People_

Welcome from the Dean

Inspiring legal minds, passionate for justice

Professor Simon Bronitt, Head of School and Dean, highlights the key strengths of our Law School.

Simon Bronitt

Professor Simon Bronitt, Head of School and Dean, Sydney Law School

As the Dean, I am both honoured and privileged to lead such an outstanding scholarly community. The Sydney Law School can point to many honours and achievements bestowed upon our students and staff during more than 150 years of law teaching at the University of Sydney.

As the first law school in Australia, we have educated successive generations of outstanding lawyers, judges and leaders from public and private sectors. Our School scores highly across many global rankings  - the most recent, 2023 QS World University Rankings placed the Sydney Law School as 16th in the world. Our graduate outcomes testify to the high quality of our students and their legal education, and confirm that we continue to be one of the top places to study law globally.

These points of distinction, though always welcome, are not the only way to gauge success. Our job foremost is to inspire legal minds, whether it be the novice student navigating law for the first time, or the more experienced scholar engaged in ground-breaking research. Learning the law should be far more than gaining technical competence in a professional discipline – it demands cultivation of deep, critical and creative thinking skills about the nature of law, and its varied and changing roles in society.

Learning the law from leaders in their academic discipline and legal profession is one of the many advantages of joining Sydney Law School. Another is having access to world class resources and facilities, professional student services and co-curricular programs (domestic and international) which enrich our learning environment. Working with the student leaders of the Sydney University Law Society, we are delivering new and innovative ways to enhance the student cohort experience and wellbeing. When graduation comes, Sydney Law School scholars will have no doubt learned much about the law and legal process, but also its capacity to uphold (or erode) the rule of law, justice and fairness. Cultivating this caste of mind and independence of thought, I believe, is one of the most important ‘transferrable skills’ our legal education provides.

Members of the Sydney Law School community are welcomed from far and wide. The University is committed to strategies for enhancing diversity and inclusion, and engagement in the spirit of reconciliation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to deliver the aspirations of our indigenous strategy Wingara Mura-Bunga Barrabugu. The School will continue to promote and expand pathways to law studies that will attract and support students from wide and varied backgrounds.

The road ahead for Sydney Law School is exciting, and I am looking forward to forging new partnerships for the benefit of our outstanding students and staff, as well as engaging in new initiatives with the wider professional and alumni communities.

Please take time to browse through our website – you will find a School where our students and staff are engaged, dynamic and global in outlook.

Professor Simon Bronitt
Head of School and Dean, Sydney Law School
@SBronitt