU) and be somewhere where you don't really want to be. Or you can pick a school someplace you and J wanna be and pay 30-40 thou.

Carl