Welcome from Dean Richard Revesz

Welcome. We are proud of what you'll find here on our Web site, and hope that you'll discover some of the unique attributes that make the NYU School of Law community an extraordinary place to study.

You'll see that our educational goals go well beyond providing future lawyers with the basic tools of the profession. Of course we are scrupulous about preparing our graduates to practice at the highest levels of competency; we want them to have a spectacular foundation on which to build an intellectually-demanding and satisfying career in whichever area of the law they ultimately choose. That's a given. But we also look to create for our students what may be the most exciting and important three years of their lives, as they encounter the law as a formal discipline for the first time, and begin to grapple seriously with issues related to basic questions of liberty, justice, compassion, fairness and (more technically) due process.

As students respond to the challenges of learning the law, they are guided by our truly outstanding faculty—a group that values the chance to teach, in addition to producing cutting-edge scholarship that is often directly tied to the big issues of the day—and by an extraordinary peer group. We encourage our students to savor their time here, to make the most of inhabiting a place where creative thinking is nurtured and mental discipline is its own reward. We urge students to set high standards for themselves as scholars, and expect that they will treat class time and assignments as seriously as they will someday treat court appearances or depositions. We ask them to view their classmates—a diverse and talented group of men and women—as colleagues, to learn from one another, and to truly appreciate being in each other's company. We are confident that this collegial approach to learning fosters rigorous outside-the-box thinking better than a more combative model. At the NYU School of Law, we welcome the respectful encounter with the strongest possible (well-informed) opposing viewpoint—and we hope to learn from the exchange, even if we don't come away wholly convinced.

It doesn't hurt, of course, that we are located in Greenwich Village, one of the most vibrant pockets of the country. New York, a dynamic and diverse capital of commerce, provides the ideal setting for our law school. The "village" is a polyglot neighborhood that is extremely conducive to fermenting our overriding philosophy that the law must serve the public at large, not just a narrow group of prosperous people. We hope that our students will graduate with an inclusive view of the world, and a conscientious sense of duty about their civic and professional responsibilities. Please be sure to take a look at our hands-on offerings, including the Root Tilden Kern Program, the Furman Academic Program, the An Bryce Scholarship Program and the Institute for International Law and Justice. Our legal clinics allow students to immediately engage in the sort of lawyering that can literally turn around, and even in extreme cases, save lives.

As you take a look at our site, you'll glean that we're truly a community—there's a palpable sense of vitality, of shared excitement here. All of us genuinely feel fortunate to be working and studying here, at the NYU School of Law. Young academics at the top of their careers routinely choose NYU over other top law schools. They choose to come here because they sense, or they've heard from trusted colleagues, that their work will be supported here, their contributions will be appreciated. In addition, our Global Faculty, comprised of visiting professors who come for a term or more, are a roll call of the legal world's leading thinkers. These "Globals," as we call them, engage with students, with our full-time faculty, and with each other every day. Because they are here, our academic offerings are always evolving, with relevant programs addressing timely international topics added all the time.

But it may be most important to consider the everyday exchanges inside and outside the classroom, along with the myriad events, activities, and casual encounters with exceptional people engaged in work they love, that combine for a rich everyday existence. The NYU School of Law is a place where the life of the mind flourishes. Come on in.