CONTACT:
(Engineering) Bill Burton at (847) 491-3115 or e-mail at [email protected]
(Law) Pat Tremmel at (847) 491-4892 or e-mail at [email protected]
FOR RELEASE: Immediate
FIRST IN U.S.: LAW SCHOOL GUARANTEES ADMISSION TO ENGINEERING FRESHMEN
EVANSTON, Ill. --- A new honors program in engineering and law, the only such program in the U.S., is being launched at Northwestern University. The program offers high school seniors conditional acceptance into law school and completion of their undergraduate studies a year early.
The program is designed to produce lawyers with expertise in technical innovation who can become leaders in fields where such a background is important, including intellectual property law, the law of ideas and inventions, relating to patents, trademarks and copyrights.
"The combined engineering and law training should give students a significant boost down career paths in the burgeoning field of intellectual property or in other areas such as environmental law and computer law," said David E. Van Zandt, dean of the School of Law. According to Jerome B. Cohen, dean of Northwestern's Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, "the program will also produce engineers who will have gained a range of skills useful for management and entrepreneurship."
Designed for exceptional students, the program will allow students to earn their bachelor of science degree in engineering from McCormick and their law degree from the Northwestern University School of Law in seven years, including 15 months of on-the-job experience off campus with a company. Both schools are among the top ranked in the country.
"Today's lawyers often grapple with complex technical issues," Van Zandt said. "But engineering and law have been widely separated academic disciplines. This unique program merges them to produce lawyers who have a deep understanding of the scientific and technological enterprise."
"It will help us attract some of the very best freshman students who already know they are interested in law careers centered on the many legal issues of science and technology," said Cohen. "It will save students time and money, and provide them with invaluable industry experience in the course of their studies."
The program is expected to be highly competitive. Each year four outstanding high school seniors will enter the engineering school with provisional acceptance to the law school based on benchmark performance standards on grades and on the Law School Admission Test. They will graduate with joint honors as BSE/JD. Students applying to McCormick for fall of this year are eligible to apply.
Students will enter law school after 11 quarters of study in engineering plus five academic quarters (four of them summers) of cooperative education in an engineering firm or corporation. During this externship, students earn salaries and pay no tuition. The courses taken during their first year of law school will then complete their elective requirements for their bachelor of science in engineering degree.
"The need for top-notch lawyers with solid technical credentials cannot be overstated, " said Gary Ropski, a partner at Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione, the Midwest's largest intellectual property law firm. "The demand for lawyers who complete Northwestern's new program should be high."
The joint engineering/law program brings to 10 the number of joint programs offered at the McCormick School. McCormick leads American engineering schools in the variety of joint programs available to its students. Students can pursue joint educational programs in the fields of medicine, arts and sciences, management, music, learning sciences, dentistry, research, education, journalism or law.
In addition to the new combined BSE/JD program, the School of Law offers two joint graduate degree options: a joint master's in management with Northwestern's J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and a joint JD/PhD program in anthropology, economics, history, political science, psychology or sociology.
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