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Howard University School of Law

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Howard University School of Law

Howard University School of Law ("Howard Law" or "HUSL") is a private law school in Washington, D.C., and the oldest historically Black law school in the United States, that enrolled a first-year class of 176 students in Fall 2025 — all full-time — from 2,428 completed applications, with a median LSAT of 156 and a median undergraduate GPA of 3.65. It is ranked #117 (tie) in the 2026 U.S. News rankings, with #42 (tie) in Clinical Training and #85 (tie) in Business/Corporate Law, and it has graduated more African American attorneys than any other law school in the nation. The central decision issue for admitted applicants is that Howard pairs elite-for-its-tier large-firm placement — 29.0% of the Class of 2025 entered firms of 501+ attorneys at a modeled salary of $155,529 — with the most severe post-graduation employment spike in this profile series (21.3% of the class unemployed and seeking ten months out) and first-time bar passage 6.7 points below the average of its testing jurisdictions, at a 2025–26 cost of attendance of approximately $79,663.

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Howard Law at a Glance

Category Latest information
Founded 1869 (the oldest historically Black law school in the United States)
Type Private (Howard University, a federally chartered historically Black research university)
ABA approval or accreditation ABA approved (Council of the Section of Legal Education, approved since 1931)
Location 2900 Van Ness Street NW, Washington, DC 20008 (separate campus, ~15 minutes from the main university campus)
Latest U.S. News rank #117 tie (2026 edition); #130 (2024 edition, per Wikipedia)
Latest completed applications 2,428 (Fall 2025, 2025 509 report)
Latest acceptance rate 24.05% (Fall 2025)
Latest LSAT median 156 (Fall 2025; 25th: 153, 75th: 160)
Latest GPA median 3.65 (Fall 2025; 25th: 3.40, 75th: 3.80)
Latest entering class 176 (Fall 2025, all full-time; no part-time division)
Current tuition $39,780, plus $1,632 in fees (2025–26, 509 report)
Current estimated cost of attendance ≈$79,663 (computed from 509 tuition, fees, and the $38,251 living allowance); three-year sticker cost $238,989
Latest first-time bar passage 78.0% (2025 first-time takers, 110 of 141; −6.7 points vs. the average for the jurisdictions where they sat)
Latest bar-required employment Not published in machine-readable form in the sources reviewed; Class of 2025 sector shares below show 45.1% of the class in law firms and 5.2% in clerkships
Current dean Roger A. Fairfax, Jr., Dean and Professor of Law, since July 1, 2024

The admissions figures are drawn from Howard Law's 2025 ABA Standard 509 Information Report (2,428 completed applications, 584 offers, a 24.05% acceptance rate, and 176 students in the first-year class as of October 2025), which also reports total J.D. enrollment of 555, three transfers in against five out, and zero part-time students. Tuition and cost data are from the 509 report and the university's financial services office; employment data for the Class of 2025 are from an independent tabulation of the ABA employment summary, and the school's own employment-statistics page was not machine-readable in this review. The school publishes no 2019-comparison dataset in the sources retrieved, so six-year trend lines are omitted from this profile rather than estimated.

Introduction

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Howard University School of Law was founded in 1869, two years after Congress chartered Howard University, and is the oldest historically Black law school in the United States. Its early history is itself a civil-rights record: Charlotte E. Ray graduated in 1872 as the first African American female lawyer in the country, and Mary Ann Shadd Cary, the first Black female newspaper editor in North America, studied law at Howard in the same era.

The school's modern reputation was built by one of legal education's most consequential figures. Charles Hamilton Houston, HUSL dean from 1929 to 1935, trained a generation of civil rights litigators in the "social engineer" tradition and then carried that method to the NAACP, work that earned him the title "The Man Who Killed Jim Crow." His student Thurgood Marshall, Class of 1933, argued Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954; HUSL professors James Nabrit Jr. and George E. C. Hayes argued Bolling v. Sharpe, the companion case that ended school segregation in the District of Columbia, in 1952 and 1953. Alumna Pauli Murray published States' Laws on Race and Color, which Marshall called the "bible" of the civil rights movement. No law school in America can claim a deeper imprint on the constitutional order.

Howard Law's present identity rests on three pillars. The first is that role as the leading producer of Black attorneys in the United States — a distinction the school states plainly and defends through admissions, scholarship, and bar-support investment. The second is Washington, D.C.: a national capital campus whose alumni hold offices from the New York attorney generalship (Letitia James) to the Virginia governorship (L. Douglas Wilder) and a Supreme Court clerkship pipeline that in 2026 placed Darryl E. Williams '22 with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson for the 2026–27 term — the second HUSL graduate to clerk for her. The third is the tension this profile documents below: the school's placement outcomes, which for decades reliably converted its national reputation into careers, have become sharply bifurcated in the most recent cohort, and applicants should read the employment section with particular care.

Rankings and Reputation

Howard Law's national standing is mid-tier overall with a genuinely strong clinical specialty, and its reputation among employers — particularly those recruiting for diversity — has historically outperformed its rank. The school is ranked #1 among HBCU law programs for criminal law, constitutional law, dispute resolution, intellectual property law, and health care law per U.S. News specialty assessments.

Overall ranking

U.S. News edition Howard rank
2026 117 (tie)
2024 130 (Wikipedia)

U.S. News reports an 8.8:1 student-faculty ratio. The underlying 509 counts are 64 full-time faculty, 64 non-full-time faculty, and five librarians; U.S. News's ratio uses the full-time instructional count, and the heavy practitioner roster in the non-full-time line is consistent with a school whose upper-level curriculum is taught substantially by sitting judges, government lawyers, and firm partners. No independent metric-by-metric tabulation (ILRG or equivalent) was successfully retrieved for Howard in this review — the ranks published here are U.S. News's own — and faculty-diversity percentages were therefore not available for comparison across the series.

Specialty rankings

Specialty U.S. News rank
Clinical Training #42 (tie) (2026 edition)
Business/Corporate Law #85 (tie) (2026 edition)

U.S. News lists clinical training, dispute resolution, environmental law, health care law, intellectual property law, international law, business/corporate law, constitutional law, contracts/commercial law, and criminal law among the school's program areas. The clinical placement — #42 (tie), top quarter nationally — is the school's best ranked specialty and reflects the eight-clinic architecture described below. Howard also claims the #1 HBCU position across five U.S. News specialty areas, including intellectual property law and health care law, supported by the Institute of Intellectual Property and Social Justice and the World Food Law Institute.

Admissions: What It Takes to Get In

Entering class (Fall 2025)

Admissions metric Fall 2025
Completed applications 2,428
Offers of admission 584
Acceptance rate 24.05%
Enrollees from applicant pool 172
Total in first-year class 176 (all full-time)
Yield (enrollees / offers) 29.11%
Enrollment rate from completed applications 7.00%
Total J.D. enrollment 555
Transfers in / out 3 in / 5 out

A 24.05% acceptance rate places Howard Law in the same selectivity band as schools ranked forty to sixty places above it — the most selective profile of any school in this series outside the national elites — and it reflects the school's status as the destination choice of the Black applicant pipeline: roughly 2,400 applicants compete for 176 seats, and the school describes the result as a student body drawn from "almost every US state and many foreign nations."

LSAT and GPA

Statistic 25th percentile Median 75th percentile
LSAT 153 156 160
Undergraduate GPA 3.40 3.65 3.80

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

Interpreting the numbers

Howard Law's credential profile deserves careful, respectful reading. A median LSAT of 156 and a median GPA of 3.65 place the school well above the national median on GPA and below it on LSAT — a gap that tracks the structural inequities of standardized testing rather than applicant quality, and that the school addresses through holistic review rather than cutoffs. Because the school receives a national applicant pool and admits at 24%, its admissible band is wide in practice: the 25th-percentile admit carries a 153 and a 3.40, and admitted applicants below those lines exist in every cycle.

The practical implication for applicants is about leverage, not eligibility. Given the school's historic brand and its #117 rank, admitted applicants hold unusual bargaining power on scholarship terms — and the financial aid section below shows why using it matters: grants reach only 48% of students, and 91% of recent graduates borrowed.

Application timing

  • Application fee: $60 (2025 ABA 509 report; U.S. News confirms)
  • Application deadline: the sources conflict — the 2025 ABA 509 report lists March 1, 2026, while U.S. News lists March 15; applicants should treat March 1 as the safe planning date
  • Financial aid deadline: the 509 report lists none; U.S. News lists May 1, and the financial aid office (Robert Muhammad, (202) 806-2820) should confirm the operative date
  • No binding Early Decision program is reported in the sources reviewed
  • All admitted students are automatically considered for scholarships; no separate scholarship application is required
  • The J.D. requires 88 credit hours (71 for the J.D./M.B.A.); the program is full-time only, with no part-time or evening division

Cost, Scholarships, and Debt

Tuition

Rate 2025–26
Full-time J.D. tuition $39,780
Mandatory fees $1,632
Total, tuition and fees $41,412

Howard Law is private and charges a single rate; the 509 report lists no part-time or per-credit lines because the school enrolls no part-time students. At $41,412 all-in, the school is one of the least expensive private law schools in this series — roughly $35,000 a year below its Washington neighbor American University and well below the New York privates — and that price is the foundation of its value case. The university's 2026–27 schedule lists LL.M. tuition at $39,780 plus the same mandatory fees. A 2019 comparison tuition figure was not retrieved in the sources reviewed and is not reproduced here.

Cost of attendance

Expense Amount (2025–26)
Tuition and fees $41,412
Living expenses — all categories $38,251
Computed total cost of attendance ≈$79,663
Three-year sticker cost (third-party tabulation) $238,989
Three-year estimated net cost (third-party tabulation) $207,480

One budget detail is genuinely unusual and deserves an applicant's attention: the 509 report lists $38,251 as the living allowance in every category — on campus, off campus, on a military base, and at home alike. Most schools discount the at-home allowance by half or more; Howard prices the student living with family in D.C. the same as one renting independently. The figure is defensible as a D.C. market estimate — the city's rents justify it for independent living — but it means the published cost of attendance does not reward the commuting or family-supported student, and borrowers should plan against actual personal costs rather than the flat allowance. Combined with the $41,412 tuition-and-fee total, the computed annual cost of attendance is approximately $79,663.

Financial aid

Metric Value
Students receiving grants 261 (48%)
25th percentile grant $10,037
Median grant $23,657
75th percentile grant $32,364
Conditional scholarships offered / reduced, 2024–25 261 / 0
Conditional scholarships offered / reduced, 2023–24 105 / 11
Conditional scholarships offered / reduced, 2022–23 87 / 8

Grant breadth is thin and depth is strong — the combination that defines Howard Law's aid structure. At 48%, the grant-recipient rate is among the lowest of any school in this series, meaning most students pay close to full freight. But the awards that exist are substantial: a $23,657 median covers well over half of tuition, and the 75th percentile of $32,364 covers 82% of the tuition-and-fee total. The school's distribution is therefore winner-take-most rather than spread-thin, and an admitted applicant's net cost will depend almost entirely on which side of the 48% line they land.

The conditional-scholarship table contains one anomaly that should be verified directly with the school. The 2024–25 row reports 261 conditional awards offered and zero reduced — but 261 is also the total grant-recipient count for the year, suggesting the school reclassified its entire grant pool as "conditional" while reducing none. The two prior years show the opposite pattern: 11 of 105 (10.5%) and 8 of 87 (9.2%) reduced. Whether the 2024–25 class genuinely experienced zero reductions or the reporting basis changed cannot be determined from the sources reviewed; applicants relying on a multi-year award should ask the financial aid office to confirm the retention terms in writing.

All admitted students are automatically considered for scholarships with no separate application. The financial aid office is led by Robert Muhammad, (202) 806-2820.

Debt perspective

Average indebtedness among 2025 J.D. graduates who incurred law school debt was $67,616, with 91% of the class borrowing, and no loan repayment assistance program is offered to 2025 graduates. The debt figure itself is low — among the best in this series, a function of the $41,412 tuition — but the borrowing pattern is the most concerning in the series: 91% of graduates borrowed, against a 48% grant rate, meaning a majority of the class financed most of its legal education with loans.

The missing LRAP is a serious gap given the school's mission. Howard Law's identity is public service and civil rights; its employment data shows 10.3% of the Class of 2025 in public interest and 9.0% in government, precisely the careers where income-driven repayment matters and where a school-funded LRAP is the standard backstop at peer institutions. A graduate entering civil rights or legal aid work with $67,616 of debt and no institutional repayment support faces real strain, and applicants targeting those paths should model federal income-driven repayment carefully and press the school on whether any university-level or alumni-funded assistance exists.

Employment Outcomes

Employment (Class of 2025)

Employment status (Class of 2025, 155 graduates, ten months out) Share of class
Law firms — 501+ attorneys (Big Law) 29.0% (46 graduates)
Law firms — other sizes 16.1%
Judicial clerkships — all courts 5.2%
Public interest 10.3%
Government 9.0%
Business and academic 3.2%
Employer not classified 0.7%
Start date deferred 2.6%
Pursuing further study 1.9%
Unemployed — seeking 21.3% (33 graduates)
Status unknown 0.7%
Overall employment rate 73.5% (114 of 155)

The detailed ABA category table — bar-required versus J.D.-advantage counts, firm-size distribution, and unemployment figures as the school reported them to the ABA — is published on the school's Employment and Placement Statistics page with the Bar Passage Report, but that page was not machine-readable in this review, and the table above is an independent tabulation of the ABA data. Applicants should read the school's official ABA Employment Summary for the Class of 2025 directly.

What these numbers mean

The Class of 2025 employment picture is the most bifurcated in this profile series, and both halves matter. On one side: 29.0% of the class entered Big Law — firms of 501+ attorneys — which is elite placement by any standard and, at this rank, extraordinary. Sixteen percent more entered other firms, and the modeled salary of $155,529 across covered categories (69% of the class reporting) reflects the weight of New York and Washington large-firm hiring in the class's outcomes. Forty-five percent of the class is in private practice, and the clerkship rate of 5.2% is respectable.

On the other side: 33 graduates — 21.3% of the class — were unemployed and actively seeking work ten months after graduation, a figure that third-party commentary has described bluntly as a collapse and that is by far the worst unemployment rate in this profile series. Add 2.6% with deferred start dates and 1.9% pursuing further study, and roughly a quarter of the class had not converted the degree into employment on the standard timeline.

Both facts are real, and neither excuses the other. The plausible reading is distributional: Howard Law's brand delivers the top of each class into a national market that recruits the school specifically — large firms meeting diversity-pipeline commitments, government offices, and clerkship judges — while a substantial middle of the class faces the combined effect of a weak 2025 market, a school career-services operation stretched across a 155-graduate class, and the D.C.-centric employer base that does not absorb every graduate. Whatever the cause, an applicant should not assume the historical Howard placement record applies to them; the Class of 2025 cohort data must be the planning baseline.

Bar passage

Bar statistic Value
First-time bar passage, 2025 takers 78.0% (110 of 141)
Comparison average, same jurisdictions 84.7% (a deficit of 6.7 points)
Earlier cohorts (2024, 2019) Not retrieved in machine-readable form in the sources reviewed

A 78.0% first-time rate puts Howard Law roughly seven points below the average of the jurisdictions where its graduates sat, and the 87.2% of the school's own tabulation for 2025 graduates (110 of 141 first-time takers passing within the school's count) does not change the underlying comparison. Two-year ultimate bar passage for recent cohorts was not retrieved in the sources reviewed and should be requested from the school directly. The bar-passage deficit is the single most consequential risk factor in this profile: 21.3% of the class was unemployed and seeking ten months out, and in most jurisdictions a graduate cannot enter bar-required practice until licensed, so bar failure and employment delay compound each other. Forum-level claims about Howard's bar passage circulate widely; this profile reports only the figures above and marks the earlier cohorts unavailable rather than repeating unverified numbers.

Where graduates go

State-by-state employment counts for the Class of 2025 were not published in machine-readable form in the sources reviewed. The school's market is national in a way few schools at this rank can claim: the Big Law cohort places in New York and Washington large firms, the government and public interest cohorts in federal and D.C. agencies, and the alumni network — Marshall, Murray, James, Wilder, Jordan — gives Howard Law graduates standing in every jurisdiction where civil rights, public service, and the bar's diversity pipeline matter. The 2026–27 Supreme Court clerkship for Darryl E. Williams '22 with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (the second HUSL graduate she has hired) symbolizes the school's ceiling. The unemployment data describes the floor. An applicant should plan for both.

Academics and Programs

The J.D. requires 88 credit hours of full-time study; there is no part-time or evening division. The school also awards the LL.M. (tuition $39,780 plus fees for 2026–27) and a four-year J.D./M.B.A. dual degree requiring 71 credit hours of law coursework within the combined program. U.S. News lists joint-degree offerings among the school's programs, and applicants should confirm current dual-degree options with the registrar.

Curriculum and special strengths

Three strengths define the academic program. The first is civil rights and constitutional litigation, which is not a concentration at Howard Law but its birthright: the Houston-Marshall lineage, the Civil Rights Clinic, and the Movement Lawyering Clinic connect students directly to the tradition that produced Brown v. Board. The second is clinical education — #42 (tie) nationally — through eight clinics spanning Alternative Dispute Resolution, Child Welfare, Civil Rights, Criminal Justice, Fair Housing, Intellectual Property and Trademark, Investor Justice and Education, and Movement Lawyering, supported by the Education Rights Center, the Institute of Intellectual Property and Social Justice, and the World Food Law Institute.

The third is Washington itself. The school's Van Ness campus sits fifteen minutes from the main Howard campus and minutes from the federal agencies, courts, Congress, and the D.C. government that employ its graduates, and the externship network runs through federal agencies, Capitol Hill, and the D.C. Superior Court. Intellectual property law is a quiet additional strength — the school claims the #1 HBCU ranking in the specialty and hosts the Institute of Intellectual Property and Social Justice, which connects students to the national IP-diversity pipeline.

Journals include the Howard Law Journal, the Howard Human & Civil Rights Law Review, and three student publications (The Barrister, The Jurist, The Howard Docket). The faculty of 64 full-time members carries the school's scholarly tradition, and the 64-person non-full-time roster brings sitting practitioners into the classroom — the structure behind the school's 8.8:1 U.S. News student-faculty ratio. Faculty-diversity percentages were not available from the sources retrieved, though Howard's identity as an HBCU makes its faculty and student community among the most representative of Black America in legal education.

Clinics and experiential learning

The eight-clinic roster is among the deepest for a school of 555 students and covers the practice areas where Howard graduates most often serve: children and families, civil rights, criminal justice, fair housing, intellectual property, investor protection, dispute resolution, and movement lawyering. The clinics are supplemented by externships across the D.C. legal ecosystem and by the school's summer public-interest programming. Applicants should request current clinic seat counts and the selection process, since demand for the Civil Rights and Criminal Justice clinics historically exceeds capacity.

Student Life and Location

Living in Washington, D.C.

Howard Law occupies its own campus at 2900 Van Ness Street NW in the Forest Hills neighborhood of upper Northwest Washington — a residential, leafy part of the city near the Van Ness metro station, roughly fifteen minutes from Howard's main campus and LeDroit Park, and a short ride from downtown, the Capitol, and the federal courthouse district. The city is the school's greatest curricular asset and its greatest cost driver: the $38,251 living allowance — applied uniformly to every living arrangement — prices independent D.C. housing realistically, and students renting alone near campus should expect the full allowance or more. Students living with family or sharing housing materially under the allowance should plan their borrowing against their actual budget, since the school's published cost of attendance will not adjust. The practical formula of a Howard Law education is a national legal education at a private-school tuition inside one of the country's most expensive rental markets — and the flat living allowance means the published budget understates the savings available to students who share housing.

Student body

Total J.D. enrollment was 555 as of October 5, 2025 (the school describes "approximately 450 students" in its admissions materials and Wikipedia lists 464 — the 509 figure is the standardized count). The first-year class of 176 is all full-time; there is no evening division. The school describes its community as a "family" built on shared purpose, drawing from nearly every U.S. state and many foreign nations, with students spanning third-generation lawyers to first-generation professionals. The culture is distinctive: a majority-Black student body at a majority-Black institution, with alumni mentorship that functions as a national professional network rather than a local one. Applicants seeking a conventional big-law cohort culture will find the large-firm placement without the culture; applicants who understand the school's mission will find a community that no other American law school replicates.

How Howard Compares

Choose Howard Law if

  • You want the national reach of the Howard brand — a network spanning the Supreme Court bench, Congress, statehouses, civil rights leadership, and large-firm diversity pipelines — at a private-school tuition of $41,412, the lowest among the D.C.-area schools.
  • You are targeting large-firm practice: 29.0% of the Class of 2025 entered 501+ firms, and the modeled salary of $155,529 reflects it.
  • You want clinical training in civil rights, criminal justice, housing, or movement lawyering — #42 (tie) nationally — inside the tradition that produced Thurgood Marshall.
  • You want to study law at the institution that has produced more African American attorneys than any other in the country, in a majority-Black academic community.
  • You hold a strong scholarship offer. With a $23,657 median grant and a $10,037 25th percentile, the spread between a well-funded admit and a full-pay admit is the difference between a $207,000 and a $239,000 three-year cost — and between manageable debt and serious debt at a 91% borrowing rate.
  • You are targeting Washington government, federal agencies, or the D.C. bar, where the school's location and externship network function as infrastructure.

Consider alternatives if

  • Post-graduation employment security is decisive. 21.3% of the Class of 2025 was unemployed and seeking ten months out — 33 graduates — the worst rate in this profile series, and it compounds with the bar-passage deficit below.
  • You are financing the full cost with loans. At 91% borrowing, a 48% grant rate, no LRAP, and a $238,989 three-year sticker cost, a self-financed Howard Law degree carries unusual repayment risk against a 73.5% employment outcome.
  • You want reliable first-time bar passage. The 78.0% rate for 2025 takers trails the jurisdiction average by 6.7 points, and earlier-cohort trends were not available in this review to establish whether that deficit is stable or worsening.
  • You need a part-time or evening J.D. — Howard Law is full-time only.
  • You want conditional-scholarship-free funding terms confirmed in writing — the 2024–25 retention table reports zero reductions after two prior years of reductions, and that reversal should be verified before relying on it.
  • You want a large national research faculty: 64 full-time professors across a 555-student body is modest, and the practitioner-heavy non-full-time roster trades research depth for practice instruction.

The TLS Verdict

Howard University School of Law is the most consequential institution in this profile series and, on the Class of 2025 numbers, one of the most difficult to advise cleanly. The case for the school is historical and structural at once: the only law school that has graduated more Black attorneys than any other in American history, the Houston-Marshall civil rights lineage, a Supreme Court clerkship pipeline running through Justice Jackson's chambers, 29% of the newest class in Big Law at a modeled $155,529, a #42 clinical program, and a $41,412 tuition that undercuts every other private school in its market. For the applicant the school's network and mission fit, Howard Law remains what it has been for 155 years — a national platform, not a regional one.

The case for caution is equally concrete. The Class of 2025 employment rate of 73.5%, with a fifth of the class unemployed and seeking, is the worst placement outcome of any school in this series and a sharp break from the school's historical record; the bar-passage deficit of 6.7 points adds licensure risk on top of placement risk; 91% of graduates borrowed while only 48% received grants; and there is no LRAP behind the public-service careers the school exists to produce. Neither the school's ABA employment page nor the U.S. statistical survey fills the gap in trend data, which leaves an applicant planning against a single volatile cohort.

The practical conclusion: Howard Law is a strong choice for the applicant the school was built to serve — one who receives real scholarship money, targets large-firm or government practice through the school's national network, or intends a civil rights career with a clear-eyed repayment plan. It is a risky choice for a full-pay applicant financing with loans against a one-year employment rate of 73.5%. Every applicant should read the school's own Class of 2025 ABA Employment Summary and Bar Passage Report — not third-party summaries — and should press two questions in the admissions conversation: what caused the 2025 employment spike, and what has changed in bar-preparation support in response. The answers, plus the scholarship offer, should decide the deposit.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Howard Law's acceptance rate?

24.05% for Fall 2025, with 584 offers extended to 2,428 completed applications and 176 students in the first-year class — a yield of 29.11%. Source: the 2025 ABA Standard 509 Information Report. This is the most selective profile of any school in this series outside the national elites.

What LSAT and GPA do I need?

The Fall 2025 medians were 156 LSAT and 3.65 GPA, with middle-50% ranges of 153–160 and 3.40–3.80. The school reviews holistically and admits below the 25th percentile in every cycle; the bargaining power that matters is in the scholarship negotiation, not the admit itself.

How much does Howard Law cost?

$39,780 in tuition plus $1,632 in fees for 2025–26 — $41,412 all-in, one of the lowest private rates in the country. Total cost of attendance computes to approximately $79,663 with the flat $38,251 living allowance, which applies to all living arrangements; the three-year sticker cost is $238,989.

Does Howard Law have a part-time program?

No. The 509 report lists zero part-time students and no part-time tuition; the J.D. is full-time only and requires 88 credit hours (71 for the J.D./M.B.A.).

What percentage of students receive scholarships?

261 students, or 48%, received grants in the most recently reported year, with a median of $23,657 and a 25th-to-75th range of $10,037 to $32,364. All admitted students are automatically considered. Note that the conditional-scholarship table shows zero reductions in 2024–25 after reductions in the two prior years — confirm retention terms in writing before relying on a multi-year award.

What is Howard Law's bar passage rate?

78.0% for first-time takers in 2025 (110 of 141), which is 6.7 points below the average for the jurisdictions where they sat. Two-year ultimate passage and earlier-cohort rates were not retrieved in the sources reviewed; request them from the school.

Where do graduates work?

Nationally. 29.0% of the Class of 2025 entered firms of 501+ attorneys, 16.1% other firms, 10.3% public interest, 9.0% government, and 5.2% judicial clerkships at ten months — but 21.3% were unemployed and seeking. The overall employment rate was 73.5% (114 of 155). The school's own ABA Employment Summary carries the official line items.

Is Howard Law good for BigLaw?

Yes — 29.0% of the Class of 2025 entered firms of 501+ attorneys, an exceptional rate for a school ranked #117, and the modeled salary of $155,529 reflects large-firm compensation. The risk is not the top of the class but the distribution: a fifth of the class had no employment ten months out.

Does Howard Law offer an LRAP?

No loan repayment assistance program is offered to 2025 J.D. graduates per the U.S. News profile — a significant gap for a school whose mission centers on public-service careers. Average indebtedness among borrowers was $67,616, with 91% of the class borrowing. Ask the financial aid office (Robert Muhammad, (202) 806-2820) about any university-level or alumni-funded assistance.

Who is the dean?

Roger A. Fairfax, Jr., Dean and Professor of Law, since July 1, 2024. He succeeded a series of recent deans including Danielle Holley-Walker (2014–2023) and interim Dean Lisa Crooms-Robinson (2023–24).

What is Howard Law best known for?

Being the oldest historically Black law school in the United States (founded 1869), the Houston-Marshall civil rights tradition that produced Brown v. Board of Education, Thurgood Marshall, Pauli Murray, and Charlotte E. Ray, graduating more African American attorneys than any other American law school, a #42 (tie) clinical training rank, and a national placement reach — from Big Law at 29% of the Class of 2025 to a 2026–27 Supreme Court clerkship for Darryl E. Williams '22 with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Contact and Key Links

Howard University School of Law
2900 Van Ness Street NW
Washington, DC 20008

Main Phone: (202) 806-8000

Financial Aid Contact: Robert Muhammad, Director, (202) 806-2820

Financial Aid Deadline: May 1

Application Fee: $60

Application Deadline: March 1, 2026 (2025 ABA 509 report)

Official links

Key documents

TLS Forum Links

Sources

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