University of Puerto Rico School of Law

The University of Puerto Rico School of Law is one of the professional graduate schools of University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus and the only law school in the University of Puerto Rico System. Was founded in 1913 at its present site on Río Piedras, within the metropolitan area of San Juan. The School of Law has been accredited by the American Bar Association since 1945 and by the Association of American Law Schools since 1948. It is also accredited by the Council on Higher Education and the Puerto Rico Supreme Court. Its graduates include important and prominent figures of Puerto Rico. Among them are former governors Rafael Hernández Colón, Carlos Romero Barceló and Aníbal Acevedo Vilá. The law school provides a unique venue for the study of the civil law tradition, its complex interaction with common law and U.S. federal law, and the controversial application of the U.S. Constitution to Puerto Rico's special political status.

Academics

The guiding principle behind our academic program is to increase and diversify the learning and development experiences of our students. That is the reason why half of our study program is elective. Our students can take courses ranging from theoretical to practical, to issues pertaining to civil rights, technology, feminism, business, international relations and comparative law. In addition, our students, as part of their program, have to participate in a clinical program. The study program consists of 92 credit hours. The majority of the courses are taught in Spanish. http://officialguide.lsac.org/SearchResults/SchoolPage_PDFs/LSAC_LawSchoolDescription/LSAC0979.pdf The Law School has several programs of studies designed to meet different needs of our students. http://www.abanet.org/legalservices/probono/lawschools/169.html/

• Juris Doctor (JD)
• Juris Doctor / Master of Business Administration concurrently (JD / MBA)
• Juris Doctor / Double Degree Program, University of Barcelona (JD / LLB)
• Juris Doctor / Master of Public Policy, University of Minnesota (JD / MPP)
• Juris Doctor / Doctor of Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Puerto Rico (JD / MD)
• Master of Laws (LLM) for International Students

http://www.law.upr.edu/

Admisions

The incoming class at the Law School is 215 students. We determined 93% of those offerings (200 applicants) based on a numerical ranking of academic excellence combined tabulated the percentiles of the three basic criteria for admission: the undergraduate GPA, as computed by the Law School Data Assembly Service (LSDAS); a service of collection of information offered by the Law School Admission Council (LSAC), the LSAT test score and the score of the Graduate Record Examination or the version in Spanish the EXADEP. All three criteria receive equal weight in the tabulation of the numerical range. We offer automatic admission to applicants with the top 200 index admission. We offer the remaining 15 spaces (7%) on the recommendation of the Admissions Committee, among those applicants who are in positions 201 to 260 of that tabulation of combined percentiles. To this end the Committee made a full assessment of the applicant's file, considering the essay and presented academic work, looking for alternative approaches such as economically disadvantaged, academic achievement, graduate studies, trends in academic progress, publications, extracurricular, and others who demonstrate the qualifications for the study of law. Another 15 students in this group are placed on a waiting list. http://officialguide.lsac.org/SearchResults/SchoolPage_PDFs/ABA_LawSchoolData/ABA0979.pdf

Faculty

Former gubernatorial candidates Rubén Berríos and Fernando Martín García are among the law school's prominent lecturers. Other professors are Chloé S. Georas, Glenda Labadie-Jackson, Santos P. Amadeo, José Julián Álvarez González, Michel Godreau Robles, Érika Fontánez Torres, Hiram Meléndez Juarbe, Ernesto Chiesa Aponte, Olga Resumil Ramírez, Félix Cifredo Cancel, Ivette Ramos Buonomo, Luis Muñiz Argüelles, Ana Matanzo Vicéns, Guillermo Figueroa Prieto, Luis González Correa, Carlos Díaz Olivo, Carmelo Delgado Cintrón, Enid Martínez Moya, Demetrio Fernández, and Roberto Aponte Toro, actual Dean. Visiting speakers have included United States Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Professor Lawrence Tribe of Harvard Law School, and Owen Fiss of Yale Law School.

See also

• University of Puerto Rico
• University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus
• Rio Piedras

References