Yale Law School

Yale Law School
Coat of arms
Parent school	Yale University
Established	1824; 201 years ago (1824)
School type	Private law school
Endowment	$4 billion
Parent endowment	$42.3 billion[1]
Dean	Heather K. Gerken
Location	New Haven, Connecticut, US 41°18′43″N 72°55′41″W / 41.312°N 72.928°W / 41.312; -72.928
USNWR ranking	1st (tie) (2025)[2]
Bar pass rate	99%[2]
Website	Yale Law
ABA profile	Standard 509 Report

Yale Law School (YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824. The 2020–21 acceptance rate was 4%, the lowest of any law school in the United States.^[3] Its yield rate is often the highest of any law school in the United States.^[4]

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.^[5]

Yale Law alumni include many prominent figures in law and politics, including U.S. presidents Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton, U.S. vice president JD Vance, U.S. secretaries of state Cyrus Vance and Hillary Clinton, U.S. secretaries of the treasury Henry H. Fowler and Robert Rubin, and nine U.S. attorneys general. Other alumni also include current U.S. Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor and Brett Kavanaugh, as well as multiple former justices, including Abe Fortas, Potter Stewart and Byron White; several heads of state, including German president Karl Carstens, Philippine president Jose P. Laurel, and Malawi president Peter Mutharika; U.S. senators, governors, and officials; and the current deans of three of the top fourteen-ranked law schools in the United States: Penn, Northwestern, and Georgetown.