​Message from the Dean

Thank you for your interest in the University of San Diego School of Law.

While our entering classes have become smaller, we continue to be highly selective, carefully choosing highly-credentialed and highly-motivated students who bring a wide diversity of backgrounds and experience to our law school. Our commitment is to provide each of these students with an excellent legal education on a par with the best law schools in the world and professional training that combines academic rigor with hands-on, practical experience that will give them the skills needed for successful legal careers.

This commitment to excellence begins with our faculty. Not only do our professors consistently rank among the nation's top law school faculties in their scholarly achievements, they are highly valued by both our students and alumni as dedicated teachers and mentors.

In addition to tax, international law and health law, we have significantly expanded our curriculum in the areas of intellectual property, finance, corporate transactions, criminal law and labor and employment law. We now offer ten concentrations.

Complementing the law school's strong academic curriculum is a broad range of programs, centers, clinics and institutes that are unequaled in providing our students with opportunities to gain hands-on, practical legal experience. Starting with the first-year Experiential Advocacy Practicum, which we have introduced as part of our required coursework for first-year students, you will be provided an introduction to the two major areas of legal practice: litigation and business law. The Practicum simulates tasks that junior attorneys are expected to perform, including client interviews, negotiation, oral advocacy, and the drafting of both formal legal documents and e-mail communications. You will also be able to learn written and oral advocacy skills through our Appellate Moot Court program or National Mock Trial Team. If you are interested in pursuing a career in business or corporate law, you can join the Transactional Law Team (TLT) and compete in the National Transactional Law Meet; or, if your interest is in international commercial arbitration, join the Vis Moot Arbitration Team (VICAM) and participate in their annual competitions in Hong Kong and Vienna. Through our nationally renowned Center for Public Interest Law (CPIL), you can focus on gaining expertise on administrative law and state regulatory agencies. Our ten client-focused legal clinics will enable you to assist low-income individuals and families, veterans or non-profits and start-up companies. Other innovative programs include the Children's Advocacy Institute (CAI), the Energy Policy Initiatives Center (EPIC), the Center for Intellectual Property Law & Markets and the Center for Corporate and Securities Law, which provide opportunities for our students to work with full-time and adjunct faculty on important research projects and policy issues.

At USD School of Law, we also offer expanding opportunities for our students to gain valuable legal experience away from campus. Our law school's location close to both downtown San Diego (where state and federal courts, other government agencies and most litigation-focused firms are located) and the La Jolla area near UCSD (where many of the technology and biotechnology companies, and the law firms who serve them, are located) makes it relatively easy for our full-time students to balance course work with an internship or part-time employment (as well as for our part-time students to get conveniently back and forth to their full-time jobs without long commute times). In addition, our Washington, D.C. Externship Program will enable you to spend a full semester interning at a government or public interest agency, an experience that will enhance your prospects for landing the job that you want, whether in Washington, back in California or elsewhere. As a former business lawyer who negotiated deals internationally, I am a great believer in the value of "global fluency" and have been urging more of our students to study abroad (as I did when I was in law school). We have exchange programs with eight leading law schools in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. These, in addition to our two summer study abroad programs in Paris and London, give our students unparalleled opportunities to gain global fluency and to qualify for positions in the expanding global legal marketplace. Through the generous support of the Gwen and Tom Price Family, we now can offer many of our students who study abroad fellowships to help cover their additional costs.

I left practice and became dean of USD School of Law in 2011 because I believe in the value of legal education and in the vital importance of training future generations of lawyers to do all the critically important things that a civil society and thriving economy needs lawyers to do. Whenever I meet with prospective or new law students, I am energized by the enthusiasm, ambition and commitment that make them want to come to law school and join the legal profession. For the reasons I have discussed above, I also am enthusiastic in encouraging them to come to USD.

I invite you to learn more about USD School of Law, first by using this website and then by coming to visit. When you do, you will find out more about why I am so enthusiastic about being dean and why I believe this is such a great place to be a law student and to prepare for a successful career as a lawyer.

STEPHEN C FERRUOLO
Dean and Professor of Law