The university was established by the National Law School of India Act of 1986, which was enacted by the Karnataka Legislative Assembly.

Spread over a lush 23 acres, the campus houses India's largest legal library and hosts some of the country's well-known competitions and events, including the NLS Debate and Strawberry Fields festival.

The NLSIU is the only Indian institute to have won the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition, having done so in 1999 and 2013.

The National Law School was founded after two decades of work by lawyers including former Chief Justice Mohammad Hidayatullah, Ram Jethmalani and Upendra Baxi, who petitioned the Legal Education Committee of the Bar Council of India to establish a university to rival Harvard Law School.

[2] Subsequently, the Bar Council of India Trust and Government of Karnataka reached an agreement to found the first National Law University in Bangalore.

[3] In 1986, the National Law University of India was established under the leadership of its founder, then Vice-Chancellor N. R. Madhava Menon.

[4] Menon ensured that the teaching at the university was based on the case method at Harvard rather than the traditional lecture format that was then rampant across Indian law schools.

Classes commenced before the school's buildings had been fully constructed, with lessons delivered at the Central College of Bangalore University until November 1991.

The school has had five more Vice-Chancellors since Menon, namely N. L. Mitra, A. Jayagovind, G. Mohan Gopal, R. Venkata Rao, and Sudhir Krishnaswamy, who took over in 2019.

In the first two years, students attend courses in history, political science, sociology and economics, alongside legal subjects such as tort, contract and constitutional law.

[32][31] In 2023, Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud and Bhutan Princess Sonam Dechen Wangchuck inaugurated a renovated library building, which now includes a number of accessibility features, including braille printers, screen readers, and desktop magnifiers.

The school regularly participates in international competitions and is currently the highest-ranking Indian team in the debating world rankings.

NLSIU was the first South Asian team to reach the second round of the Cambridge University Debate Competition.