Start Here. Go Anywhere.

Start at Penn State Law in University Park. Go Anywhere in the World.

With over 20 specialized fields of study, Penn State Law in University Park helps you discover your passion, while you learn to work with real clients, in real-world settings—taking you beyond the bar and launching you into a career where you live in the truth and uphold the law. So when you start at Penn State Law in University Park, you can get a job anywhere in the world. 

About Penn State Law

Penn State Law, located on Penn State’s largest campus — University Park — in State College, Pennsylvania, offers the resources of a world-class, public research institution together with 

challenging and innovative classroom study and ample opportunities for learning by doing. A Penn State Law legal education includes: 

• Traditional doctrinal courses, plus innovative courses that reflect the evolving legal landscape taught by scholars and experienced practitioners who often testify before Congress and comment on current events; 
• Eleven in-house legal clinics, including an immigrants’ rights clinic led by a nationally recognized scholar, and a civil rights clinic primarily working on U.S. Supreme Court cases; 
• Interdisciplinary courses, established joint degree programs, and individualized joint degrees; 
• Comprehensive mentoring that begins at admission; 
• Curriculum based in emerging technology and analysis of the legal questions posed by new technology; 
• Externships Everywhere Program that places students in legal positions all around the world; 
• Professional network of Penn State Lawyers and Penn State’s more than 740,000 alumni; and 
• A commitment to welcoming a diverse community from around the country and from around the world.    

What We Do

Interdisciplinary and collaborative partnerships are a core strategy in our mission of providing students with an innovative legal education at Penn State Law in University Park. Through our Legal-Tech Virtual Lab, we partner with leading legal technology companies to offer workshops to train Penn State Law students in groundbreaking technologies being implemented in today’s legal practice.

The Law, Policy, and Engineering (LPE) initiative, launched in 2019, takes a comprehensive approach to solving major societal challenges. A joint initiative between Penn State Law in University Park, the College of Engineering, and the School of International Affairs, LPE proposes an innovative and ambitious set of new degrees, certificates and courses, and interdisciplinary research and scholarly collaborations. Students and professors in the Veterans and Servicemembers Legal Clinic and Family Law Clinic have collaborated in LPE courses where law students and engineering students work together to create technology to close the access to justice gap. Recent LPE symposia and guest speakers have focused on topics including election security, next-gen biodevices, aerospace engineering, law, and policy, and the interdisciplinary impact of COVID-19. 

In 2020, in partnership with LegalSifter and Penn State’s Office of Sponsored Programs, we announced a strategic pilot project to explore a “combined intelligence” solution for the negotiation of sponsored-research contracts. The goal: to help the University’s negotiators review contracts more quickly and confidently, while in compliance with best practices.

Interdisciplinary Education and Research at a Leading Big 10 University 

Penn State Law provides opportunities to develop cross-cutting knowledge needed to solve problems, and partners across the Penn State community to impact the world. 

• Penn State Law shares a dean, location, and strategic resources with the Penn State School of International Affairs, which offers a flexible, interdisciplinary master’s program; 
• Leadership roles in the Center for Energy Law and Policy; 
• Partner in the Law, Policy, and Engineering Initiative that includes innovative research and education necessary to address issues like election security, biotechnology, and autonomous vehicles, and home to the Policy Innovation Lab of Tomorrow (PILOT); 
• Entrepreneur Assistance and Intellectual Property Clinics that are embedded in Invent Penn State, a broader entrepreneurship initiative of the University; 
• College of Agricultural Sciences partnerships, including the Center for Agricultural and Shale Law; 
• Individualized joint degree program that allows students to pair a J.D. with any master’s or doctoral degree at Penn State; and 
• Accelerated Bachelor’s/J.D. Program that allows students in any major on any Penn State campus, to apply to law school early.