A law school (also known as a school of law or college of law) is an institution specializing in legal education.

Law degrees

Upon graduation from law school, students are awarded a professional degree, the Juris Doctor (J.D.) or Doctor of Law degree in the U.S. or the Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.; or, from the University of Toronto and Queen's University, a J.D.) in common law Canada and Bachelor of Civil Law (B.C.L) in civil law Canada (Quebec) and some schools in Louisiana.

In England, Australia and other common law countries the law degree is usually an undergraduate qualification, with the LL.B being the most commonly awarded degree.

Some schools also offer a Master of Laws (LL.M.) program, offered as a way of specializing in a particular area of law. A further possible degree is the academic doctoral degree in law of Doctor of Juridical Science (S.J.D.) (in the U.S)., or the Doctorate of Laws (LL.D.) in Canada, or the Ph.D. in Law from European or Australasian universities.

In addition to attending law school, in many jurisdictions a graduate of a law school is required to pass the state or provincial bar examination in order to practice law. The Multistate Bar Examination is part of the bar examination in almost all United States jurisdictions; generally, the standardized, common law subject matter of the MBE is combined with state-specific essay questions to produce a comprehensive bar examination.

In other common law countries the bar exam is often replaced by a period of work with a law firm known as articles of clerkship.

In the U.S., law school typically involves a full time course of study, though there are part-time programs available. In Canada, part-time study is very rare.

On July 3, 2007, the Korean National Assembly passed legislation introducing 'Law School', closely modeled on the American post-graduate system.

Controversies

Recently, in the United States, critics have emerged questioning the forthrightness of some law schools in providing prospective students with accurate facts regarding alumni job- placement and compensation rates, suggesting that certain law schools may be distorting their statistics in order to attract students to their institutions. In particular, many law school graduates--particularly at lower-ranked schools--suggest that their schools utilized correct, but misleading, statistics to attract students. An example of this would be citing the mean graduate salary, instead of the median; while the median salary of law grads in the U.S. is approximately $62,000, the mean could be inflated somewhat by a relatively small concentration of graduates earning starting salaries well above the median. For example, the starting salary at nearly all large law firms in several cities across the country in 2008 is $160,000 plus bonus. Also, it is very likely that even median salary statistics are incorrect, since students who are unemployed, working temporary jobs or have a low salary are less likely to submit a salary report to the school.