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part of PKU’s Shenzhen Graduate School , is the only law school in China that offers an American Common Law Juris Doctor degree (J.D.), and the only law school in the world that offers both an American law J.D. and a China law Juris Master’s degree (J.M.). STL also offers a unique LL.M. program for international students.
China’s State Council authorized Peking University’s creation of China’s only American Common Law Juris Doctor curriculum in 2007. The following year, the University’s new School of Transnational Law admitted its first students. The University appointed Jeffrey Lehman, a former president of Cornell University and dean of the University of Michigan Law School, as STL’s Founding Dean.
STL graduates now work with leading law firms such as Fangda Partners, King & Wood Mallesons, Junhe, Kirkland & Ellis, Shearman & Sterling, Paul Weiss, Simpson Thatcher, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, DLA Piper, Morrison & Foerster, and others; with leading companies such as Huawei Technologies, Tencent, Baidu, Walmart China, Ping An, General Electric, and others; and with leading government offices and nonprofit organizations such as the Qianhai Equity Exchange, the Supreme People’s Court, the South China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission, the United Nations Refugee Agency, CIETAC and others.
STL graduates pursuing academic careers have been accepted into advanced degree programs at such elite universities as Harvard, Yale, Sciences Po, College of Europe and others.
The true value lies in imparting the skills that make for great lawyers, jurists and leaders of any nationality: rigorous analytical thinking, the ability to see all sides of an issue, the ability to solve complex problems creatively, and the ability to persuade. STL students acquire these skills because of STL’s unique method of instruction: serious, reflective study of actual cases accompanied by intensely interactive class sessions in which professors question and challenge students, day after day, about the cases they read. The effect of this method becomes apparent to STL students:
Contribute to the creation of a Chinese legal profession equipped to serve China’s increasingly sophisticated domestic economy and to compete successfully on an international scale with dominant American and British law firms
Educate top university graduates about different legal traditions and systems and thereby promote their ability to contend with the new policies and practices likely to emerge in a globalized economy;
Provide domestically in an affordable way the graduate-level legal education top Chinese students traditionally have only been able to obtain abroad at great expense.
STL has assembled an outstanding multinational faculty of scholars from China, the U.S., the EU, South Asia, Israel and Australia whose previous and concurrent appointments include such esteemed law faculties as those of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, the University of Chicago, Peking University, University College London, King’s College London, European University Institute, EBS Germany, University Aix-Marseille, Hong Kong University, and others. As one of STL’s students recently exclaimed, “Studying at STL is like studying abroad in China!”
Currently, the school has nearly 650 full-time students, and since its inception in 2008, it has produced over a thousand graduates. The alumni are widely engaged in government agencies, multinational corporations, international law firms, and various international organizations.
