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Private law school in Los Angeles, California

On March 12, 1890, the Los Angeles Times declared in an editorial: "It is time that a law school should be established in Los Angeles." During the 1890s, there were several false starts at founding the first law school in Southern California. At the time, the term "law student" simply meant anyone who was actively studying law, either in an attorney's office, or by correspondence, or on their own. Law student associations were tiny, informal, fluid, and unstable, since individual students' level of interest in helping to run the associations tended to evaporate once they became members of the California bar and needed to focus on the actual practice of law. As head of the new law school, Scott preferred the new interactive style of teaching law pioneered by Christopher Columbus Langdell at Harvard Law School: the casebook method combined with the Socratic method. It has been an American Bar Association (ABA) approved law school since 1924. By the mid 1940s, young people in Southern California who wished to obtain a high quality legal education faced a difficult choice: they had to find some way to pay the USC School of Law's expensive tuition, settle for a lesser program, or move north to attend the state's existing public law schools at Berkeley Law or Hastings. The California State Legislature responded to this problem in 1947 by creating the first public law school in the Southland (and USC's crosstown rival): the UCLA School of Law. UCLA Law graduate Dorothy Wright Nelson served as dean of USC Law from 1969 to 1980, before becoming a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. 2002 saw the beginning of the USC Law Graduate and International Programs.

For the class entering in 2023, the school accepted 607 applicants (12.52%), with 178 of those accepted enrolling, a 29.32% yield rate. Eleven students were not included in the acceptance statistics. The class consists of 189 students. The median LSAT score was 169 and the median undergraduate GPA was 3.88. Ten students were not included in the LSAT calculation and four not included in the GPA calculation. Its 25th/75th percentile LSAT scores and GPA were 165/169 and 3.77/3.96.

USC Gould awards the J. D., LL. M., and M. C. L. law degrees. It currently has about 600 J. D. students (200 per year) and a graduate program of about 200 LL. M. and M. C. L. students. It offers three certificate programs: business law, entertainment law, and alternative dispute resolution.

USC Gould has consistently been ranked between 16th and 20th by the U. S. News & World Report list of "America's Best Graduate Schools" since the magazine has published an annual version of its rankings, ranking tied for 20th in 2024. It was listed with an "A−" in the March 2011 "Diversity Honor Roll" by The National Jurist: The Magazine for Law Students.

USC Gould hosts three academic journals and offers one additional honors program: Southern California Law Review, Southern California Review of Law and Social Justice (formerly the Review of Law and Women's Studies), Interdisciplinary Law Journal, and the Hale Moot Court Honors Program. Selected law students can participate in one honors program in an academic year. The school has a chapter of the Order of the Coif, a national law school honorary society.

USC Gould offers international study abroad programs, providing credit to J. D. students. Students may spend a semester abroad at the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law, Bocconi University, Jean Moulin University Lyon 3, Bond University and Fundação Getúlio Vargas. Previously, students could pursue a J. D./LL. M dual degree with the London School of Economics.

USC Gould maintains dual degree programs with the Marshall School of Business, the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, the Price School of Public Policy, the School of Social Work, the Davis School of Gerontology, and the Annenberg School of Communication. Dual degree programs are accelerated. If the non law master's degree normally requires one year of study, a student in a dual degree program earns both degrees in only three years. If the master's degree normally requires two years, a total of four years is necessary. USC Gould also maintains two other dual degree programs. A program with the California Institute of Technology enables a student to receive a J. D. from USC and a Ph. D. in social science from Caltech. A dual degree program with the USC School of Pharmacy enables a qualified student to earn a J. D. and a Pharm. D. degree.

In 2023, the overall bar examination passage rate for the law school’s first time examination takers was 82.42%. The Ultimate Bar Pass Rate, which the ABA defines as the passage rate for graduates who sat for bar examinations within two years of graduating, was 97.87% for the class of 2021.

According to the USC Gould School of Law's official 2014 ABA required disclosures, 79.3% of the Class of 2014 obtained full time, long term, JD required employment nine months after graduation. USC Gould's Law School Transparency under employment score is 8.8%, indicating the percentage of the Class of 2014 unemployed, pursuing an additional degree, or working in a non professional, short term, or part time job nine months after graduation.

The total cost of attendance (indicating the cost of tuition, fees, and living expenses) at USC Gould for the 2024 2025 academic year is $109,558 if living on campus and $110,368 if living off campus. The Law School Transparency estimated cost for three years at USC Gould is $414,611.