From Japan to Argentina, Germany to Israel, Stanford Program in International Legal Studies (SPILS) alumni from around the world returned to Stanford Law School (SLS) this past weekend to help celebrate the program’s 20^th anniversary.

SPILS offers a select group of graduate students from outside the United States the opportunity to engage in interdisciplinary research that applies empirically based methods, adapted from the social sciences, economics and other disciplines, to analyze legal issues.

“The participants, who are among the more than 250 alumni of the program, agreed that the program was transformative – that it shaped their careers in important ways,” said Lawrence Friedman, the Marion Rice Kirkwood Professor of Law, who founded the program with Thomas C. Heller, the Lewis Talbot and Nadine Hearn Shelton Professor of International Legal Studies, Emeritus. “SPILS remains a unique graduate program in American law schools focused on empirical research and drawing participants from all over the world. Its alumni are academics, policy makers and practicing lawyers, in 34 countries, and the program has had a strong influence on scholarship and on legal education in many of these countries.”

Each of the graduate students accepted to SPILS develops and executes a research study on a socio-legal topic of their choice. Only students who have completed SPILS are eligible to apply for the JSD Program, which is designed for those interested in becoming scholars and teachers of law.

“We are so proud of this program, the incredible achievements of our graduates and the profound impact they have had​,” said M. Elizabeth Magill, dean and Richard E. Lang Professor of Law, in her welcoming remarks to attendees.

The more than 50 alums in attendance joined Professor Friedman, along with Professor Deborah Hensler, Visiting Professor Rogelio Perez-Perdomo, Lecturer Jonathan Greenberg and many other top supporters at the three-day conference for a series of roundtable discussions focusing on topics such as the growth of women in legal academia, the complex relationship between academic research and private practice, and moving between creating “real life” policy and doing academic work.

“I was overwhelmed by the turnout of SPILS alumni from literally all corners of the world who assembled to celebrate SPILS’ 20th anniversary,” said Deborah Hensler, the Judge John W. Ford Professor of Dispute Resolution and Associate Dean of Graduate Studies at SLS. “In a day-long series of panels on their career paths in academic, public policy and practice — they spoke eloquently of the effects SPILS, and their time at SLS, had on their lives.”

For current students, the opportunity to connect and collaborate with SPILS alumni at the event provided them with a better sense of the breadth of the program and its role in the fabric of Stanford Law School.

“It was truly remarkable for me to see how many people actually took the time and invested the money in coming back to SLS for the reunion,” says Doron Dorfman, who completed the SPILS program in 2014 and is now a second year JSD student and a member of the organizing committee for the event. “Seeing all those amazing people who took their SPILS and JSD experiences and made a difference in the world was very special and encouraging.”

View the SPILS 20th Anniversary commemorative booklet here.

View more photos from the SPILS 20th Anniversary celebration here.