Harvard Law School Frequently Asked Questions

If you are interested in J.D. admissions information, please visit the J.D. Admissions website.
If you are interested in LL.M. or S.J.D. admissions information, please visit the Graduate Program website.
If you are a journalist, please contact the HLS Communications Office.

Unfortunately, the HLS campus is not currently not open to the public due to COVID-19.

Directions to HLS.

If you require legal assistance, contact your local Bar Association for referrals to attorneys; or visit the American Bar Association information site. In Massachusetts, referral sources include the Massachusetts Bar Association and the Boston Bar Association. For information about legal services for people with low incomes call the Legal Advocacy Resource Center at Greater Boston Legal Services (617-371-1234 or 800-323-3205) or the WilmerHale Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School (617-522-3003).

Harvard Law School was founded in 1817. It is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States.

Approximately 1,990 students attend the School each year: 1,750 J.D. students, 180 LL.M. students, and 60 S.J.D. candidates.

The faculty each year includes more than 100 full-time professors and clinical professors.  It also includes a rotation of more than 40 visiting professors, and over 150 lecturers on law, professors of practice, clinical instructors, and professors emeriti. For an exact list, please see our Faculty Directory.

The curriculum features more than 500 courses and seminars each year which you can find in our Course Catalog.

Please contact the Registrar’s office at 617-495-4612 or visit the transcript page of the Registrar’s website to obtain a copy of your HLS transcript.

You can e-mail your new address to alumrec@law.harvard.edu, or contact the Alumni Records Office at 617-495-3114, or fax changes to 617-495-9684.

Please visit the reunion section of the alumni website for information about upcoming reunion events and activities.

Information about giving to HLS can be found on the giving section of the alumni website.

The Library’s collections include more than 2 million volumes.

Please see the Use the Library page for information on the access policies.

Please visit the HLS Library’s website for information on the library’s collections.

If you have questions about applying to the J.D. program, how best to prepare for Law School, enrollment statistics, and other J.D. Admissions-related subjects, you may also be interested in viewing FAQs compiled by the J.D. Admissions Office.

View the first-year class profile for the current class.

You are eligible to apply if you will have a bachelor’s degree by August of the year you intend to enroll at HLS. You must also take either the LSAT or GRE tests as part of your application requirements.

The J.D. degree requires three years of full-time study, and new students begin their studies only in the fall semester of each year. Apart from for practicing lawyers, we have no part-time, distance, on-line or summer programs.

Except for continuing legal education for practicing lawyers, HLS does not have any part-time or summer programs.

Admission decisions are based on the Admission Committee’s experienced judgment applied to individual cases, and many factors are taken into account. Each application is given a thorough review, taking account of all available information. Because GPA and standardized test scores alone do not fully or adequately summarize information about individuals that is important to admission decisions, these “numbers” often prove poor predictors of admission decisions on individual applications. At no point on the GPA or standardized scales are the chances of admission to HLS ‘0’ or ‘100’ percent. The 2017-2018 application cycle is the first year HLS will be accepting the GRE. We do not have information available regarding prior class statistics. For more information about LSAT statistics, please review our class profile.

All students who demonstrate financial need according to a combination of federal and institutional guidelines receive adequate financial assistance to complete their course of study. For more information about financial aid, please consult our current application for admission or visit the HLS Student Financial Services website.

The Low Income Protection Plan (LIPP) is one of the most generous loan repayment programs in the nation. This program helps relieve the burden of repayment of educational loans for J.D. graduates in qualifying jobs. Qualifying jobs include all full-time jobs in non-profits, government, or academia and some law-related jobs in the private sector.

How does one prepare for law school? The Harvard Law School faculty prescribes no fixed requirements with respect to the content of pre-legal education. The nature of candidates’ college work, as well as the quality of academic performance, is taken into account in the selection process. As preparation for law school, a broad college education is usually preferable to one that is narrowly specialized. The Admissions Committee looks for a showing of thorough learning in a field of your choice, such as history, economics, government, philosophy, mathematics, science, literature or the classics (and many others), rather than a concentration in courses given primarily as vocational training. The Admissions Committee considers that those programs approaching their subjects on a more theoretical level, with attention to educational breadth, are better preparatory training for the legal profession than those emphasizing the practical.

Harvard Law School offers joint degree programs, with the Harvard Business School (J.D./MBA), the Harvard School of Public Health (J.D./MPH), the Harvard Kennedy School of Government (J.D./MPP or MPA/ID), the Harvard Graduate School of Design (J.D./MUP), and the Cambridge University Faculty of Law (J.D./LL.M.) and the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (J.D./PhD). For those interested in combining a legal education with advanced training in a field in which a joint degree is not offered, we offer a number of concurrent degree opportunities with other graduate schools. Learn more about joint and concurrent degree programs, and the coordinated J.D./PhD program, as well as cross-registration and study abroad.