The International Association of Law Schools is a private, non-political, non-profit, volunteer, collaborative, learned society dedicated to serving the worldwide legal education community. It is an association of more than 250 law schools and departments from over 60 countries representing more than 12,000 law faculty members. Our primary mission is the improvement of legal education throughout the world. The idea for an international association of law schools emerged from several meetings of legal educators from around the world who recognized the growing inter-relationship of norms from transnational legal systems. The first such meeting was held in Florence, Italy in the year 2000, and consisted of 50 invited legal educators from twenty-seven countries. This meeting led to additional meetings of international legal educators, and during the May 2004 meeting in Hawaii, 130 legal educators from forty-seven different countries unanimously adopted a resolution to form the International Association of Law Schools. In May 2005, a select group of legal educators from fourteen different countries, representing all types of the world’s legal systems, gathered in Istanbul, Turkey, and agreed to the terms of a charter for the International Association of Law Schools. In October 2005, the IALS was incorporated under the laws of the District of Columbia in the United States of America.