The Indiana University School of Law—Bloomington provides the highest quality legal education in a relaxed, collegial setting. Located on the beautifully wooded campus of one of the nation's largest teaching and research universities, the Law School offers a unique blend of academic excellence, community, and cultural opportunity.

Program Highlights
The Law Library
The City of Bloomington

Program Highlights

With over 650 students, drawn from more than 200 undergraduate schools in the United States and abroad, the Law School is small enough to retain its distinctive sense of community and collegiality, while large enough to facilitate a stimulating, cosmopolitan environment. The Law Library is among the 20 largest in the nation, offering more than 650,000 volumes, as well as cutting-edge electronic resources. In fact, the library is host of the Virtual Law Library, one of the world's leading online legal research tools, and the Law School's Web site has been named among the top 10 in the country. Graduates of the Law School are found in every state and 31 foreign countries.

With 38 full-time faculty members and a number of practitioners and judges who serve as adjunct faculty, the Law School features both a wide variety of specialized courses and small elective classes, as well as extensive faculty-student interaction.

The educational program of the Law School is designed to prepare its graduates for the many roles lawyers may play both in the United States and abroad. In addition to engaging in the private practice of law for clients at all income levels, lawyers serve in legal or executive posts for a variety of government agencies, business organizations, and educational institutions. As a member of a profession, an attorney is called upon to provide civic and political leadership and to devote time to the public interest. The community often entrusts the lawyer with elective and appointive offices in local, state, and national government. Further, global economic and political changes are placing new demands on the profession and providing new opportunities for its members.

To meet the diverse challenges its graduates will encounter, the Law School stresses the development and discipline of reasoning ability, verbal and writing skills, and interpersonal skills. The student is expected to become familiar with the basic institutions, rules, and doctrines of the legal order, to appreciate their development in social context and historical perspective, and to understand the processes by which the legal order is adapted to meet social needs.

In addition, students have the opportunity to develop extensive knowledge and substantive experience in key areas of legal specialization. The Law School not only offers leading programs in a variety of important specialities—including securities, environmental law, communications and information law, tax, and global and international law, just to name a few—but also joins with other departments of Indiana University to provide a number of joint degree programs and other opportunities for interdisciplinary study.

The Law School offers a variety of clinical opportunities and intensive training in the preparation and litigation of trials, as well as in alternatives to litigation. The school has an innovative program to assure that its graduates have the necessary writing skills to meet the demands of practice now and in the future. In the first year of law school, students work in small groups under the supervision of a lecturer and the director of legal research and writing to become familiar with the conventions and requirements of legal writing. In the second year, students select a regular substantive course in which they further exercise and sharpen their writing skills in a small-group setting. During the third year, they complete a substantial research and writing project.

The Law School participates in a consortium with seven other law schools that permits students to spend the spring semester of the second or third year studying in London. The London Law Consortium is described more fully under Special Programs in this bulletin. In addition, students may participate in exchange programs with several other European universities, including Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris II) Law School in Paris and ESADE Law School in Barcelona, Spain.

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The Law Library

The Law Library is one of the true attractions of the Law School, with an extensive research collection, state-of-the-art computer facilities, a variety of comfortable study areas, and a five-story atrium facing Dunn Woods.

During the three years of law school, students spend many hours in the Law Library. Whether sitting at a carrel, studying with a friend in a conference room, or curled up in an easy chair in the reading room, students can always find an inviting place to study. In the relaxed environment of the Law Library, students have an opportunity to chat with friends or read a newspaper in the library lounge, share a pizza in a conference room, or watch a movie in one of the A-V rooms. Study facilities for students with disabilities include specially designed carrels for wheelchairs and study rooms for visually and hearing impaired students.

With more than 650,000 volumes, the Law Library is one of the 20 largest law libraries in the country and the largest in the state of Indiana. The library includes a first-rate research collection in Anglo-American law as well as outstanding holdings in international and foreign law. In addition to being a depository for U.S. government publications, the Law Library is one of only 11 law school libraries that serve as depositories for the paper records and briefs of the U.S. Supreme Court. Law-trained librarians provide training in research techniques as well as reference assistance. The library's excellent collection, helpful staff, and beautiful facility provide an exceptional environment for the careful preparation and effective research necessary for the study of law.

The Law Library is recognized as a national leader in computer applications in legal education. The online catalog provides access to the complete holdings of the Law Library as well as more than seven million volumes in the University Library system. Web-based and CD-ROM technology provide new methods of research and computer-assisted instruction. The library's Media Center has a cluster of three computer rooms, providing the latest in computer equipment, including a computer classroom. Through Internet access in the center, students can utilize systems specific to law, such as LEXIS and WESTLAW, or access the rapidly expanding national and international networks. Students can bring their own laptop computers to the library and connect to the university's network at study carrels, in library conference rooms, and in the Laptop Room. With a personal computer and modem, law students can also access many of these resources from home.

As we enter a new century, the well-prepared lawyer must be able to bridge the print and computer environments, balancing traditional research methods with innovative systems technology. At Indiana University, we are committed to maintaining a print collection of the highest quality while serving the technological needs of the lawyers of tomorrow.

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The City of Bloomington

Located in hilly and heavily wooded southern Indiana, Bloomington offers the advantages of both a small town and a cosmopolitan area. Bloomington is a major cultural area in the Midwest, and the presence of the university and its top-ranked School of Music draws renowned performers in all the arts to the campus throughout the year.

Bloomington also offers exceptional recreational facilities for both participants and spectators: lakes, forests, and caves; racquetball, squash, tennis, and basketball courts; running tracks; swimming pools; and National Collegiate Athletic Association events in nearly every sport. Ethnic restaurants, bookstores, specialty shops, pubs, and shopping malls are readily accessible by both the university and city bus systems.

Here are 10 other facts you may not know about Bloomington:

1. Bloomington is nestled amid rolling hills and surrounded by state parks and national forests. The campus has been named one of the five most beautiful in the country, and the New York Times has designated Bloomington one of the nation's top 10 college towns.
2. Bloomington is 46 miles from Indianapolis, 222 miles from Chicago, 130 miles from Cincinnati, 223 miles from St. Louis, and 103 miles from Louisville. In fact, one-quarter of the U.S. population is within an easy day's drive of Bloomington.
3. Bloomington is a mecca for people who love music. Name a style of music, and chances are you can see it performed live in Bloomington. From operas at the university's world famous School of Music to jazz at a local club, Bloomington is a music lover's paradise.
4. Architecturally, southern Indiana is host to an amazing variety of styles. From the I. M. Pei designed Art Museum on campus to the internationally known buildings of Columbus ("Athens of the Plains"), Indiana, just 35 miles east, one can view examples of works by some of the world's most famous architects.
5. Bloomington was the site of the Academy Award-winning movie Breaking Away. Written by a former Bloomington resident, the movie illustrates one of the town's greatest passions, bicycling.
6. Bloomington is also home to the world famous Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction.
7. Bloomington has an incredible variety of restaurants, including Thai, Japanese, Greek, Moroccan, French, Tibetan, Yugoslavian, Indian, Afghani, West African, Mexican, Italian, Irish, Korean, and more than a dozen Chinese restaurants.
8. Bloomington has been the home of many entertainers. Perhaps the two most famous are current resident and Grammy-winning singer/songwriter John Mellencamp and legendary songwriter (and IU Law School alum) Hoagy Carmichael.
9. The first color television was manufactured in Bloomington. The essential component was invented by Bloomington resident Sarkes Tarzian, and RCA began producing the RCA CT-100 on March 25, 1954, at its plant on South Rogers Street. Fluoride toothpaste (Crest) was also invented in Bloomington.
10. And while basketball wasn't invented in Indiana, it was perfected here.