Culture
With total enrollment of approximately 640 Juris Doctor and L.L.M. candidates, usually no more than 195 students comprise each entering J.D. class, with approximately 40 LL.M. students each year.
The small class size has contributed to a congenial, non-competitive atmosphere. VLS has more than 40 student organizations, which support many lectures, presentations and social events throughout the year. Students are also encouraged to form new organizations tailored to their personal interests, which has most recently produced Law Students for Social Justice (LSSJ), a new organization within the Social Justice Program that aims to facilitate an increasing number of students interested in pursuing public interest careers or hearing from legal practitioners on various ways to implement social justice values into their practice.
Regarding career options, Vanderbilt's small class size and diverse makeup of its students contribute to a dispersing graduating body, both in terms of industry and geography. While 67.6% of the most recent graduating class (the Class of 2009) pursued law firm work, 11.2% found employment as judicial clerks, 6.4% took government positions, 2.1% accepted corporate positions, 8.5% accepted public interest positions, and 3.2% are pursuing another graduate degree. Geographically, Vanderbilt 2009 graduates accepted positions throughout the United States, with 26.6% choosing employment in the Northeast, 14.4% in the West/Southwest, 43% in the South, 13.3% in the Midwest and 2.1% abroad. 99.5% of Vanderbilt's 190 2009 graduates had jobs by graduation.
This geographic dispersal, along with its lack of a class rank system, has minimized competition among students for firm opportunities among different regions and different firms. Moreover, students may not compete with each other relative to other schools because of heavy firm recruiting; hundreds of firms participate in the Vanderbilt's On-Campus Interview (or OCI) program. Notable firms include Skadden, White & Case, Williams & Connolly, and Davis Polk.
The law school also offers a 1L OCI program in the spring semester, which typically involves more regionally proximate firms based in the Southeast.
On some Friday nights throughout the school year, various student organizations sponsor informal social gatherings known as "Blackacres," named after the outdoor courtyard on campus where the gatherings are often held. The law school also has an annual auction to support its Legal Aid Summer Stipend program, which provides financial assistance to enable students to do pro bono legal work during the summer break.
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Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“The future is built on brains, not prom court, as most people can tell you after attending their high school reunion. But you’d never know it by talking to kids or listening to the messages they get from the culture and even from their schools.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1953)
“The best hopes of any community rest upon that class of its gifted young men who are not encumbered with large possessions.... I now speak of extensive scholarship and ripe culture in science and art.... It is not large possessions, it is large expectations, or rather large hopes, that stimulate the ambition of the young.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The hard truth is that what may be acceptable in elite culture may not be acceptable in mass culture, that tastes which pose only innocent ethical issues as the property of a minority become corrupting when they become more established. Taste is context, and the context has changed.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)