Impact

• One of the most diverse law schools in the nation
• 2024 Incoming Class:
  • 35% Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC)
  • 36% First Generation College Students
  • 28% LGBTQ+
• The Gregoire Fellows Program provides scholarships, stipends, mentoring support, and clerkships for two students each year to help support diversity in the legal profession.

See Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for more information.

• Our acclaimed Access Admission Program provides a pathway to law school and legal careers for students from historically disadvantaged and underrepresented communities.
• Full Circle Scholarship — one of first of its kind in the nation – helps formerly incarcerated students become lawyers.
• Flex JD, our new hybrid-online part-time JD program, makes it possible for students with work and family commitments to earn a law degree and enter the legal profession.

2025 U.S. News & World Report Rankings

#1 in the Pacific Northwest

• Part-Time JD
• Clinical Training

#1 in Washington State

• Legal Writing
• Dispute Resolution
• Most Grads in Public Interest Law (tied)

Nationally:

• #6 Legal Writing Program
• #16 Part-time JD Program
• #27 Most Grads in Public Interest Law
• #31 Clinical Training Program
• Highest Peer Academic Rating Ever

Professor Charles R.T. O’Kelley’s Berle Center facilitates the study of corporations and the economic system. See Berle Center Marks 10 Years (PDF) in Lawyer Magazine, Spring 2020

Professor Sara Rankin and her students advance the rights of homeless individuals through the Homeless Rights Advocacy Project. See Poverty Warriors (PDF) in Lawyer Magazine, Fall 2018

In recent years, dramatic changes in the use of technology in law practice and recognition of the impact of bias on the justice system have influenced legal education, including externship courses. While there are a number of excellent books on how to design and teach in-house clinical courses, to date there is no comprehensive book on best practices for designing and teaching externship courses. This book fills that gap.

Gillian Dutton, Associate Professor of Lawyering Skills
Externship Pedagogy and Practice, Carolina Academic Press (2023).

The flaws in the Robinson-Patman Act are well known. It protects competitors at the expense of consumers and rarely stops the buyer-induced discrimination it was meant to prevent. This article proposes reforms that would greatly reduce both problems and explains why adopting those reforms would be preferable to repealing the Act altogether.

John Kirkwood, Professor of Law
Reforming The Robinson-Patman Act, Competition Policy International (CPI) (2023).

Around the globe, people are faced with a spiraling succession of crises. As governments fail to respond to each crisis, ordinary people are finding bold and innovative ways to share resources and support the vulnerable. Mutual aid — which is survival work when performed alongside social movement demands for transformative change — is a crucial part of powerful movements for social justice, and offers concrete tools for organizing.

Dean Spade, Professor of Law
Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (And The Next) (Verso Press 2020).

For comparative and international scholars, one striking feature about Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is that foreign law was used by the conservative justices in their majority opinion. If international and foreign law can be used to expand rights, it can also be used to retrench them. Dobbs underscores that judges and lawyers need to develop a principled framework for when and how to use foreign and international law sources.

Sital Kalantry, Associate Dean for International and Graduate Programs and Associate Professor of Law
Foreign Law in Dobbs: The Need for a Principled Framework (ConLawNow, 2023)