Columbia University School of Law – New York Law Schools

Columbia University was founded in 1754 as King’s College, which was located in a schoolhouse in Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan.

The Law School, one of the first independent law schools in the nation, opened its doors in 1858 as Columbia College of Law. Theodore Dwight became the school’s first warden (an earlier name for the dean) and introduced a new mode of legal pedagogy known as “The Dwight Method.” In lieu of the prevailing office apprenticeship as a means of legal education, Dwight developed a formal program of law, using lectures, examinations, recitations, quizzes, moot trials, and Socratic dialogue with the student.