Founding Harvard Law School's founding is traced to the establishment of a "law department" at Harvard in 1819. Dating the founding to the year of the creation of the law department makes Harvard Law School the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States.
William & Mary Law School opened first in 1779, but it closed during the
American Civil War and did not reopen until 1920. The
University of Maryland School of Law was chartered in 1816 but did not begin classes until 1824, and it also closed during the Civil War. , painted in 1769 by
J.S. Copley The founding of the law department came two years after the establishment of Harvard's first endowed professorship in law, funded by a bequest from the estate of merchant and slave-trader
Isaac Royall Jr., in 1817. The dean of the law school traditionally held the Royall chair; deans
Elena Kagan and
Martha Minow declined the Royall chair due to its origins in the proceeds of slavery. The Royall family's
coat of arms, which shows three stacked wheat sheaves on a blue background, was adopted as part of the law school's arms in 1936, topped with the university's motto (
Veritas,
Latin for 'truth'). Until the school began investigating its connections with slavery in the 2010s, most alumni and faculty at the time were unaware of the origins of the arms. In March 2016, following requests by students, the school decided to
remove the emblem because of its association with slavery. In November 2019, Harvard announced that a working group had been tasked to develop a new emblem. In August 2021, the new Harvard Law School emblem was introduced. In 2019, the government of
Antigua and Barbuda requested reparations from Harvard Law School on the grounds that it benefitted from Royall's enslavement of people in the country.
Growth By 1827, the school, with one faculty member, was struggling.
Nathan Dane, a prominent alumnus of the college, then endowed the Dane Professorship of Law, insisting that it be given to then Supreme Court Justice
Joseph Story. For a while, the school was called "Dane Law School". In 1829, John H. Ashmun, son of
Eli Porter Ashmun and brother of
George Ashmun, accepted a professorship and closed his
Northampton Law School, with many of his students following him to Harvard. Story's belief in the need for an elite law school based on merit and dedicated to public service helped build the school's reputation at the time, although the contours of these beliefs have not been consistent throughout its history. Enrollment remained low through the 19th century as university legal education was considered to be of little added benefit to apprenticeships in legal practice. After first trying lowered admissions standards, in 1848 HLS eliminated admissions requirements. In 1869, HLS also eliminated examination requirements.
20th century During the 20th century, Harvard Law School was known for its competitiveness. For example,
Bob Berring called it "a samurai ring where you can test your swordsmanship against the swordsmanship of the strongest intellectual warriors from around the nation." When Langdell developed the original law school curriculum, Harvard President
Charles Eliot told him to make it "hard and long". An urban legend holds that incoming students are told to "Look to your left, look to your right, because one of you won't be here by the end of the year."
Scott Turow's memoir
One L and
John Jay Osborn's novel
The Paper Chase describe such an environment. Trailing many of its peers, Harvard Law did not admit women as students until 1950, for the class of 1953. Eleanor Kerlow's book
Poisoned Ivy: How Egos, Ideology, and Power Politics Almost Ruined Harvard Law School criticized the school for a 1980s political dispute between newer and older faculty members over accusations of insensitivity to minority and feminist issues. Divisiveness over such issues as
political correctness lent the school the title "Beirut on the Charles". In
Broken Contract: A Memoir of Harvard Law School, Richard Kahlenberg criticized the school for driving students away from public interest and toward work in high-paying law firms. Kahlenberg's criticisms are supported by Granfield and Koenig's study, which found that "students [are directed] toward service in the most prestigious law firms, both because they learn that such positions are their destiny and because the recruitment network that results from collective eminence makes these jobs extremely easy to obtain." and an inaccessible faculty. The latter stereotype is a central plot element of
The Paper Chase and appears in
Legally Blonde. In response to the above criticisms, HLS eventually implemented the once-criticized
21st century , dean, 2009–2017 Under Kagan, the second half of the 2000s saw significant academic changes since the implementation of the Langdell curriculum. In 2006, the faculty voted unanimously to approve a new first-year curriculum, placing greater emphasis on problem-solving, administrative law, and international law. The new curriculum was implemented in stages over the next several years, with the last new course, a first-year practice-oriented problem-solving workshop, being instituted in January 2010. In late 2008, the faculty decided that the school should move to an Honors/Pass/Low Pass/Fail (H/P/LP/F) grading system, much like those in place at Yale and at
Stanford Law School. The system applied to half the courses taken by students in the Class of 2010 and fully started with the Class of 2011. In 2009, Kagan was appointed
solicitor general of the United States by President
Barack Obama and resigned the deanship. On June 11, 2009, Harvard University president,
Drew Gilpin Faust named
Martha Minow as the new dean. She assumed the position on July 1, 2009. On January 3, 2017, Minow announced that she would conclude her tenure as dean at the end of the academic year. In June 2017,
John F. Manning was named as the new dean, effective as of July 1, 2017. In September 2017, the school unveiled a plaque acknowledging the indirect role played by
slavery in its history: In 2025, an original copy of the
Magna Carta was found, kept in Harvard's library for nearly 80 years.
Coat of arms The
governing body of the university voted to retire the law school's
coat of arms. The school's shield incorporated the three garbs of wheat from the armorial bearings of
Isaac Royall Jr., a university benefactor who had endowed the first professorship in the law school. The shield had become a source of contention among a group of law school students, who objected to the Royall family's history of slave ownership. The president of the university and dean of the law school, acting upon the recommendation of a committee formed to study the issue, ultimately agreed with its majority decision, that the shield was inconsistent with the values of both the university and the law school. Their recommendation was ultimately adopted by the Harvard Corporation and on March 15, 2016, the shield was ordered retired. On August 23, 2021, it was announced that a new emblem was approved by the Harvard Corporation. The new design features Harvard's traditional motto, (
Latin for 'truth'), resting above the Latin phrase
Lex et Iustitia, meaning 'law and justice'. According to the HLS Shield Working Group's final report, the expanding or diverging lines, some with no obvious beginning or end, are meant to convey a sense of broad scope or great distance — the limitlessness of the school's work and mission. The radial lines also allude to the latitudinal and longitudinal lines that define the arc of the earth, conveying the global reach of the Law School's community and impact. The multifaceted, radiating form — a form inspired by architectural details found in both Austin Hall and Hauser Hall — seeks to convey dynamism, complexity, inclusiveness, connectivity, and strength.
Rankings HLS was ranked tied for sixth best law school in the United States by
U.S. News & World Report in its 2023 rankings. HLS was ranked first in the world by QS World University Rankings in 2023. It is ranked first in the world by the 2019 Academic Ranking of World Universities. In November 2022, the law school made a joint decision along with Yale Law School to withdraw from the
U.S. News & World Report Best Law Schools rankings, citing the system's "flawed methodology". == Student life ==