- New England School of Law
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New England School of Law 
Motto Jus et Auctoritas Established 1908 School type Private Endowment US$ 40.5 million[1] Dean John O'Brien Location Boston, Massachusetts, United States Enrollment 1,077[2] Faculty 157[3][4] USNWR ranking Tier 4[5] Bar pass rate 93.6%[6] Annual tuition $40,904[7] Website www.nesl.edu 
New England School of Law (NESL or New England Law or New England Law | Boston) is a private law school in Boston, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1908 as a law school for women.
Contents
History
Main academic building on Stuart Street
In 1908, two women from Boston decided to sit for the Massachusetts bar examination. A lawyer named Arthur Winfield MacLean agreed to tutor them, and other students followed over the next few years. MacLean's wife called the school Portia Law School after the heroine of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. From 1908 to 1938, Portia Law School was the sister school to the then all male, Suffolk University Law School. This partnership fostered because MacLean was a law partner with Suffolk founder, Gleason Archer, Sr. MacLean also served as the school's first Dean from 1908-1943.[8]
Beginning in 1920, Portia graduates received the LL.B. degree.[9] In 1922, the school moved into its first permanent building in Boston's Beacon Hill neighborhood, when enrollment had reached 228.[9] In 1926, Portia was awarded the authority to award LL.M. degrees to both men and women.[9] A few years later, in 1938, Portia Law School became a fully integrated coeducational institution. As the school entered the 1950s it saw its student body shift from a student body that had a majority female population to a predominately male student body.[10] 1963 saw Portia Law School begin the process of applying for American Bar Association accreditation,[10] and some of the steps the school took included restructuring its board of governors and launching the schools first law review.[10] In 1969, the school changed its name to New England School of Law to coincide with its accreditation granted by the ABA.[11]
President George H. W. Bush at the 75th Anniversary of NESLDean Tenure Arthur W. MacLean 1908–1943 W. Chesley York 1943–1952 Margaret H. Bauer 1952–1962 Guy V. Slade 1962–1966 Walter J. Kozuch, Jr. 1966–1971 Robert E. O’Toole 1971–1974 Colin W. Gillis 1974–1978 Thomas C. Fischer 1978–1983 Timothy J. Cronin 1983–1988 John F. O’Brien 1988–Present As New England Law neared its 75th anniversary, new programs were started, the first was the creation of Law Day in 1970 and then the opening of its clinical law services office in 1971.[12] The clinical law services program is performed by the law students to those who did not have the economic means to seek paid legal assistance.[12] In 1980, New England moved into its current location; which is located in the Boston Common neighborhood.[12] To honor the 75th anniversary of New England Law the 41st President, George H. W. Bush, was the keynote speaker for the celebration.[12]
In the 1980s, the school started a program that arranged for students to study abroad and work with former Soviet Bloc nations to develop their own legal systems.[13] New England Law also became a co-founder of the Consortium for Innovative Legal Education; which allows students to study abroad at countries throughout the world and learn about foreign law and put their current education to work through externships.[13] In 1996, New England Law students worked with Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals by providing legal research and analysis for war crimes in Rwanda and the former nation of Yugoslavia.[13] New England Law received membership from the Association of American Law Schools in 1998.[14] In 2002, New England Law expanded its campus by buying adjacent buildings around the schools current location.[13] Also, in 2008, New England School of Law began a new campaign to rebrand itself as "New England Law | Boston", with the purpose to put an emphasis on its location.[15]
Campus
The law school's main campus consists of five buildings:[16] The main academic building is a five-story building on Stuart Street in Boston's theater district, which includes classrooms, faculty offices, and the schools library.[16] Clinic, administrative, and law review offices are in a nearby building in the Bay Village on Church Street.[17] Offices for the school's admissions office, administrative departments, clinical law office, and student publications are located in a two-story building two blocks from the main academic building.[16] New England Law also shares its bookstore facilities with Tufts University.[16] Student's also have access to the Tuft's University Medical Library located down the street.
Academics
New England School of law offers full-time and part-time enrollment with an application deadline of March 15. In 2008, the school accepted 56.7% of all applicants who applied to the school. Enrolled students from that entering class had Law School Admission Test (LSAT) scores in the range of 149 to 153 (25th-75th percentile).[18] New England Law offers full-time time and part-time (both day and evening) divisions and the student-to-faculty ratio is 23:1.[19] It is currently a medium sized law school with approximately 1,100 students, with a majority of its students in the full-time program.[20]
New England Law has three specializations in environmental law, international law, and tax law[21] and offers an LL.M. in advanced legal studies.[22] New England Law also offers a program where a student may spend a period of time up to two academic semesters at a law school associated with the Consortium for Innovative Legal Education, Inc. (CILE). The schools taking part in the program include California Western School of Law, South Texas College of Law, and William Mitchell College of Law.[23]
Accreditation and rankings
New England Law is American Bar Association (ABA) accredited and is a member of the Association of American Law Schools.[14] It is also a founding member of the Consortium for Innovative Legal Education.[24] According to U.S. News and World Report, New England Law ranks in the "Fourth Tier" of law schools in the United States.[5] New England Law is ranked as the 45th best law school in the country for those who want to be public defenders.[25]
Centers
The Center for Law and Social Responsibility, CLSR, works mostly pro bono and public service activities.[26] It is run and supported by students, faculty and alumni.[26] The CLSR serves as a socially responsible organization that works with numerous projects that are representative of its members, as well as issues that public service lawyers are currently working with.[26] The CLSR also works to support classroom projects, scholarship, and other activities that convey current social problems.[26]
The Center for Law and International Polic, CILP, is utilized by both students and faculty for research, analysis and produce resource material on numerous topics.[27] Some of the topics include CIA renditions in Europe, intergovernmental peacekeeper accountability and hate speech.[27] Students also have the chance to practice international law in overseas externships. Most students work assist in prosecutions related to war crimes, because of the schools relationships with international criminal courts and tribunals.[27] CILP also hosts the annual international law conference, by creating more awareness in global legal work, for issues such as Chinese reunification and Taiwanese independence, competition laws, responses to rogue regimes, the Rwandan genocide, and the development of new countries out of the former Yugoslavia.[27]
New England Law's Center for Business Law offers academic credit in conjunction with legal externship positions through one of the CBL’s three institutes, which individually focus on corporate governance and ethics, intellectual property, and tax law. Typical placements include Liberty Mutual, RNK Telecommunication, Natural Microsystems, Inc., the Boston Stock Exchange, and the National Association of Securities Dealers.[28]
Clinics
New England Law offers more than a dozen clinics each semester in a wide range of areas including public interest, tax law, administrative law, criminal law, family law, health law, immigration law, land use law, and mediation. Students are eligible to participate in clinics in the first semester of their second year of law school.[29]
Notable alumni
New England Law has some notable alumni, including Brian Darling, Director of United States Senate relations for the Heritage Foundation, Joseph R. Driscoll, Norfolk representative to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, Martha Ware, and Leonard P. Zakim, religious and civil rights leader in Boston, as well as Andrew Vachss, Class of 1975, children's lawyer and author of the Burke series of novels, and Joseph F. D'Antonio (1993- Dean's List) the Senior Associate Commissioner for Compliance and Governance for the Big East Conference, headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island. Paul Pelletier, Principal Deputy Chief at Fraud Section, Criminal Division, Justice Department who is lead prosecutor on Allen Stanford.
Notes and references
- ^ Law School Almanac - 2008 Endowments retrieved on 6-6-2009.
- ^ Princeton Review Student Body retrieved on 6-6-2009.
- ^ Adjunct Faculty retrieved on 6-6-2009.
- ^ Faculty Bios retrieved on 6-6-2009.
- ^ a b http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-law-schools/rankings/page+7
- ^ NESL at a glance New England School of Law. retrieved on 6-9-2009.
- ^ http://www.nesl.edu/admissions/tuition_fees.cfm
- ^ Michael Rustad, "Book Reviews," Contemporary Sociology, January 1986, Vol. 15, Number 1, page 102. accessed through JSTOR
- ^ a b c "NESL History 1908". http://www.nesl.edu/HistoryProject/1908/. Retrieved 2009-06-07.
- ^ a b c "NESL History 1943". http://www.nesl.edu/HistoryProject/1943/. Retrieved 2009-06-07.
- ^ http://www.abanet.org/legaled/approvedlawschools/alpha.html
- ^ a b c d "NESL History 1969". http://www.nesl.edu/HistoryProject/1969/. Retrieved 2009-06-07.
- ^ a b c d "NESL History 1988". http://www.nesl.edu/HistoryProject/1988/. Retrieved 2009-06-07.
- ^ a b http://www.aals.org/about_memberschools.php#n-q
- ^ ""New England School of Law has a new "nickname"". The Boston Globe. 2008-09-05. http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2008/09/new_england_sch.html. Retrieved 2009-06-14.
- ^ a b c d "NESL Campus". http://www.nesl.edu/admissions/directions.cfm. Retrieved 2009-06-07.
- ^ Bay Village NESL retrieved 6-6-2009.
- ^ http://officialguide.lsac.org/SearchResults/SchoolPage_PDFs/ABA_LawSchoolData/ABA3288.pdf
- ^ http://www.nesl.edu/admissions/ataglance.cfm
- ^ US News overview retrieved on 6-7-2009.
- ^ Princeton Review overview retrieved on 6-7-2009.
- ^ NESL Programs retrieved on 6-7-2009.
- ^ http://www.nesl.edu/exceptional/additional_opportunities.cfm
- ^ [1]
- ^ Public Defender Rankings Law School Almanac. retrieved on 6-9-2009.
- ^ a b c d "NESL CLSR". http://www.nesl.edu/centers/clsr.cfm. Retrieved 2009-06-07.
- ^ a b c d NESL. "CILP". http://www.nesl.edu/centers/cilp.cfm. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
- ^ http://www.nesl.edu/centers/cbl.cfm
- ^ http://www.nesl.edu/students/clinics.cfm
External links
Law schools in New England Connecticut Maine Massachusetts Boston College Law School • Boston University School of Law • Harvard Law School • University of Massachusetts School of Law • Massachusetts School of Law • New England School of Law • Northeastern University School of Law • Suffolk University Law School • Western New England University School of LawNew Hampshire University of New Hampshire School of LawRhode Island Vermont Categories:- Law schools in Massachusetts
- Educational institutions established in 1908
- Universities and colleges in Boston, Massachusetts
- Independent law schools in the United States
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