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Harvard Law School (HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. As of 2023, U.S. News and World Report ranked it the fifth-best law school in the nation.
Each class in the three-year JD program has approximately 560 students, which is among the largest of the top 150 ranked law schools in the United States. The first-year class is broken into seven sections of approximately 80 students, who take most first-year classes together. Aside from the JD program, Harvard also awards both LLM and SJD degrees. Harvard's large class size has led the law school to graduate a distinguished alumni in the judiciary, government, and the business world.
HLS is home to the world's largest academic law library. The school has an estimated 115 full-time faculty members. According to Harvard Law's 2020 ABA-required disclosures, 99% of 2019 graduates passed the bar exam. The school's graduates accounted for more than one-quarter of all Supreme Court clerks between 2000 and 2010, more than any other law school in the United States.