The University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law (formerly University of Maryland School of Law) is the law school of the University of Maryland, Baltimore and is located in Baltimore City, Maryland, U.S. Its location places Maryland Law in the Baltimore-Washington legal and business community.[3] Founded in 1816, it is one of the oldest law schools in the United States.
In 2002, the law school moved into a facility in downtown Baltimore near the Inner Harbor and Oriole Park at Camden Yards.[6] In 2011, the law school received a US$30 million donation from the W.P. Carey Foundation, the largest gift in the school's history. In response, the law school changed its name to the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law.[7]
Student body
Maryland Law has approximately 650 students enrolled in its Juris Doctor (J.D.) program.[1] The racial makeup of students in the J.D. program is approximately 68% white, with about 30% identifying as a minority race (and the remainder are unknown or did not specify).[1] Around 72% of J.D. students are under 25 years old.[8] There are more than 40 student organizations,[9] four specialized legal centers,[10] and five law journals.[11]
In 2019, Maryland Law enrolled 205 students into its first-year J.D. class, including 179 full-time students and 26 part-time students. The median LSAT score was 160, and the median undergraduate GPA was 3.66. The law school accepted approximately 36% of its applicants.[1]
Rankings
The law school was ranked 51st by the U.S. News & World Report in 2023-2024. The 2023 edition ranked Maryland Law 6th in part-time programs, 6th in health care law, 13th in environmental law, 12th in dispute resolution, and 8th in clinical training.[2]
Bar passage and employment outcomes
According to Maryland Law's official data reported to the American Bar Association, approximately 77% of Maryland Law graduates who took the bar exam for the first time in 2019 passed. In addition, 94% of 2019 J.D. graduates were employed in some capacity ten months after graduation.[12] These 2019 graduates became employed in a variety of contexts, including approximately 35% in judicial clerkships (4% federal clerkships and 31% state and local clerkships), 23% in government, 20% in private practice, 11% in business and industry, 5% in public interest, and 4% in education. For 2018 J.D. graduates who entered private practice within ten months of graduation, the median starting salary was $80,000.[13]
Costs
During the 2019-2020 academic year, tuition and fees for full-time J.D. students were $32,808 for Maryland residents and $48,426 for out-of-state students. For part-time J.D. students, tuition and fees were $21,538 for Maryland residents and $31,704 for out-of-state students. The estimated total cost of attendance for J.D. students, which includes tuition and fees, living expenses, transportation expenses, book expenses, and health insurance, was $61,745 for full-time students who are Maryland residents, $79,277 for full-time out-of-state students, $45,123 for part-time students who are Maryland residents, and $56,972 for part-time out-of-state students.[14] In addition, 77% of students received a scholarship or grant from Maryland Law, including 78% of full-time students and 74% of part-time students.[1]
Academics
Curriculum
Core
The core curriculum at Maryland Law for J.D. students includes courses in civil procedure, constitutional law, torts, property, contracts, and criminal law, as well as a two-semester sequence of courses focusing on legal skills of analysis, research, writing, and oral argument. After completing these initial courses, students are required to complete additional coursework in constitutional law, ethics, and legal research, and satisfy experiential and writing requirements.[15] This core curriculum forms the basis for more specialized study through more than 150 elective courses, seminars, independent studies, simulations, clinics, and externships.
The LL.M. degree program is designed for students who have earned a prior law degree, either a J.D. degree from a law school in the United States or a law degree from a school in another country. Students must complete coursework in a specialty field and may choose to write a thesis. LL.M. students who did not earn a prior law degree in an American law school must take a course on introductory American law, but otherwise, no specific courses are required for LL.M. students.[16]
Specialty programs
Maryland Law is home to several specialty programs that enable students to explore areas of interest through experiential learning and a specialized curriculum. The main specialty areas include:[10]
Alternative Dispute Resolution
Business Law
Clinical Law
Cybersecurity and Crisis Management
Environmental Law
Health Care Law
Intellectual Property Law
International and Comparative Law
Public Health Law
Women, Leadership, and Equality
Students can focus in other areas as well, such as criminal law, dispute resolution, family law/child advocacy, general practice, jurisprudence/legal history, labor/employment law, administrative law, property/real estate/decedent's estates law, public interest law/community development, and tax law.
Clinical law program
Through the Cardin Requirement, named after Maryland Law alumnus U.S. Senator Benjamin Cardin, each full-time day student in the J.D. program must gain hands-on legal experience by representing actual clients who would otherwise lack access to justice. Most students fulfill the Cardin Requirement through the Clinical Law Program,[17] which provides free legal services to Maryland's poorest citizens each year.
More than 25 clinics[18] focus on a broad range of practice areas, including civil and criminal litigation, advice and counseling, and transactional work. Civil practice areas include environmental law, health, housing and community development, juvenile law and children, AIDS, and immigration. Criminal student attorneys often represent defendants in misdemeanor cases in Maryland's district courts, as well as work in the School of Law's community justice efforts. In addition to in-house clinical work, students may gain experience in public and private nonprofit externships in the Baltimore-Washington region.
Initiatives
In addition to formal specialty programs, the law school sponsors a variety of academic and public service initiatives. These initiatives enhance the educational and scholarly mission of the law school and also serve the community.[19]
Agriculture Law Education Initiative
Chacón Center for Immigrant Justice
Leadership, Ethics and Democracy (LEAD) Initiative: In spring 2008, the Fetzer Institute made a three-year $1.6 million funding commitment to the School of Law to help it respond to these challenges and create a Leadership, Ethics and Democracy program (LEAD).[20]
Legislation, politics, and public policy: The University of Maryland School of Law offers students an educational experience in the areas of legislation, public policy and public interest practice.[21]
Linking law and the arts: The University of Maryland School of Law, in conjunction with local arts organizations and as part of the "Linking Law and Arts" series, uses theater and art to help address complex legal, social, and public policy issues.[22] As part of their commitment to blending law and the arts, students and professors at Maryland Law produced a short film in 2010 about the handling of war tribunals at Guantanamo Bay titled "The Response" starring Aasif Mandvi.[23] UMD Carey Law is also one of fewer than 10 law schools in the United States to offer a course in Visual Legal Advocacy, teaching students how to and encouraging them to incorporate cinema into their advocacy work.[24]
The Moser Ethics in Action Initiative The successor to the LEAD Initiative.
Erin Levitas Initiative for Sexual Assault Prevention
Dual-degree programs
The law school offers several dual-degree options:[25]
Business
Maryland Law has a combined J.D./M.B.A.Tooltip Master of Business Administration through:[25]
J.D./Master of Social Work through the University of Maryland School of Social Work (J.D./M.S.W.)
Campus
Maryland Law, including the Thurgood Marshall Law Library, occupies a complex that supports the school's programs integrating classroom and experiential learning. The facility opened in 2002 and contains three courtrooms, including the Ceremonial Moot Courtroom, where state and federal trial and appellate courts regularly sit in session to hear cases.[26]
The Thurgood Marshall Law Library houses a collection of more than 495,000 volumes and equivalents accessible through the online catalog.[27] A staff of 23, including 11 librarians, provides customized reference and consulting services to faculty and students. In addition to LexisNexis, Westlaw and Bloomberg Law, the library offers a legal and non-legal Web-based electronic databases.
The library is named after Justice Thurgood Marshall. Despite growing up in Baltimore, he was unable to attend Maryland Law because, in the 1930s, the school denied all African Americans admission. Marshall attended Howard University School of Law.[28]
^University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. "David Hoffman: Life, Letters and Lectures at the University of Maryland 1821-1837". Faculty Scholarship. University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. Retrieved April 7, 2021. David Hoffman was a prominent pioneer in the establishment of university-based legal education. He helped to found the University of Maryland Law School in 1816 and was its first professor. His A Course of Legal Study (1817) and Legal Outlines (1829) played a critical role in the development of law school curricula and provided guidance to hundreds of antebellum law students and attorneys.
