Yale Law School

Yale Law School

Yale Law School (often referred to as Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, located in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1824, it has been the top-ranked law school in the United States by U.S. News & World Report every year since the magazine began publishing law school rankings in the 1980s.The school's small size and prestige make its admissions process the most selective of any law school in the United States, with an acceptance rate of 4% in the 2020-21 cycle. Its yield rate of 87% is consistently the highest of any law school in the United States.Yale Law has produced a significant number of prominent figures in law and politics, including United States presidents Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton and former U.S. secretary of state and presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton. Alumni also include current United States Supreme Court associate justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor and Brett Kavanaugh, as well as a number of former justices, including Abe Fortas, Potter Stewart and Byron White; several heads of state around the world, including Karl Carstens, the fifth president of Germany, Jose P. Laurel, the third president of the Republic of the Philippines; and Peter Mutharika, the immediate former president of Malawi; five current U.S. senators; the former governor of California and immediate former governor of Rhode Island and current United States Secretary of Commerce; and the current deans of three of the top fourteen-ranked law schools in the United States: Virginia, Cornell, and UCLA. Each class in Yale Law's three-year J.D. program enrolls approximately 200 students. Yale's flagship law review is the Yale Law Journal, one of the most highly cited legal publications in the United States. According to Yale Law School's ABA-required disclosures, 83% of the Class of 2019 obtained full-time, long-term, JD-required or JD-advantage employment nine months after graduation, excluding solo practitioners.

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