Nora Demleitner served as dean from 2012 through 2015, the first woman to hold the position, during which time the school completed its $35 million campaign, Honor Our Past, Build Our Future,[5] renovated Lewis Hall, established the Washington, DC portion of W&L's third-year program,[6] and significantly increased the employment[7] and bar passage[8] rates of its graduates.

The Future of Privacy Forum will facilitate professional, research, and curricular development, and the Washington, DC portion of W&L's third-year program will move into its offices.

[10] Sydney Lewis Hall is the home of the school of law on the historic campus of Washington and Lee in Lexington, Virginia.

Lewis Hall was designed by Marcellus Wright Cox & Smith Architects in the Mid-century modern style.

The Millhiser Moot Courtroom serves as the continuity of operations site for the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

[12] Lewis Hall also has a cafeteria for students, staff, and faculty called the Brief Stop, which serves food, snacks, and drinks.

As part of its $35 million campaign completed in 2015, Honor Our Past, Build Our Future, the School of Law renovated and modernized its facilities.

The library houses more than 492,000 volumes and is unique in offering each student personally designated work and storage space.

[16] The Powell Wing includes an expanded main reading room space, in addition to stack area and workspace for the papers.

[43] The Juris Doctor curriculum at W&L consists of three unique and integrated years of full-time study with a mix of traditional casebook method and practice-oriented courses.

1Ls are also assigned to an upper-level student from the Burks Scholar Program who teaches legal research and Bluebook methods.

Since establishing the practice-based curriculum, W&L incorporated its experiential curricular offerings, such as practicum courses, into the second-year in addition to casebook-oriented electives.

The new third-year program, which began in the fall of 2010, replaced further elective advanced coursework based on the casebook method as is the norm in most ABA law schools.

The 3L year requires students to exercise professional judgment, work in teams, solve problems, counsel clients, negotiate solutions, and serve as advocates and counselors — the full complement of professional activity that engages practicing lawyers as they apply legal theory and doctrines to the real-world issues of serving clients ethically and honorably within the highest traditions of the profession.

The program is flexible and allows students the ability to tailor their schedule and, if they wish, to take several traditional casebook method courses.

The Honor System has been run by the student body since 1905 and is derived from Robert E. Lee during his tenure as President of the University.

A formal review, occasionally including referendums, is held every three years to refine the tenets of the Honor System.

These include more freedom in exam taking as well as an informal account system at the Brief Stop cafeteria in Sydney Lewis Hall.