The story
Early years
During the winter of 1890, a dispute arose at Columbia Law School over an attempt by Columbia University president Seth Low to introduce the Case Method of study. The Case Method had been pioneered at Harvard Law School by Christopher Columbus Langdell, who opposed educating women in the practice of law.
Theodore Dwight opposed the case method. Therefore, he and most of Columbia Law School's faculty and students departed Columbia Law School in protest to found NYLS the following year because they believed Columbia, by introducing the case method, had moved away from moral engagement and toward abstraction, hierarchy, and exclusivity.
Ironically, Dwight was succeeded at Columbia by William Albert Keener. A Southerner from Augusta, Georgia, and the son of a carpenter, Keener was born before the outbreak of the Civil War and enjoyed access to education denied African-Americans in the Antebellum South, and he happily implemented Low's agenda so he could remain in New York.
On June 11, 1891, New York Law School was chartered by the State of New York, and the school began operation shortly thereafter. By this time, Theodore Dwight was in poor health and was not able to be actively involved with the law school, so the position of dean went to one of the other professors from Columbia Law School, George Chase. New York Law School held its first classes on October 1, 1891, in the Equitable Building at 120 Broadway, in Lower Manhattan's Financial District.
In 1892, after only a year in operation, it was the second-largest law school in the United States. Steady increases in enrollment caused the law school to acquire new facilities in 1899, at 35 Nassau Street, only blocks away from the law school's previous location; and by 1904, the law school had become the largest law school in the United States. Continuous growth led the law school to acquire a building of its own in 1908, at 172 Fulton Street, in the Financial District. New York Law School would remain at this site until 1918, when it closed briefly for World War I.
Persecution by Columbia Law School
In 1897, furious about the fact that Dwight resigned from Columbia, taking the entire faculty with him save for one professor, and jealous of New York Law School's success (New York Law School had 617 students, compared to 361 at Columbia), Columbia Law School lobbied the New York State Assembly to oppose New York Law School's effort to obtain a charter to confer law degrees by its own examination -- a privilege all other law schools throughout New York State already enjoyed.
Interwar period
When New York Law School reopened in 1919, it was located in another building at 215 West 23rd Street, in Midtown. However, George Chase contracted an illness that resulted in him running New York Law School for the last three years of his life from his bed; he died in 1924. New York Law School continued without Chase, seeing its enrollment peak in the mid-1920s, but it saw a steady decline at the onset of the Great Depression. The law school began seeing a serious decline in enrollment. The law school moved to smaller facilities at 253 Broadway, just opposite City Hall. In 1936, the law school moved to another location at 63 Park Row, on the opposite side of City Hall Park; it also became coeducational that same year. However, the military draft, which started in 1940, contributed to further declines in enrollment, and the school closed in 1941. The remaining students who were still enrolled finished their studies at St. John's University School of Law, in Brooklyn.
Reopening
After reopening in 1947, the law school started a new program that was influenced by a committee of alumni headed by New York State Supreme Court Justice Albert Cohn. The law school resumed operations in a building at 244 William Street.
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In 1954, New York Law School was accredited by the American Bar Association, and in 1962, moved to facilities at 57 Worth Street, in Tribeca.
Renaissance
In 1973, E. Donald Shapiro became the dean of the law school and reformed the curriculum, expanding it to include many more classes to train students for more than simply passing the Bar Examination. These reforms, combined with the addition of new Joint Degree Programs with City College of New York in 1975 and Manhattanville College in 1978, helped the law school to recruit new students. Dean Shapiro's reform of the curriculum was behind New York Law School gaining membership to the Association of American Law Schools in 1974. That year, the New York State Department of Education changed its view of the law school, which in 1973 it had criticized in a report as the worst school in the state, proclaiming that the law school had started to undergo a "renaissance."
The buildings of the law school underwent renovation under the leadership of Dean James F. Simon from 1983 to 1992. Under Simon's successor, Dean Harry H. Wellington, who served in that position until 2000, the curriculum was revised to put greater emphasis on the practical skills of a professional attorney.
21st century
In late June 2006, under the leadership of Dean Richard A. Matasar, New York Law School sold its Bernard H. Mendik building at 240 Church Street. This sale enabled the school to move forward with the sale of $135 million in insured bonds, which were issued through the New York City Industrial Development Agency. The school's securities were given an A3 credit rating by Moody's and an A-minus rating by S&P, both reflective of the school's stable market position and solid financial condition. The proceeds from the building sale have been allocated to the school's endowment, which is now among the top 10 of all American law schools.
The law school opened its first dormitory in the East Village in 2005. In August 2006, it broke ground on the $190 million expansion and renovation program that transformed its Tribeca campus into a cohesive architectural complex that nearly doubled the school's current size. The centerpiece of the expansion is a new glass-enclosed, 235,000-square-foot (21,800 m2), nine-level building—five stories above ground and four below, which integrates the law school's existing buildings. The new facility opened in July 2009, followed by the complete renovation of the law school's existing buildings in the spring of 2010.
On December 16, 2008, in connection with the Bernard Madoff scandal, New York Law School filed a lawsuit against J. Ezra Merkin, Ascot Partners, and Merkin's auditor BDO Seidman, LLP, after losing its $3 million investment in Ascot. The lawsuit charged Merkin with recklessness, gross negligence, and breach of fiduciary duties.
In May 2012, Anthony W. Crowell became the 16th Dean and President of New York Law School. In 2012, Crowell launched JumpStart, an incentive program for NYLS students who undertake bar prep classes. Following the creation of the JumpStart program, NYLS' bar passage rate registered the highest increase of all NY law schools from 2012 to 2013. In February 2013, NYLS launched a public service scholarship program, which extends full and partial tuition scholarships to city, state, and federal service members and public servants living in New York City. In April 2013, New York Law School announced an expansion of its clinical and experiential learning programs, doubling the number offered from 13 to 26.
On September 5, 2013, New York Law School announced the creation of a two-year J.D. Honors program, slated to begin in January 2015. The program allows selected students to graduate one year sooner at two-thirds of the cost of a traditional three-year J.D. program. Each honors student also receives a $50,000 academic scholarship. The inaugural class of 2015 had 23 honors students selected from 166 applicants. In October 2013, in recognition of the two-year program and other innovations, Crain's New York Business included Dean Crowell in its list of "People to Watch in Higher Education."
In April 2015, NYLS announced a partnership with the University of Rochester's Simon Business School, enabling the business school to move its New York City center to the NYLS campus in Tribeca. The agreement enables both institutions to capitalize on different schedules and to collaborate on shared programs to serve their respective students and alumni. The arrangement created the only co-located law school and business school under one roof in New York City.
NYLS opened the Innovation Center for Law and Technology in August 2015. The Innovation Center prepares NYLS students for careers in the science, media, and technology industries. It offers specific instruction in fields including intellectual property, sports law, entrepreneurship, cybersecurity, fashion law, and privacy. The center is directed by professor Houman B. Shadab.
In November 2015, NYLS announced the creation of The Joe Plumeri Center for Social Justice and Economic Opportunity. Supported by a $5 million gift from businessman Joe Plumeri, the Center houses NYLS' more than twenty legal clinics, provides hands-on legal training for students, and offers free legal services to clients through NYLS' law firm.
Government leaders and judges from the United States often speak at or visit the law school. These have included former President Jimmy Carter; Justices of the Supreme Court Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Harry A. Blackmun, William J. Brennan Jr., Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Sandra Day O'Connor; former New York State Governor Mario Cuomo; former New York City Mayors Edward Koch, David Dinkins, Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg; Drew S. Days III, U.S. Solicitor General; Thomas Pickering, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; and Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo of the International Criminal Court. In May 2011, Newark, New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker gave the commencement address. In October 2011, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke. In March 2012, then-U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, now Secretary of State John Kerry gave the 2012 Sidney Shainwald Public Interest Lecture.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer spoke at New York Law School's Commencement in 2018, ending a four-year drought of Supreme Court justices speaking at law school graduations. Earlier in 2018, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke at New York Law School, as part of the Sidney Shainwald Public Interest Lecture. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, New York Law School began offering a simulated Big Law Summer Associate program in partnership with law firm Venable LLP, an eight-week virtual training program to provide students an experience similar to typical work experiences they missed due to the pandemic.
In 2021, alumnus Zygi Wilf, owner of the NFL's Minnesota Vikings, donated $5 million to New York Law School to support public interest law and social justice programs, establish scholarships for 10 students annually, and fund fellowships, and rename the law school's Impact Center for Public Interest Law as the Wilf Impact Center for Public Interest Law. Also in 2021, New York Law School launched the James Tricarico Jr. Institute for the Business of Law and In-House Counsel with support from alumnus James Tricarico to prepare students for in-house legal careers, a "mini-MBA program", and other classes and offerings that merge law, technology, and business skills.
In 2022, New York Law School redesigned its Evening Division program, now called NYLS Pro, to make a Juris Doctor degree more accessible to working professionals and others with significant work and family responsibilities through additional online courses, new programs, and scholarships. Also in 2022, TV personality and alumna Judge Judy Sheindlin, donated $5 million to New York Law School to create the Judge Judy Sheindlin Honors Scholars Program for women law students and support young women and girls interested in legal careers through a partnership with Her Honor Mentoring, a nonprofit organization founded by Judge Sheindlin and her step-daughter, Nicole Sheindlin, a class of 1993 alumna. Sheindlin also addressed graduates at the Barclay's Center in the Law School's first in-person Commencement ceremony since 2019.
From Wikipedia’s article on New York Law School, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4