All Student Organizations and Journals

High School Law Institute (HSLI)

The High School Law Institute provides Columbia Law students the chance to teach students from New York City high schools. The institute’s student-teachers help their students build oral advocacy and writing skills through classes in criminal law, constitutional law, moot court and mock trial. It also focuses on exploring the relevance of legal topics to students’ lives and developing students’ ability to effectively articulate their opinions. 

Contact: [email protected]

If/When/How - Lawyering for Reproductive Justice

If/When/How is a national network of law students and professionals committed to promoting reproductive justice. We fight to ensure everyone can decide if, when, and how to create and sustain families with dignity—free from discrimination, coercion, or violence. The organization educates, organizes, and supports law students with extensive resources, and career and advocacy opportunities to advance reproductive justice.

Contact: [email protected]

Jewish Law Students Association (JLSA)

The Jewish Law Students Association (JLSA) is a social, cultural, educational, and religious organization that welcomes all students interested in Jewish life and culture, regardless of background or level of observance. In addition to serving as a helpful resource for Jewish students on campus, JLSA seeks to bring together and cultivate a warm, pluralistic community at CLS through events such as holiday parties and celebrations, Shabbat meals, and study breaks. JLSA also provides a place to explore the law through a Jewish lens, along with other relevant topics of interest, through educational events such as guest speakers and panel discussions. 

Contact: [email protected]

Latinx Law Students Association (LaLSA)

The Latinx Law Students Association (LaLSA) sponsors academic, professional, social, and community service activities to promote understanding of the Latino community, and serves as a liaison between its members and the administration, alumni, and other professionals in the legal field. The association also works to increase the number of Latinx students and faculty at Columbia Law School and to ensure that students receive the necessary support to achieve academic and professional success.

Contact: [email protected]

Law and Political Economy Society (LPE)

The Columbia Law and Political Economy Society is the Law School’s student-led chapter of the national Law and Political Economy Project (LPE Project), dedicated to bringing together a network of scholars, practitioners, and students to develop innovative intellectual, pedagogical, and political interventions to advance the study and practice of the law.

Specifically, we are students concerned by the law’s role in facilitating ballooning inequality and economic precarity, political alienation, the entrenchment of racial hierarchies and intersectional exploitation, and ecological and social catastrophe. We aim to reverse these trends by promoting and engaging with work that traces and identifies these legal iniquities, and that develops ideas and proposals to democratize our political economy and build a more just, equal, and sustainable future.

We are an intellectual and social forum that allows Columbia students to critically examine the economic and political assumptions embedded in the law, and simultaneously, the role that law plays in creating and maintaining unjust hierarchies of class, race, gender, and sexuality, as well as ecologically unsustainable economic systems.   

For more information on future events and how to get involved:

Contact: [email protected].

Law in Africa Students Society (LASS)

Currently Inactive

The Law in Africa Student Society is a dynamic and diverse community of students, alumni, and faculty that seeks to educate, encourage, and inspire interests in African jurisprudence, society, and institutions. Our goal is to provide avenues for discussion and a robust exchange of ideas on issues concerning Africa and how they inter-relate with the United States and the rest of the world.

Contact: [email protected]

Law Revue

The Columbia Law Revue is one of the world’s leading organizations for making fun of legal scholarship and tradition. Founded in 19??, the Review is an independent nonprofit organization that produces a fall and spring semester show written and performed entirely by students at Columbia Law School. It is one of a handful of law school musical parody groups in the nation that performs twice a year and produces no actual legal scholarship. The Revue is one of the most celebrated and criticized law Revues in the country. It receives about X auditions per year and selects approximately all of them to perform in the show each semester, in addition to the Law Revue Band. In 2007, the Revue expanded its audience with the launch of a YouTube channel where it posts its videos. Columbia Law Revue Online, not to be confused with Columbia Law Review Online, does not exist apart from a Youtube channel and a highly secret Facebook group where we share Air Bud puns and memes.  It brings together a diverse group of legal scholars, practitioners, community leaders, and judges, into one forum for mercilessly mocking the legal profession.

Contact: [email protected]

Law Students Against Antisemitism

Law Students Against Antisemitism (LSAA) is an inclusive, multifaith, multiethnic organization dedicated to combating bigotry against Jews. LSAA offers opportunities to learn about historic and contemporary forms of antisemitism and provides support to students experiencing antisemitism on campus. Members will have opportunities to connect through various educational and social events. We invite all interested students to join us in confronting and eliminating antisemitism on campus and beyond.

Contact: Marie-Alice Legrand [email protected]

Legal Scholars Student Association

The Legal Scholars Student Association is dedicated to cultivating an engaged, inclusive, and collaborative academic community for J.D., LL.M., and J.S.D. students with interests in legal research, scholarly publication, and professional pursuits in academia.

Contact:
Justina Bruera, President – [email protected]
Amalia Fernández Salvador, Vice President – [email protected]

Manhattan Courtwatch

Currently Inactive

Manhattan Courtwatch intends to cultivate a culture of “sousveillance” or “watching from below.” Court watchers across the country challenge institutional ideas of justice and safety by attending courtrooms to draw attention to the systemic harms caused by criminal punishment and the legal system and to ensure the presence of the community is felt by the court. 

Manhattan Courtwatch arranges for volunteers to attend sessions at Manhattan Criminal Court. Volunteers fill out data forms while at court and the data is used in abolition focused advocacy efforts. Volunteers are eligible to record the hours they spend on the project as pro bono hours.

Contact: Jacob Turner [email protected]