University of Illinois College of Law

The College of Law was founded in 1897 and is a charter member of the Association of American Law Schools.[6] The law honor society known as the Order of the Coif was founded at the University of Illinois College of Law in 1902.

University of Illinois College of Law is on the south end of the main University of Illinois campus in Champaign, near Memorial Stadium (Champaign) and the State Farm Center.

The University of Illinois College of Law has the 14th largest law library in the United States of America, and the College has several notable alumni in law firms, politics, the judiciary, and academia, including: Albert E. Jenner Jr., name partner at law firm Jenner & Block, Annette Lu, Vice President of the Republic of China from 2000 to 2008, and Philip McConnaughay, current dean of Peking University School of Transnational Law and former Dean of Penn State Dickinson Law.

In 2011, in its annual ranking of "Go-To Law Schools," the National Law Journal then ranked the University of Illinois College of Law 16th in the number of alumni associates promoted to partner.[7] The College of Law tied with the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Emory University School of Law in 2011. Several of the law schools ranked in the Top 16 – including Harvard, Columbia, and Georgetown – graduated over twice as many students as the College of Law. In the 2011 U.S. News & World Report ranking of American law schools, the College of Law was ranked 23rd in the country. In its 2021 rankings, U.S. News & World Report ranks the College of Law tied for 31st.[8]

Alma Mater

The College of Law offers the Juris Doctor (J.D.), the professional degree in law, as well as the Master of Laws (LL.M) and Doctor of Juridical Science (J.S.D.), academic graduate degrees in law.

A program that had been started with the American Bar Association in 2009 to permit certain UIUC undergraduates to enter without an LSAT was shut down in 2012 as part of the penalty for the College's falsification of admission data.[12]

In the past seven years, the College has added 28 new tenure-track and tenured faculty, achieving a student-faculty ratio of 13 to 1. The faculty is expected to grow by 15 percent over the next half decade.[13]

In Brian Leiter's "Top 25 Law Faculties In Scholarly Impact, 2005–2009", the school achieved a joint #21 rank.[14]

There are currently 662 students in the J.D. program.[6] Thirty-six students from nine countries are enrolled in the one-year international LL.M. program. Students come from 42 states, 14 countries, and 189 undergraduate institutions. Over 30 percent of students are people of color, which is the highest percentage among public universities in Illinois and in the Big Ten.[15]

The flagship law review is the University of Illinois Law Review; the law school also publishes two specialized law journals, the Elder Law Journal and the Journal of Law, Technology & Policy,[16] which in 2007 ExpressO then ranked as the #4 Science & Technology law journal.[17] The College is also the home institution for the Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal, and for Law and Philosophy.

The Albert E. Jenner, Jr. Memorial Library is the College's law library. It is the 14th largest academic law library in the United States, with some 750,000 volumes.[18]

According to the College of Law's official 2016 ABA-required disclosures, 78.92% of the Class of 2016 obtained full-time, long-term, JD-required employment 10 months after graduation.[19] This was then the 19th highest out of all law schools in the United States.[20] Law School Transparency under-employment score is 10.8%, indicating the percentage of the Class of 2016 unemployed, pursuing an additional degree, or working in a non-professional, short-term, or part-time job ten months after graduation.[21]

The total cost of attendance (indicating the cost of tuition, fees, and living expenses) at UIUC Law for the 2014–2015 academic year was $59,772 for Illinois residents and $67,522 for out-of-state students.[22] The Law School Transparency estimated debt-financed cost of attendance for three years was then $217,510 for residents and $246,495 for out-of-state.[23]

In 1957 the Chicago Sunday Tribune released the first modern rankings of law schools, and included Illinois among the top 10 law schools in America.[24] In its annual 2011 ranking of "Go-To Law Schools," the National Law Journal then ranked the University of Illinois College of Law 16th in the number of alumni associates promoted to partner.[25] In the 2010 U.S. News & World Report ranking of American law schools, the College of Law was ranked 21st in the country and in the 2011 it was ranked 23rd in the country. In the 2012 U.S. News and World Report ranking of American law schools, the College of Law was originally ranked 23rd in the country. However, in the wake of the grades and LSAT inflation scandal, that ranking fell from #23 to #35 in 2012, and dropped to 47th in 2013. In the 2014 U.S. News and World Report rankings, the College rose to 40th. In 2015, it dropped one spot to 41st. In 2018, the ranking rose to 37th, and rose again to 31st in the 2020 rankings. The College of Law’s 31st place tied with a few other law schools, including Boston College and William & Mary Law School.

Prof. Brian Leiter, a University of Chicago law professor and well known for his blogs about law schools and law school rankings, said that the University of Illinois College of Law is a top 20 law school.[26]

In 2012, the National Jurist named the University of Illinois College of Law in its list of the 20 most innovative law schools, based on more than 40 submissions.[27]

In 2020, the popular website Above the Law ranked the College of Law #19 in the nation.[28]

• Official website