Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University

The Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University ("Hofstra Law") is a private law school on Long Island in Hempstead, New York, that enrolled a first-year class of 263 students in Fall 2025 from 2,448 applications, with a median LSAT of 157 and a median undergraduate GPA of 3.65. It is ranked #117 (tie) in the 2026 U.S. News rankings, with #85 (tie) in Clinical Training and #92 (tie) in Business/Corporate Law. The central decision issue for admitted applicants is that Hofstra Law sells genuine New York City market access — 91.6% of the Class of 2025 was employed at ten months and 210 graduates work in New York — from a green 244-acre campus 25 miles from Manhattan, while charging $76,730 in full-time tuition and fees and cutting or eliminating the conditional scholarships of 53% of the Fall 2024 entering class's award-holders, making scholarship structure and retention terms the decisive variable in the offer.

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Hofstra Law at a Glance

Category	Latest information
Founded	1970 (the first new law school in New York in 45 years)
Type	Private
ABA approval or accreditation	ABA approved; member of the Association of American Law Schools since 1973
Location	Hofstra University campus, 121 Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY 11549 (25 miles east of New York City)
Latest U.S. News rank	#117 tie (2026 edition); #125 (2025 edition, per Wikipedia)
Latest completed applications	2,448 (Fall 2025)
Latest acceptance rate	40.6% (Fall 2025; U.S. News reports 40.56%)
Latest LSAT median	157 (Fall 2025; 25th: 154, 75th: 160)
Latest GPA median	3.65 (Fall 2025; 25th: 3.35, 75th: 3.83)
Latest entering class	263 (Fall 2025)
Current tuition	$76,730 full-time tuition and fees / $57,483 part-time (2026–27, school's official cost-of-attendance figures; the 509-based rate for the Fall 2025 cohort is $73,344)
Current estimated cost of attendance	$106,998 full-time living on own / $105,923 on campus / $94,203 with family; part-time $86,757 / $85,805 / $73,962 (2026–27)
Latest first-time bar passage	78.9% (2024 cohort, ILRG — 6.8 points below the New York average of 85.7%); a 2025 figure was not retrieved in the sources reviewed
Latest bar-required employment	80.4% full-time long-term bar-required, #113 of 196; 93.5% overall employment, #83 (Class of 2024, ILRG); Class of 2025: 228 of 263 graduates (86.7%) in bar-required positions
Current dean	Jenny Roberts

The admissions figures are drawn from the 2025 ABA Standard 509 Information Report cycle as tabulated by LSD.law (2,448 applications, 993 offers, a 40.6% acceptance rate, 263 students in the first-year class, and a 26.18% yield) and ILRG (percentile data from the December 2025 ABA disclosures); the school's own 509 PDF was not machine-readable in this review, so applicants should verify line items against the report linked on the school's ABA required disclosures page. Tuition and cost data are the school's official 2026–27 cost-of-attendance figures. Scholarship, retention, and conditional-award data are from the school's own merit scholarships page, including its ABA-mandated conditional scholarship retention table. Employment figures for the Class of 2025 are the school's ABA employment data as of March 16, 2026, published on its employment statistics page.

Introduction

Hofstra Law was founded in 1970 by Malachy Mahon, then the youngest law school dean in the country at 34, who left Fordham to build the school from scratch — choosing the faculty and designing the curriculum before the first class of 79 students arrived. It was the first law school founded in New York in 45 years, won Association of American Law Schools accreditation in 1973 before graduating its first class that June, and renamed itself the Maurice A. Deane School of Law in September 2011 in honor of the Newsday editor, Hofstra trustee, and university benefactor.

The school sits on Hofstra University's 244-acre arboretum campus in Hempstead, on Long Island — 25 miles east of Manhattan, less than an hour by train or car. Its identity rests on three pillars: a pioneering clinical program (the school describes itself as the first to fully integrate clinical education into the traditional first-year and upper-level curriculum), a skills-first culture backed by more than 53,000 hours of student practical training in the most recent year, and a location that functions as a dual-market platform — Long Island's courts, firms, and government offices on one side, New York City's legal market a commuter rail ride away on the other.

Its alumni network is a cross-section of New York public life: Governor David Paterson, judges Maryanne Trump Barry and Juan Merchan (the judge in the New York criminal case against Donald Trump), businessman and diplomat Steve Witkoff, Charles Kushner, Mets executive Randy Levine, and TV legal analyst Joey Jackson. The school publishes the Hofstra Law Review (est. 1973), the Hofstra Labor and Employment Law Journal (est. 1982), and the Journal of International Business and Law, plus two peer-reviewed journals it hosts: Family Court Review and the ACTEC Law Journal.

Rankings and Reputation

Hofstra Law sits in the middle of the national rankings with a genuinely distinctive specialty profile: clinical training ranked #85 (tie) and business/corporate law #92 (tie) in the 2026 U.S. News edition, both well above the school's overall position. Employment outcomes rank above the school's overall tier; bar passage ranks below it.

Overall ranking

Source	Rank
U.S. News, 2026 edition	#117 (tie) of 194
Wikipedia (2025 edition)	#125
ILRG, metric-by-metric (December 2025 ABA data)	#83 in overall employment; #113 in bar-required employment; #115 in bar passage

U.S. News is the source used for the At-a-Glance table. The eight-place movement between editions (#125 to #117) is favorable but within normal annual noise.

ILRG's metric-by-metric report, built on the December 2025 ABA disclosures, places the school as follows: #118 of 196 in LSAT composite (157.0); #105 in GPA composite (3.61); #118 in selectivity (40.6% acceptance rate); #153 (tie) in student-faculty ratio (15.4:1); #83 in overall employment at ten months (93.5%); #113 in bar-required employment (80.4%); #123 in federal clerkship rate (0.8%); #115 in first-time bar passage (78.9%); #65 in highest tuition ($73,344); tied #102 in female faculty (43.9%); and #102 in minority faculty (17.7%). The employment rank is the school's best number in the report; the student-faculty ratio and bar-passage ranks are its weakest.

Specialty rankings

Specialty	U.S. News rank
Clinical Training	#85 (tie) (2026 edition)
Business/Corporate Law	#92 (tie) (2026 edition)

The clinical ranking is the more meaningful of the two: the school runs eight clinics plus practicum programs, and clinical integration is its oldest institutional claim. Business and corporate law is anchored by the Business Law Honors fellowship and a corporate compliance concentration aimed at New York's financial and compliance sectors. U.S. News also lists family law, health law, intellectual property law, and international law among the school's concentrations, and the school markets itself as a pioneer in legal technology — its Law, Logic and Technology Research Laboratory opened in 2010, one of the first legal-tech centers in the country, and the Weitz & Luxenberg "Courtroom of the Future" trains students on trial presentation software, digital evidence, and remote testimony.

Admissions: What It Takes to Get In

Entering class (Fall 2025)

Admissions metric	Fall 2025
Completed applications	2,448
Offers of admission	993
Acceptance rate	40.6%
Enrollees from applicant pool	260
Total in first-year class	263
Yield (enrollees / offers)	26.18%
Total J.D. enrollment	≈800 (ILRG, total student body)

The 26.18% yield is modest and typical of a private school in this tier whose admitted applicants hold offers from Brooklyn, Cardozo, and St. John's — the New York schools that recruit from the same pool. The four-student gap between the 260 applicant-pool enrollees and the 263 first-year class reflects deferrals; LSD.law reports the class size as 263.

LSAT and GPA

Statistic	25th percentile	Median	75th percentile
LSAT	154	157	160
Undergraduate GPA	3.35	3.65	3.83

GRE acceptance was not confirmed in the sources reviewed; applicants should verify with the admissions office.

Interpreting the numbers

The six-year improvement is real and substantial. Since 2019, the acceptance rate has fallen from 48.1% to 40.6%, the median LSAT has risen from 153 to 157 (with the middle 50% moving from 148–155 to 154–160 — the 25th percentile alone climbed six points), and the median GPA has risen from 3.42 to 3.65 (with the 25th percentile rising from 3.11 to 3.35). Hofstra Law's applicant pool has strengthened faster than its rank has moved, which is the signature of a school whose net price and placement record have improved in applicants' eyes.

What has not changed is the competitive gap against the New York schools directly above it. A median LSAT of 157 sits below Brooklyn Law, Cardozo, and Fordham, all of which feed the same Manhattan large-firm summer programs from stronger credential bases. That gap explains both the employment composition (strong overall, mid-tier bar-required) and the generous merit scholarships — Hofstra Law is buying a slice of the New York applicant pool, and admitted applicants are holding the negotiating leverage.

Application timing

Application fee and deadlines: not retrieved in machine-readable form in the sources reviewed; applicants should confirm current dates with the Office of Enrollment Management at (516) 463-5916 or [email protected]
All applicants are automatically considered for merit scholarships upon admission; no separate scholarship application is required
The J.D. is offered full-time and part-time; the J.D. requires 90 credit hours
The school admits for fall entry; no Early Decision program is reported in the sources reviewed

Cost, Scholarships, and Debt

Tuition

Rate	Full-time	Part-time
2026–27 tuition and fees (school, official)	$76,730	$57,483
2025–26 tuition (509-based, ILRG)	$73,344	—
2019 tuition (for comparison)	$59,214	—

The school's bursar lists full-time law tuition at $37,590 per term ($75,180 for the year) with the difference to the $76,730 total made up in fees, and part-time at $2,578 per credit hour or $28,193.50 per term. The three-year full-time cost at the 2026–27 rate approaches $230,000 in tuition and fees alone.

The trend is the cost story. Full-time tuition has risen from $59,214 in 2019 to $73,344 in 2025–26 (509 basis), an increase of 24% in six years, and again to $76,730 in tuition-and-fees for 2026–27. That is slower growth than most New York privates posted over the same period, but the base is high: Hofstra Law ranks #65 of 275 distinct national tuition rates.

Cost of attendance

Expense	Full-time, living on own	Full-time, on campus	Full-time, with family
Tuition and fees	$76,730	$76,730	$76,730
Food and housing	$23,665	$23,230	$11,020
Books, course materials, supplies, and equipment	$1,800	$1,800	$1,800
Personal expenses	$2,100	$1,950	$1,950
Stafford loan fees	$528	$528	$528
Transportation	$2,175	$1,685	$2,175
Total budget	$106,998	$105,923	$94,203

Part-time budgets run $86,757 (on own), $85,805 (on campus), and $73,962 (with family) for 2026–27. These are the school's own published figures, not computed. The housing line is the hidden cost driver: ILRG's tabulation puts room and board at $36,009 against $18,722 in 2019 — a near-doubling that tracks Long Island's rental market, and the school's $23,665 allowance assumes shared suburban housing rather than Manhattan rents. A three-year full-time budget at the on-own rate approaches $321,000 before any scholarship.

Financial aid

Metric	Value
Entering students receiving merit awards (Fall 2025)	92%
Merit award range	$5,000 to full tuition
Top award	Legal Scholars Award, up to full tuition, retained at 100% with a cumulative GPA of 2.2 or higher
Standard retention terms (Fall 2026 entrants)	Maintain cumulative academic rank in the top 80% of the class
Retention terms (Fall 2025 and earlier entrants)	Top 50% of class: retain 100%; 50–65%: retain 50%; 65–80%: retain 25%

The breadth is real — 92% of the Fall 2025 entering class received merit money, automatically, no separate application — and so is the risk. The school's own ABA conditional scholarship retention table, published on its merit scholarships page, is one of the starkest in this series:

Class entering
Reduced \| Eliminated
Fall 2024	231	74 (32%)	49 (21%)
Fall 2023	226	72 (31%)	46 (20%)
Fall 2022	219	71 (32%)	38 (17%)
Fall 2021	227	67 (30%)	44 (19%)

Read that table carefully. Of the 231 Fall 2024 entrants who held conditional scholarships — more than half the class — 123 of them, or 53%, had seen their awards reduced or eliminated. The pattern is stable across four cohorts: roughly 30–32% reduced and 17–21% eliminated each year, with a small cohort-wide attrition the school does not separately report. The tiered retention schedule for Fall 2025-and-earlier entrants (100% / 50% / 25% at rank cutoffs of 50% / 65% / 80%) formalizes the mechanism: an award advertised at $40,000 can become $20,000 or $10,000 after 1L grades. The Legal Scholars Award is the exception — it retains 100% so long as the student stays above a 2.2 GPA — and applicants negotiating with the school should aim for that award or for a written non-conditional commitment. The named fellowships (Business Law Honors, Child and Family Advocacy, LGBTQIA+ Rights, Dwight L. Greene Memorial) renew subject to participation and good standing; the Health Law and Policy Fellowship is explicitly not automatically renewable.

The school does offer a Loan Repayment Assistance Program for graduates who enter qualifying public interest employment and meet the program's guidelines — a genuine asset for a school with a large public-service clinical tradition, though the specific benefit formula and income thresholds should be requested directly.

Average indebtedness and borrowing rates for the Class of 2025 were not retrieved in machine-readable form in the sources reviewed and are therefore not reproduced here; applicants should read the U.S. News profile and the school's consumer disclosures for those figures.

Employment Outcomes

Employment (Class of 2025)

Employment status	Full-time long-term	Part-time long-term	Total
Bar admission required / anticipated	227	1	228
J.D. advantage	10	0	10
Other position	3	0	3
Enrolled in graduate studies	—	—	3
Start date after March 16, 2026	—	—	3
Unemployed, not seeking	—	—	4
Unemployed, seeking	—	—	12
Total graduates	—	—	263

Total employed comes to 241 of 263 graduates — 91.63%. The gold-standard count (full-time long-term bar-required plus full-time long-term J.D.-advantage) is 237, or 90.1% of the class. Employer-type detail — firm-size distribution, government, public interest, and clerkship counts — is published in the school's ABA Employment Summary for the Class of 2025 (data as of March 16, 2026), and the underlying categories were not fully itemized in the sources reviewed. For the Class of 2024: 278 graduates, 240 in bar-required positions (86.3%), with the school separately reporting 95% employment and 92% in "gold standard" jobs.

Employment metric	Value
Overall employment at 10 months (Class of 2024, ILRG)	93.5% (#83 of 196)
Bar-required employment, full-time long-term (Class of 2024, ILRG)	80.4% (#113 of 196)
Federal clerkship rate (Class of 2024, ILRG)	0.8% (#123 of 196)
Overall employment rate (Class of 2025, tabulated)	91.63% (241 of 263)

What these numbers mean

The employment story is solid and quietly better than the school's rank. A 93.5% overall employment rate ranks #83 nationally — thirty-four places above the school's U.S. News position — and the Class of 2025's 91.63% employment rate with only 12 graduates still seeking work confirms the pattern holds. Hofstra Law gets its graduates hired.

The composition is the constraint. At 80.4% full-time long-term bar-required (#113), roughly one in five graduates is not in a conventional licensed-attorney position ten months out — a figure consistent with a school that sends substantial numbers into J.D.-advantage compliance, business, and government roles, and that has a large part-time division of working professionals. The 0.8% federal clerkship rate (#123) effectively forecloses the appellate and academic paths. Against a $106,998 annual budget and a $76,730 tuition, the employment picture supports the investment for applicants who secure strong scholarships and target the New York or Long Island markets — and does not support it, on sticker, for applicants hoping to finance a coastal BigLaw trajectory through loans alone.

Bar passage

Bar statistic	Value
First-time bar passage, 2024 cohort (ILRG)	78.9% (#115 of 196)
New York overall rate, same comparison	85.7% (a deficit of 6.8 points)
School's 2019 first-time rate vs. New York	68.2% vs. 75.7% (a deficit of 7.5 points)
2025 first-time figure	Not retrieved in machine-readable form in the sources reviewed — consult the school's ABA Bar Passage Report

Bar passage is the school's chronic weakness, and the trend line cuts both ways. The good news: the first-time rate has climbed from 68.2% in 2019 to 78.9% — a ten-point improvement that tracks the school's rising credential profile. The bad news: the New York average rose faster, so Hofstra's deficit against the state barely moved (−7.5 to −6.8 points). In a state whose first-time takers passed at 87% in 2025, a roughly seven-point deficit means a Hofstra graduate is meaningfully more likely than the median New York test-taker to need a repeat administration — and at these tuition and living costs, every repeat cycle carries real financial weight. The school's ABA Bar Passage Report (linked from its consumer disclosures page) carries the year-by-year detail and ultimate-passage figures; applicants should read it and ask what academic-support and bar-preparation changes the school attributes the improvement to.

Where graduates go

The ABA employment summary for the Class of 2025 reports New York as the largest employment state with 210 graduates — the overwhelming majority of the 241 employed. The market is New York City and Long Island in roughly equal parts: Manhattan firms and government offices reachable by LIRR, plus the Nassau and Suffolk county firms, district attorneys' offices, and judgeships that recruit locally. The school's dual identity — suburban campus, urban market — is a genuine structural advantage for students who want New York access without Manhattan housing costs, and the with-family budget of $94,203 reflects exactly that strategy for the commuter-heavy student body. Graduates targeting markets outside the New York metropolitan area should expect the degree to function as a regional credential.

Academics and Programs

The J.D. requires 90 credit hours and is offered full-time and part-time. The school claims a 9:1 student-to-teacher ratio in its admissions materials; ILRG computes 15.4:1 from the ABA disclosures (#153 of 196, tied) across 164 faculty including non-full-time instructors. The two figures are methodologically different — U.S. News-style ratios count full-time instructional faculty, and Hofstra's practitioner-taught upper-level curriculum inflates the non-full-time count — and applicants should understand both: small full-time cohorts for core courses, larger practitioner-driven sections for electives. Faculty diversity is solid: 43.9% female (tied #102) and 17.7% minority (#102).

Curriculum and special strengths

Three strengths define the academic program. The first is clinical education: eight clinics plus practicum programs, including the Asylum Clinic, Defender Clinic, Deportation Defense Clinic, Clinical Prosecution Practicum, Robert W. Entenmann Veterans Law Clinic, Youth Advocacy Clinic, Community and Economic Development Clinic, Law Reform Advocacy Clinic, Hofstra-Northwell Medical-Legal Partnership, Legal Hand Call-in Center, and Pro Se Legal Assistance Program — one of the largest clinical menus in the New York area, and the basis of the school's #85 (tie) clinical training rank.

The second is law and technology. The school built one of the country's first legal technology centers in 2010, runs the Law, Logic and Technology Research Laboratory, teaches cybersecurity, cryptocurrency, and courtroom technology, and operates the Weitz & Luxenberg "Courtroom of the Future." The Perry Weitz Mass Torts Institute connects students to one of the country's largest mass-torts practices.

The third is health law and family law: the Gitenstein Institute for Health Law and Policy supports the online LL.M. and M.A. in Health Law and Policy, and the Robert and Priscilla Livingston Center for Children, Families and the Law anchors a family law program whose peer-reviewed journal, Family Court Review, is the field's leading publication. The Monroe H. Freedman Institute for the Study of Legal Ethics and the Wilbur F. Breslin Center for Real Estate Studies round out a ten-center network.

Degree offerings beyond the J.D.: joint degrees (J.D./M.B.A., J.D./M.A. in Bioethics, J.D./M.P.H., J.D./M.A. in Forensic Linguistics), concentrations (business law, corporate compliance, criminal law, family law, health law, intellectual property, international law), three LL.M. programs (American Legal Studies; Family Law; online Health Law and Policy), an M.A. in Bioethics, an online M.A. in Health Law and Policy, and an ABA-approved Paralegal Certificate Program.

Clinics and experiential learning

More than 53,000 hours of student practical training were logged in the most recent year. The clinic roster spans immigration (asylum and deportation defense), criminal practice (defense, prosecution practicum, and appellate work), veterans law, youth advocacy, housing and community development, and transactional practice. Fellowships layer paid, program-based experience on top: Business Law Honors, Child and Family Advocacy, Environmental Law, Health Law and Policy, Legal Ethics, LGBTQIA+ Rights, and Access to Justice Advocacy, with fellows selected from each incoming class. The externship network runs through Long Island's courts and agencies and into Manhattan firms and nonprofits; for a school whose stated mission is practice-readiness, the experiential volume is the proof, and U.S. News's #85 clinical ranking underweights what is functionally one of the school's two strongest assets.

Student Life and Location

Living on Long Island

Hofstra Law occupies the 244-acre Hofstra University campus in Hempstead, 25 miles east of Manhattan on Long Island — a leafy suburban arboretum campus with on-campus law housing (Seryl and Charles Kushner Hall), unlimited parking, and a college-town student life that no Manhattan school can offer. The LIRR runs from Hempstead to Penn Station in under an hour, which makes New York internships, externships, and interviews fully compatible with living on campus. The cost-of-attendance math reflects the trade: $23,665 for food and housing living on your own, or $11,020 living with family — and many of Hofstra's students are exactly the Long Island commuters the second figure describes. The ILRG trend line shows room and board at $36,009 versus $18,722 in 2019, so applicants renting independently on Long Island should budget above the school's allowance rather than below it. The practical formula is simple: Hofstra offers Manhattan's legal market at Long Island's cost of living, which is the entire value proposition.

Student body

Total J.D. enrollment runs approximately 800 students (ILRG), with the Wikipedia figure of 271 reflecting an older snapshot. ILRG's demographic tabulation reports a student body split between men and women consistent with the school's profile; the school emphasizes diversity programming and active identity-based student organizations. The first-year class of 263 is large by national standards for the tier and splits between full-time and part-time divisions, with the part-time cohort drawing heavily from Long Island paralegals, government employees, and career changers. The culture is practice-oriented and local: students come to Hofstra to practice in New York, and the mentoring, alumni-network, and professional-development programming ("the business of lawyering," per the school) are all built around that destination. Applicants seeking a residential college experience will find it here more readily than at any Manhattan law school; applicants seeking a large-firm cohort culture will find a professional school that behaves like one.

How Hofstra Compares

Choose Hofstra Law if

You want the New York City legal market without Manhattan housing costs — a suburban campus with on-campus housing, an hour from Penn Station, and $210 of the employed Class of 2025 working in New York.
You want clinical volume: eight clinics plus practica, 53,000+ hours of student practical training annually, and a #85 (tie) clinical training rank.
You are targeting business, compliance, real estate, health law, or family law in New York, where the school's centers, concentrations, and the ACTEC Law Journal and Family Court Review give it genuine specialist standing.
You need the part-time option and a 9:1 claimed student-to-teacher ratio in a small-school environment.
You secure a Legal Scholars Award or another written non-conditional award — with 92% of entrants receiving merit money, the negotiating odds favor applicants with credentials above the medians.
You are public-interest-bound: an LRAP exists for qualifying employment, and the clinical infrastructure supports it.

Consider alternatives if

Conditional-scholarship retention is a deal-breaker. The school's own table shows 53% of conditionally funded Fall 2024 entrants had awards reduced (32%) or eliminated (21%) — and the standard retention schedule for Fall 2025-and-earlier entrants cuts awards to 50% or 25% below the top-half rank line.
You are paying sticker. $106,998 a year against a 80.4% bar-required rate (#113) is difficult arithmetic for a self-financed student.
Bar passage reliability is decisive. The school has trailed the New York first-time average by roughly seven points for six consecutive years, and the 2025 figure was not available in this review.
You want federal clerkships or BigLaw scale: 0.8% federal clerkship placement and a #113 bar-required rank define the ceiling.
You want to practice outside the New York metropolitan area, where the degree functions as a regional credential.

The TLS Verdict

Hofstra Law is a stable, well-run New York school whose best qualities — employment (#83 nationally), clinical training (#85), and a campus-to-Manhattan pipeline no other school can quite replicate — are obscured by one of the most aggressive conditional-scholarship structures in this series. Start with the value case: 91.6% of the Class of 2025 employed at ten months, 228 of 263 in bar-required roles, 210 working in New York, a 92% merit-award rate with awards reaching full tuition, a real LRAP, and a campus that delivers the legal market at suburban cost. For a Long Island or outer-borough applicant who wants to practice in New York, the structural fit is excellent.

The problem is the fine print. The school's own ABA-mandated retention table shows that among the 231 Fall 2024 entrants holding conditional scholarships — more than half the class — 123 had awards reduced or eliminated, a 53% attrition rate that has held steady for four consecutive cohorts. The tiered schedule (100% at top-half rank, 50% at 50–65%, 25% at 65–80%) converts the advertised discount into a meritocratic lottery, and at $76,730 a year the difference between keeping and losing half an award is the difference between a manageable loan and a six-figure one. Add the bar-passage deficit — roughly seven points below the New York average in both 2019 and the most recent reported cohort — and the school's financial model demands that applicants win twice: once in admissions, once in 1L class rank.

The synthesis is straightforward. Hofstra Law with a Legal Scholars Award or a written non-conditional scholarship is one of the smartest value plays in the New York market — genuine employment outcomes, elite clinical training, and a campus 25 miles from the clients. Hofstra Law at sticker with a conditional award is among the riskiest: six-figure annual budgets, a seventh of the class still seeking work, and a retention schedule engineered to cut. Get the award terms in writing, ask what the school changed after the 2024–2025 retention results, and compare the net cost against Brooklyn and Cardozo offers before deciding.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Hofstra Law's acceptance rate?

40.6% for Fall 2025, with 993 offers extended to 2,448 completed applications and 263 students in the first-year class — a yield of 26.18%. Source: the 2025 ABA 509 cycle as tabulated by LSD.law and ILRG.

What LSAT and GPA do I need?

The Fall 2025 medians were 157 LSAT and 3.65 GPA, with middle-50% ranges of 154–160 and 3.35–3.83. Both medians have risen sharply since 2019 (153 and 3.42), with the 25th-percentile LSAT climbing from 148 to 154.

How much does Hofstra Law cost?

$76,730 full-time and $57,483 part-time in tuition and fees for 2026–27. Total cost of attendance is $106,998 for a full-time student living on their own, $105,923 on campus, and $94,203 living with family; part-time budgets run $86,757, $85,805, and $73,962 respectively.

Does Hofstra Law have a part-time program?

Yes — part-time tuition and fees are $57,483 for 2026–27, and part-time students are prominent in the school's enrollment and employment mix (most Class of 2025 J.D.-advantage placements reflect working-professional trajectories).

What percentage of students receive scholarships?

92% of the Fall 2025 entering class received merit awards, ranging from $5,000 to full tuition, automatically considered at admission. But read the retention terms: standard awards for Fall 2026 entrants require maintaining a class rank in the top 80%; for Fall 2025 and earlier entrants, awards cut to 50% or 25% below the top-half rank line. The Legal Scholars Award retains 100% with a 2.2 GPA. Among the 231 Fall 2024 entrants with conditional scholarships, 53% saw reductions or eliminations.

What is Hofstra Law's bar passage rate?

78.9% for first-time takers in the most recent ILRG tabulation (2024 cohort), 6.8 points below the New York average of 85.7% and ranked #115 of 196. The 2019 first-time rate was 68.2% against a 75.7% state average, so the school has improved by ten points while the state improved by more. A 2025 figure was not retrieved in the sources reviewed; the school's ABA Bar Passage Report carries the year-by-year detail.

Where do graduates work?

Predominantly in New York — 210 of the employed Class of 2025 worked in the state. Overall employment at ten months was 91.63% for the Class of 2025 (241 of 263 graduates) and 93.5% (#83 of 196) for the Class of 2024, with 80.4% in full-time long-term bar-required positions (#113). The market is Manhattan and Long Island in roughly equal parts: firms, government offices, the judiciary, compliance, and business roles.

Is Hofstra Law good for BigLaw?

Not as a primary pipeline. A 0.8% federal clerkship rate (#123 of 196) and a bar-required placement rank of #113 point away from the large-firm and clerkship tracks. Hofstra graduates land in New York's small and mid-size firms, government, and business sectors at high rates — which serves most applicants at this tier better than token BigLaw placement would.

Does Hofstra Law offer an LRAP?

Yes — a Loan Repayment Assistance Program is available to graduates who enter qualifying public interest employment and meet the program's guidelines. Average indebtedness and borrowing rates for the Class of 2025 were not retrieved in machine-readable form in the sources reviewed; confirm both figures with the financial aid office.

What is Hofstra Law best known for?

Clinical education (a founding pioneer, #85 tie nationally), legal technology (the Law, Logic and Technology Research Laboratory and Courtroom of the Future), health law and family law (the Gitenstein Institute, Family Court Review), and a suburban campus with direct access to the New York legal market. Notable alumni include Governor David Paterson, Judges Maryanne Trump Barry and Juan Merchan, Steve Witkoff, Charles Kushner, and Randy Levine.

Who is the dean?

Jenny Roberts. (Wikipedia's current listing names her as dean; applicants should verify current leadership on the school's leadership page before publishing.)

Contact and Key Links

Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University
121 Hofstra University
Hempstead, NY 11549

Law School Main Phone: (516) 463-5858

Admissions Phone: (516) 463-5916

Admissions Email: [email protected]

Official links

Key documents

TLS Forum Links

Sources

Hofstra Law

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