“I feel so humbled that Stanford Law School chose me to join its ranks. With generous scholarship support, I can continue to stay true to my dreams of becoming a civil rights attorney. My generation must answer a bevy of tough questions about race, economic inequality, immigration, technology, and climate change. Stanford lawyers will surely be involved in these fights, if not leading many of them. I cannot thank those of you who support student scholarships enough.”

“I was drawn to Stanford Law School due to its reputation as a place of innovation and creativity and its emphasis on the development of practical skills through full-time clinics. While many law schools profess to support the pursuit of careers in public interest, Stanford is unique due to the Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP) and generous financial aid, individual counseling, and opportunities to develop practical skills. During my time here, I look forward to exploring issues that I care deeply about through pro bono projects like Project Clean Slate and StreetLaw and through the Mills Legal Clinic.”

“I am already engaged in pro-bono work through the International Refugee Assistance Project and the Stanford Advocates for Immigrant Rights project. I am working with two other students to help a Syrian asylum seeker and his family, presently domiciled in a refugee camp in Jordan, work their way through the appropriate channels to complete their resettlement to the U.S. Earlier this month, I traveled with some of my classmates to Tijuana to help asylum seekers register their claims and prepare for their judicial hearings in the U.S. None of this would be possible without the generosity of Stanford Law School supporters.”

At Stanford Law School, we provide our students with the training they need to practice law in an increasingly global world. The W. A. Franke Global Law Program at SLS is unparalleled, offering students the chance to become fully immersed in international law through a 10-week global quarter, combined with rigorous classroom training and intensive overseas study trips.

In the 2018–2019 academic year, students traveled to four different international locations: Thailand, India, South Africa, and The Hague. Classes varied by location, offering students insight into specific legal issues faced by individuals in these international locations. For example, students in the course Human Trafficking: Law and Policy traveled to Thailand where they met with government officials, non-governmental organizations and victims’ organizations, and other actors involved in the anti-trafficking movement. As a result of this field study trip, students came away with a better understanding of the components of the international anti-trafficking ecosystem as well as the complex legal, political, social, and economic factors at work.

The Mills Legal Clinic at Stanford Law School gives students the opportunity to receive hands-on experience doing the real work that lawyers do, while providing critical legal services to underserved individuals and communities. Through engaging in the transformative experience of clinical education at SLS, students gain the tools they need to assess, innovate, and collaborate to solve the pressing problems of our time and become future leaders.

Each of the eleven clinics within the Mills Legal Clinic is directed by faculty members who are not only top lawyers in their fields, but also exceptional educators and mentors. Students work in the clinics full-time for a quarter or more, engaging in an immersive experience that reinforces what they have learned in the classroom.

Priscilla Hernandez, JD ’20, enrolled full-time in the Criminal Defense Clinic in Spring of 2018. In reflecting on her experience, she writes, “Seeing our client’s reaction at the end of the hearing made it all worth it. It reminded me of the incredible difference we as lawyers have the capacity to make, but also showed me the importance of that moment in perfecting the client-centered approach to advocacy. It truly felt like a victory we’d all worked for, and earned together, and it belonged just as much (if not more) to our client’s hard work as to our own.”

The Law and Policy Lab, unique to Stanford Law School, began six years ago as a new venture in experiential learning. Under the mentorship of expert faculty, students engage in policy practicums for real clients, using analytic approaches that supplement traditional legal analysis. The practicums emphasize teamwork and collaboration, and many are interdisciplinary, giving law students the opportunity to work with faculty and colleagues from across the university with expertise in such fields as technology, environmental engineering, medicine, and international diplomacy, among others.

In fact, in the 2018–2019 academic year, law students and engineering students enrolled in the policy practicum, Administering by Algorithm: Artificial Intelligence in the Regulatory State. Students in this policy lab explored the growing role that artificial intelligence (AI) and related technologies play in the federal administrative state. At the culmination of the practicum, students submitted a first-of-its-kind report to the Administrative Conference of the United States, canvassing the hundreds of agencies that make up the federal administrative state and documenting agency use of AI across a wide range of substantive policy areas.