Melbourne Law School is host to a number of research centres and institutes, specialising in a wide variety of legal fields.

[4]: 1  A small proportion of people in the United States, England and her colonies, including Australia at the time, chose to study law in college before entering the legal profession.

[4]: 7  Compared to sciences that needed expensive equipment, law could be taught more affordably and draw in a useful number of students.

[5] New admission roles created by the Supreme Court of Victoria gave prospective lawyers the choice between completing an exam administered by the Court, or completing a course of study at Melbourne Law School, with the thirty-three law students of 1857 more than doubling total enrolments at the university.

Sewell was educated at Winchester and then Oxford University, becoming a fellow of Magdalen College and graduating with a doctorate in civil law.

Sewell struggled with the commitments of teaching, with his initial lectures bland and poorly received by students.

Sir William Harrison Moore was appointed as the third dean of Melbourne Law School, succeeding Edward Jenks.

Greig received third-class honours for her degree, placing her second in her year level.Melbourne Law School under Moore opened its doors to practising lawyers in addition to academics, visiting lecturers in the year of 1908 including people such as High Court Justice H. B. Higgins, Chief Justice of Victoria Sir John Madden, and judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria Leo Cussen.

[10] The school continued to grow throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, and underwent a major transformation with the appointment of Sir Zelman Cowen as dean in 1951.

From 2008 the only degree offered by Melbourne Law School qualifying for legal practice is the graduate-entry JD.

However, the school permanently removed the LSAT as doing so increased diversity and access to the program while maintaining strong academic standards.

[15] The process of removing the LSAT requirement was criticised by the University of Melbourne Student Union, noting the WAM requirement remained high and "severe lack of organisation displayed by the School" in not providing students sufficient notice or detail surrounding the decision.

[17] Eligible students in either fee type may defer payment of tuition through the Higher Education Loan Program.

subjects, such as constitutional law,[19] and is widely pursued by the student body in both internal and external moot court competitions.

[21] Melbourne Law School students have achieved success in multiple international moot court competitions.

[30] Melbourne Law School students also produce a newspaper, De Minimis, and a magazine, "Purely Dicta".

Unlike today, members used to comprise primarily of students working as an articled clerk in a law firm.

Three governors-general and at least 13 attorneys-general have also graduated from Melbourne Law School, including Gareth Evans, Nicola Roxon and Mark Dreyfus.

Foreign politicians who attended Melbourne Law School include Neri Javier Colmenares, a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines, Adnan Buyung Nasution, member of the Presidential Advisory Council of the Republic of Indonesia and Dame Meg Taylor, former ambassador of Papua New Guinea to the United States and former secretary general of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat Four Melbourne Law School graduates have served as Chief Justice of Australia.

Geoffrey Nettle, a current justice of the High Court of Australia, graduated from Melbourne Law School.

In addition, two Melbourne Law School graduates have served on the International Court of Justice: Hsu Mo and Hilary Charlesworth.

Francis Gurry, the director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization, Gillian Triggs, the president of the Australian Human Rights Commission, and Samuel Pisar, the UNESCO special envoy for Holocaust education, all graduated from Melbourne Law School.

Melbourne Law School graduates in the business world include James P. Gorman, chairman and CEO of Morgan Stanley.

Legal academics who graduated from Melbourne Law School include Sir David Derham, the founding dean of Monash Law School, Greg Craven, the vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University, and Sir John Monash, a vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne and decorated World War I general.