Brooklyn Law School

Overview

Brooklyn Law School turns 125 years old today. It opened on September 30, 1901, in a borrowed classroom provided by a Brooklyn business school, with five students, five faculty members, and two special lecturers — and its founders’ whole idea was that legal education should not belong exclusively to the privileged (The Education Magazine). By the end of that first academic year, enrollment had grown from five to twenty-eight, and the New York State Board of Regents granted the institution its official charter (The Education Magazine).

One measure of what that founding idea produced: the sitting Attorney General of the United States earned his law degree here at night, while working days as a paralegal. Todd Blanche received his law degree from Brooklyn Law School in 2003, where he served as an editor of the Brooklyn Law Review; he started at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York as a paralegal while attending law school at night, then spent eight years as a federal prosecutor before moving into private practice — and on August 8, 2026, he was confirmed as the 88th Attorney General of the United States (U.S. Department of Justice). A school that opened its doors to working people now counts the country’s top law-enforcement officer among its night-school graduates. That is the profile in miniature.

Founded in a borrowed classroom

The school’s origin runs through the Pratt Institute in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, where the Department of Commerce had become so popular it broke off under the guidance of Norman P. Heffley — personal secretary to Charles Pratt — to form the Heffley School of Commerce. Heffley met William Payson Richardson at a law teacher’s conference, and, as the school’s own anniversary archive puts it, encouraged Richardson to start his own law school (Brooklyn Law School). Richardson became dean; Heffley became president.

The school is marking its 125th year the way institutions that take their archives seriously do: its BrooklynWorks repository hosts a dedicated 125th-anniversary collection of deans and law-school leaders, with material being added since April 2026 (Brooklyn Law School).

Independence and the access mission

Brooklyn Law’s early history includes a forty-year detour. In 1903 it became affiliated with St. Lawrence University in order to secure degree-conferring authority for its first class; that affiliation ended in 1943, when it became an independent law school — the status it has kept ever since (Brooklyn Law School Library). Today it stands as the only law school in Brooklyn and one of the few independent law schools in the United States not affiliated with a larger university system (The Education Magazine).

The access mission is not just founding lore. New York City’s 106th mayor put it plainly: “In 1953, Brooklyn was one of the few schools that would admit you if you had to work,” David N. Dinkins remembered — he worked in his father-in-law’s store in Harlem while attending. “And it had the best record of any school in the nation of its graduates passing the bar the first time. I will forever be grateful for what Brooklyn Law School did for me” (Brooklyn Law School). The school now enrolls approximately 1,166 students from 42 U.S. states and multiple countries under Dean David D. Meyer, and in recent entering classes women have made up roughly two-thirds of students while more than one-third have identified as members of historically underrepresented groups (The Education Magazine). Its graduates practice across all 50 states, four U.S. territories, and more than 50 countries (The Education Magazine).

The current curriculum keeps the practical emphasis. Offerings include a traditional three-year J.D., a four-year part-time J.D., an LLM for internationally trained lawyers, and multiple joint and dual degrees, with more than 200 courses weighted toward legal writing, advocacy, and hands-on training through clinics and externships (The Education Magazine). Its centers include the Center for Urban Business Entrepreneurship (CUBE) and concentrations in Business Law and Regulation, International Business Law, Criminal Justice, Health Science and Public Policy, Law Language and Cognition, and Public Service Law (The Education Magazine).

A school of firsts

The school’s own “Alumni of Distinction” page keeps a Trailblazers list, and it reads like a catalogue of American firsts (Brooklyn Law School):

• Sumner Lark, class of 1916 — the first African-American Assistant District Attorney of New York City.
• Frieda B. Hennock, class of 1924 — the first female Federal Communications Commissioner.
• Hon. Henry Bramwell, class of 1948 — the first African-American judge appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
• Percy E. Sutton, class of 1950 — the first African-American Manhattan borough president, and founder of the media company Inner City Broadcasting Corporation.
• Herman Badillo, class of 1954 — the first U.S. congressman of Puerto Rican origin.
• Dorothy Chin-Brandt, class of 1974 — the first Asian-American woman judge in New York State.
• Hon. David N. Dinkins, class of 1956 — the first African-American mayor of New York City.

Dinkins, who died November 23, 2020, at age 93, was the school’s icon: Alumnus of the Year in 1990, named an Icon of Brooklyn Law School in 2015, with his LL.B. from the school in 1956 (Brooklyn Law School). The same alumni page lists other leaders, including former dean and federal judge I. Leo Glasser ‘48, veteran broadcast journalist Geraldo Rivera ‘69, CNN and NY1’s Errol Louis ‘05, and Boeing executive Wanda Denson-Low ‘81 (Brooklyn Law School).

2026: bar passage, rankings, and the 125th Commencement

The school’s 125th year is showing up in outcomes as well as archives. In 2026 the school reported an 87 percent first-time bar passage rate among 2024 test takers — its strongest bar examination performance in years, credited to sustained investment in academic success and bar preparation programs (The Education Magazine). The class of 2025 set a new employment benchmark, continuing a run that has put the school on The National Law Journal’s “Go-To Law Schools” list — which ranks schools by the share of graduates hired as first-year associates at the nation’s largest firms — for nine consecutive years (The Education Magazine). PreLaw Magazine’s 2026 rankings gave the school A+ designations in Business Law and Real Estate Law, plus an A+ for practical training (The Education Magazine). And in 2026, criminal law professor Jocelyn Simonson ranked No. 4 on the Top 100 Legal Scholars list (The Education Magazine).

The 125th Commencement ceremony in 2026 had a keynote that fit the school’s whole story: Hon. Sparkle L. Sooknanan ‘10, U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia — born in Trinidad and Tobago, arrived in New York at sixteen — reflecting on how the institution has long served immigrants, first-generation professionals, and students seeking opportunity (The Education Magazine).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not state the school’s ABA accreditation date, AALS membership date, endowment, or U.S. News ranking: those figures appear in sources that were not read in full for this profile, so they are recorded as open items rather than asserted. It does not assert enrollment beyond the approximately 1,166 students the school itself reported through recent coverage — a separate directory’s 1,461 figure conflicts with it and is left out. It dates the founding to September 30, 1901 and notes the 125th-anniversary repository collections, but makes no claims about any specific anniversary celebration events, which no source read described. And it presents the Trailblazers as the school’s own published alumni list, without adding alumni names that appear only in third-party lists.