It was founded as Portia School of Law in 1908 and is located in downtown Boston near the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

[8] According to New England Law's official 2018 ABA-required disclosures, the class of 2018 had a full-time employment rate of 83.4% with 4% pursuing an additional degree.

[13] The former site of the Portia Law School at 45 Mount Vernon Street is a stop on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.

[17] In the 1980s, the school started a program that arranged for students to study abroad and work with former Soviet Bloc nations to develop their own legal systems.

[18] New England Law also became a co-founder of the Consortium for Innovative Legal Education; which allows students to study abroad at countries throughout the world.

[18] In 1996, New England Law students worked with Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals by providing legal research and analysis for war crimes in Rwanda and the former nation of Yugoslavia.

[26] New England Law offers full-time and part-time (both day and evening) Juris Doctor programs, with an application deadline of May 1.

In 2021, the entering class had Law School Admission Test (LSAT) scores in the range of 149 to 157 (25th–75th percentile).

[35] According to New England Law's official 2018 ABA-required disclosures, the class of 2018 had an employment rate of 83% with 4% pursuing an additional degree.

[9] The Center for Law and Social Responsibility, CLSR, works mostly pro bono and public service activities.

The CLSR also works to support classroom projects, scholarship, and other activities that convey current social problems.

[36] The Center for International Law and Policy, CILP, is utilized by both students and faculty for research, analysis and produce resource material on numerous topics.

Most students work assist in prosecutions related to war crimes, because of the schools relationships with international criminal courts and tribunals.

[37] CILP also hosts the annual international law conference, by creating more awareness in global legal work, for issues such as Chinese unification and Taiwanese independence, competition laws, responses to rogue regimes, the Rwandan genocide, and the development of new countries out of the former Yugoslavia.

Typical placements include Liberty Mutual, RNK Telecommunication, Natural Microsystems, Inc., the Boston Stock Exchange, and the National Association of Securities Dealers.