Law School Retains Top 100 Ranking

Carlisle, PA (March 30, 2007) —In the just released 2008 U.S. News and World Report ranking of all ABA-approved law schools, Penn State’s Dickinson School of Law retains its Top 100 ranking, remains one of the nation’s “Most Diverse” law schools, and improves its standing in the Top Ten Alternative Dispute Resolution Programs to number eight.

Many recent achievements at the Law School give us great confidence that the Law School’s rank will continue to improve as the achievements become more widely known among the deans, law professors, judges and lawyers whose opinions are factored into the U.S. News rankings:

• Over the last four years, applications for admission have increased by more than 100 percent; our student body diversity has more than tripled, from 7 percent to nearly 25 percent; and the academic credentials of our students have increased dramatically (in 2002, 75 percent of our entering class scored below a 157 on the LSAT; in 2006, 75 percent of our entering student class scored above a 157 on the LSAT).

• The number, diversity, scholarly productivity and scholarly standing of our permanent faculty have improved dramatically. We have recently appointed several scholars who are among the leaders in their respective fields of study, including former law clerks to Supreme Court Justices Harry Blackmun and Ruth Bader Ginsburg; the world’s preeminent authority on the law of Russia, the first chief counsel to the African Union; two of the leading antitrust scholars in the United States; leading scholars of arbitration, sports law and gay rights; a leading financial institutions scholar who served recently as counsel to the presidency of the European Union; and several other faculty of similar caliber.

• The number, diversity and qualifications of our senior administrative staff have improved dramatically. Recent senior staff appointments have included top professionals from counterpart positions at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, the University of Illinois College of Law, Yale Law School, Penn State, and the University of Michigan.

• The University is investing $110 million in new inter-connected facilities for the Law School, with construction under way in University Park and groundbreaking in Carlisle anticipated later this year. Additionally, the University has allocated a $5 million recurring annual subsidy to the law school to support new faculty and programs.

In addition to these developments, in January, the University Board of Trustees approved the establishment of a new School of International Affairs to be housed administratively within The Dickinson School of Law. This arrangement offers significant opportunities for Law School students in both of our locations to benefit from the programs and classes of a multidisciplinary professional graduate school destined to become soon one of the world’s great School of International Affairs.