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About USC Gould
USC Gould is a top-ranked law school with a 120-year history and reputation for academic excellence. We are located on the beautiful 228-acre USC University Park Campus, just south of downtown Los Angeles.
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Academics
Learn about our interdisciplinary curriculum, experiential learning opportunities and specialized areas.
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Admissions
USC Gould helps prepare you for a stellar legal career. You can pursue a JD degree, one of our numerous graduate and international offerings, or an online degree or certificate.
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Students
Participate in an unparalleled learning experience with diversity of people and thought. Get involved in the law school community and participate in activities that enhance your studies.
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Careers
We work closely with students, graduates and employers to support successful career goals and outcomes. Our overall placement rate is consistently strong, with 94 percent of our JD class employed within 10 months after graduation.
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Faculty
Our faculty is distinguished for its scholarship, as well as for its commitment to teaching. Our 12:1 student-to-faculty ratio creates an intimate and collegial learning environment.
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Areas of Focus
USC Gould School of Law
- SAKS INSTITUTE FOR MENTAL HEALTH LAW, POLICY, AND ETHICS
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The Areas of Focus and Particulars of Action describe how we specifically actualize our principles and live our mission:
Elyn Saks has assembled both a stellar external and internal Board of Directors to support her mission.
The Saks Institute selects an Issue for Investigation each year. The current topic is Mechanical Restraints in Psychiatric Hospitals with discussions around liberty vs. safety, as well as recent moves to reduce the use of restraints and how best to go about doing that. A Distinguished Lecture Event and a Spring Symposium highlight the annual theme and bring together in dialogue constituents with multiple perspectives of the issue.
A future topic to be addressed is Psychotropic Medication and the Law, which has multiple and rich dimensions for study and collaboration, including right to treatment with psychotropic medications, right to refuse medication, ethical dimensions involved in participating in research on medication, and ways to encourage patients to want medication without force.
We expect all of our topics to involve collaboration not only with experts in law and mental health, but also with consumers who have lived with the issues. We believe that consumers are a source of enormous wisdom that the research community ought better to tap into. We will have consumers speaking and writing at all of our events.
Over the years, our Institute will look at many other issues, e.g. the criminalization of mental illness, ethical dimensions of psychiatric research, geriatric patients and the law, and veterans and mental health.
RECENT NEWS

USC Gould Law Library showcases ‘rejuvenating power of music’
June 2, 2023
Performances feature LA Philharmonic concertmaster, saxophone quartet

‘The Best Beloved Thing is Justice’
June 1, 2023
New book by Gould alum Lisa Kloppenberg celebrates life of Judge and former Dean Dorothy W. Nelson

USC Gould Title IX trailblazer works to put more women in leadership roles
May 30, 2023
"If we can continue moving forward, the future is very bright," says Associate Dean Nickey Woods