I am happy to share just a few key highlights and thank you for your generous partnership in making them possible:

• A 9-point Jump in Bar Passage: Thanks to the hard work of our graduates and a comprehensive effort to support them, funded by our alumni and friends, BLS achieved an 87 percent first-time pass rate on the NY Bar Exam — the highest in at least a decade.
• A New Record in Job Placement: BLS graduates also excelled in job placement, with 87 percent of the Class of 2023 landing full-time, long-term legal jobs. This includes many in the most competitive employment markets: The National Law Journal rated BLS 38^TH in its ranking of the country’s “Top 50 Go-To Law Schools” for our placement of graduates in the nation’s 100 largest law firms. All of this success coincides with a major expansion of career support for students, including moving the Career Development Office back into the main Law School building for the first time in 40 years.
• Excellence in Skills Training: Brooklyn’s renowned clinical and skills-training program continues to prepare our students for careers of high impact. This year, BLS teams competing in national lawyering-skills moots spanning client counseling, mediation, negotiation, arbitration, and appellate advocacy earned us a distinction as a Top 10 ABA Competitions Champion.
• A New Record in Faculty Reputation and Impact: Brooklyn Law’s powerhouse faculty were recognized as 29^TH in the nation in the most respected ranking of scholarly impact. This extends a decade-long rise, from 44^TH in 2018, to 33^RD in 2021, and now to 29^TH in 2024.
• A New Fundraising Record: This momentum has been fueled directly by your generous partnership. You’ve stepped up to support the Law School’s priorities — including more than $350,000 for our Bar Exam Prep Fund led by a matching gift from Sandy Hausner ’85; new scholarships to enable talented students to realize their dreams at BLS, by Jeffrey Scott ’96 and others; and a record three new endowed professorships to support faculty excellence: the Les Fagen Professorship, by Adjunct Professor Les Fagen in honor of his father, Herman Fagen ’42; the Michael Simmons and Michael Gerber Professorship, by Kathleen and Bradley Hoffman in honor of their late son, Michael Simmons ’20, and Professor Michael Gerber; and the Allen Grubman Chair in Media and Entertainment Law, by Allen Grubman ’67 and his wife, Deborah (the third largest gift in Brooklyn Law School’s history). Collectively, your support secured our best fundraising year in more than a decade and one of the highest in the Law School’s history.

Thanks to you, Brooklyn Law School is rising fast and poised for even greater success in the years to come. Thank you! And onward and upward!

With gratitude,

The first promising sign is just inside the doors of 250 Joralemon St., where our freshly relocated Career Development and Public Service Law Center has opened just beyond the library’s first floor. For the first time in 40 years, the Center occupies space in the main Law School building. Students now have easy access to advisers, Zoom interview rooms, and real-time assistance.

The move builds upon strengthening employment data. Last year, the Career Center achieved its highest placement rate on record. Buoyed by alumni serving as mentors and recruiting at our job fairs, nearly 87 percent of 2023 graduates obtained full-time legal positions within 10 months of graduation.

Our new Bar Exam Preparation Fund, supported by alumni and friends, is making an impact. Brooklyn Law School students made sweeping gains in passing the New York Bar Exam this past summer, with an 87 percent pass rate, up 9 points over last year and the highest pass rate in more than a decade. Brooklyn graduates also achieved a 100 percent first-time pass rate in eight out-of-state bar exams.

Now, with the establishment of the Jeffrey Scott ’96 Scholarship, Scott is recognizing Brooklyn Law School’s role in shaping his career. After the New Jersey native set his sights on becoming a litigator in New York City, he chose Brooklyn Law for its local and national reputation.

“When I graduated and started as a clerk and then became a young practitioner, I felt that I had a substantial leg up on a number of my peers because of the quality of education that I received from Brooklyn Law School and that advantage has further solidified the longer I have practiced law,” he said. “Brooklyn Law School teaches you to think like a lawyer, in a very practical way.”

With more time to reflect on philanthropy, Scott decided he could make a real difference here, and even pay forward the 3L-year scholarship he received as Brooklyn Journal of International Law’s managing editor. He appreciates the Law School’s diverse student body not only in the traditional sense but also in the diversity of students’ socioeconomic backgrounds (89 percent of students receive financial aid) and the many first-generation college and/or law school graduates represented here.

“To the extent I can contribute to helping someone else obtain the top-notch legal education that I did, I am more than happy to do it,” Scott said.

The “Sisk ranking,” compiled every three years by Professor Greg Sisk and colleagues at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minnesota and viewed as one of the most accurate metrics of scholarly distinction and accomplishment, measures how frequently scholars are cited by their peers in law review articles.

Similarly, in 2024 alone, our faculty excellence has inspired three major gifts presented to Brooklyn Law School in the form of new professorships and faculty chairs.

Next, Professor and legal scholar Alice Ristroph was inducted as Brooklyn Law School’s inaugural Les Fagen Professor in October, thanks to a major gift from Les Fagen, a renowned litigator and adjunct professor at the Law School. The professorship pays tribute to Les’s father, Herman Fagen ’42, and our distinctive mission of educational access for students of all backgrounds.

Most recently, Kathleen and Bradley Hoffman, parents of the late Michael Simmons ’20, honored their son’s memory in perpetuity with a $775,000 gift named for his mentor, Professor Michael Gerber, who on Nov. 18 became the inaugural inductee of the Michael Simmons and Michael Gerber Professorship. The two-year professorship will generously support faculty mentorship of our students for years to come.

We could not be prouder of our esteemed faculty.

Led by Associate Dean of Experiential Education Susan Hazeldean, also the director of the LGBTQ Advocacy Clinic, the school’s seven in-house clinics have benefited from grants and other funding.

The Disability and Civil Rights Clinic, directed by Assistant Professor of Law Prianka Nair, focuses on protecting and advancing the civil rights of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities and is funded with a multiyear Taft Foundation grant, which was increased to $1.7 million in 2022.

Currently, the Clinic is taking on the disproportionately high rate at which people with disabilities have their children removed from them by the family regulation system, sometimes even at birth, because of systemic ableism and racism.

The work of the Criminal Defense & Advocacy Clinic (CDAC), which is directed by Professor of Clinical Law Kate Mogulescu, advocates for survivors of domestic violence who have been criminalized and are serving extreme sentences. It has been fueled by the support of several foundations, including Vital Projects Fund, the Tow Foundation, the New York Women’s Foundation, the New York Bar Foundation, V-Day and the Sonya Staff Foundation.

Additionally, from 2022-2024, four law firms (Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP; Davis Polk & Wardell LLP; Paul, Weiss Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP; and Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP) sponsored a post-graduate fellowship in the clinic.