Loyola Law School

Loyola Law School
Motto Ad maiorem Dei gloriam - Tua Luce Dirige
(For the greater glory of God - direct us by thy light)
Parent school Loyola Marymount University
Established 1920[1] (1865)
School type Private, Roman Catholic
Parent endowment $378.8 million (as of 2007)
Dean Victor J. Gold[2]
Location Los Angeles, CA, US
Enrollment 1,297[3]
Faculty 135[3]
USNWR ranking 54[1]
Bar pass rate 83% (ABA profile)
Annual tuition $41,840 full-time
$28,035 part-time[4] (2010-11)
Website www.lls.edu
ABA profile Loyola Marymount University

Loyola Law School is the law school of Loyola Marymount University, a private Catholic university in the Jesuit and Marymount traditions, in Los Angeles, California. Loyola was established in 1920. Like Loyola University Chicago School of Law and Loyola University New Orleans College of Law (separate and unaffiliated institutions), it is named in honor of St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits. The Frank Gehry-designed campus,[5] is located in the Westlake neighborhood just west of downtown Los Angeles, and is separate from the Westchester main university campus.

Contents

Academics

U.S. News & World Report ranked Loyola Law School 54th[1] in its "America's Best Graduate Schools 2012" feature, which ranked the school fifth for trial advocacy, ninth for diversity and 10th for tax law. It was ranked 8th[6] in average graduate indebtedness ($132,267).

Loyola ranks higher on alternative guides such as The Princeton Review in addition to the Cooley rankings (also known as the Brennan rankings).[7] The Cooley Rankings ranked Loyola Law School 26th in the nation in 2010.[7]

For speciality rankings:

Distinct from most law schools, which typically reside in one or two centralized buildings, Loyola has a separate law school campus. The campus, sitting on a full city block just west of downtown Los Angeles, is made up of an open central plaza surrounded by several contemporary buildings designed by Frank Gehry.[15] Its recently renovated library is one of the largest private law libraries in the western U.S., with a collection of nearly 560,000 volumes.[16]

Including its day and evening J.D. programs, Loyola has the largest and most diverse student enrollment of any California law school, and it prides itself in its civic duties. It was the first California law school with a pro bono graduation requirement,[17] under which students perform 40 hours of pro bono work.[18] After Hurricane Katrina, Loyola was also one of a handful of schools to open its doors to students of law schools in New Orleans who were forced to relocate for a period of time after the hurricane.[19]

Degrees offered include the Juris Doctor (JD); Juris Doctor/Master of Business Administration (JD/MBA); Masters of Law in Taxation (LLM); Masters of Law in American Law & International Legal Practice (International LLM)[20]

It has been an American Bar Association (ABA) approved law school since 1935.[21] It is a member of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS).[22]

Loyola is a member of the Order of the Coif, a national law school honorary society founded for the purposes of encouraging legal scholarship and advancing the ethical standards of the legal profession.[23]

2010 adoption of B curve grading system

Before 2004, Loyola used a unique "numeric grading system" where GPAs ranged from 70 to 100. In 2004, Loyola adopted the more familiar 4.0 "letter grading scale" used by other law schools, applying a low 2.667 forced median GPA. However, all other Los Angeles area law schools applied a median GPA between 3.0 and 3.3. In May 2010, Loyola corrected this imbalance by raising their median GPA one-third of a point to 3.0 - retroactive to all classes taken since 2004. Loyola claimed the controversial move as necessary to enable its students to be competitive with those from UCLA, USC, and Pepperdine law schools.

The change in grading policy attracted national attention. In June 2010, Loyola's plan to retroactively inflate grades was the subject of a New York Times article.[24] Comedian Stephen Colbert also mocked Loyola's change in grading policy on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report."[25]

Treatment of students who apply to transfer

In 2008, Loyola students revealed to the legal tabloid Above the Law that Loyola had recently adopted a policy of excluding any student from participating in the school's on-campus interviewing (OCI) program if he had applied to transfer to other law schools.[26] The exclusion applied even if a student's transfer application was still pending during OCI and even if the student had already paid tuition to Loyola for the next semester.[27] In response to the Above the Law article, Loyola Dean Victor Gold wrote in a campus-wide e-mail that Above the Law "misrepresents our policy, omits some key facts, and gets others wrong."[27] The purpose of the policy, Gold wrote, was to prevent transferring students from "double-dipping" by interviewing both at Loyola and at their new school.[27] Furthermore, any student whose transfer application was rejected could apply for reinstatement in the OCI program.[27] However, Above the Law noted that Gold did not dispute that Loyola banned tuition-paying students whose applications were still pending from participating in OCI.[27]

Bar passage rates

Based on a 2001-2007 6 year average, 72.4% of Loyola Law graduates passed the California State Bar. The first-time pass rate for Loyola Law School graduates on the July 2010 California Bar Examination was 84%, nine percentage points above the 75% pass rate for first-time takers from all ABA-accredited schools in California. And Loyola Law School graduates represented the largest group of successful first-time takers with 297 alumni passing.[28]

Post-graduation employment

Based on a 2001-2007 6 year average, 96.7% of Loyola Law graduates were employed 9 months after graduation.[28]

Media coverage

In 2009, Loyola reported that 95.1% of its students were employed within 9 months after graduation.[29] However, Loyola does not disclose what percentage of its graduates work part-time or on a temporary basis. In 2009, Loyola reported to U.S. News & World Report that 66.6% of Loyola students were employed at graduation. In 2010, Loyola refused to release "employed upon graduation" statistics to U.S. News & World Report.

"Loyola 2L" Controversy

In 2007, an anonymous Loyola student, Loyola 2L, began an online campaign to draw attention to what he believed was false advertising by the school.

Loyola 2L's campaign drew the attention of major newspapers. The fortunes of Loyola graduates became the subject of articles in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and other national publications. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, former Dean David Burcham said that Loyola does not guarantee that its students will find jobs. He says it is problematic that big firms only interview the top of the class, "but that's the nature of the employment market; it's never been different." Burcham also asserted that a "majority" of Loyola students and alumni found that Loyola "turned out to be a good investment."[30] The same Wall Street Journal article noted that "[a]n anonymous writer called Loyola 2L, purportedly a student at Loyola Law School, who claims the school wasn't straight about employment prospects, has been beating a drum of discontent around the Web in the past year that's sparked thousands of responses, and a fan base."[30]

One firm partner criticized this practice as limiting the diversity of incoming associates by effectively narrowing the applicant pool to only 25% of the class.[31][32][33][34]

"Loyola 6L" Controversy

In October 2011, the online legal tabloid Above the Law circulated an e-mail from an anonymous 2009 Loyola graduate.[35] Writing in response to a Loyola request to update his profile in Loyola's alumni database, the graduate, who Above the Law dubbed "Loyola 6L," accused "high-powered faculty" of not caring about unemployed graduates. "The complacency of knowing that any complaining student will disappear within three years must have been at the forefront of their minds," he wrote. Loyola 6L also accused Loyola Dean Victor Gold of ignoring the struggles of recent graduates.

Programs and clinics

• Cancer Legal Resource Center[40]
• Civil Rights Litigation Project[41]
• Education Advocacy Project[42]
• Disability Mediation Center[43]
• Community Outreach Program[44]
• Inland Empire Program[45]
• Options Counseling and Lawyer Referral Service[46]
• Pro Bono Attorney Program[47]

Law reviews

Loyola currently has three student-run and edited law reviews:

Trial advocacy and moot court

Loyola's trial advocacy and moot court competition programs have traditionally been regarded as the best in the state of California:

Study-abroad programs

Loyola offers study-abroad programs for J.D. students in Beijing, China, Bologna, Italy, Cyprus, Greece, and Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica. It also offers an International LL.M. program based in Bologna, Italy.

Noted people

Dean and faculty

Current faculty

Clinical faculty

Former faculty

Alumni

Lawyers and activists

Non-legal

Political

Judicial

Academia

See also

Notes and references

  1. ^ a b c d e "U.S. News & World Report, "Best Law Schools: Loyola Maymount University"". http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-law-schools/loyola-law-school-los-angeles-03009. Retrieved April 14, 2011. 
  2. ^ a b [1]
  3. ^ a b Loyola Marymount University Official ABA Data
  4. ^ Summer 2010 - Spring 2011 Tuition and Fees
  5. ^ "Former LMU President Donald Merrifield, S.J. Dies at 81". Loyola Marymount University. http://newsroom.lmu.edu/newsroompressreleases/Former_LMU_President_Donald_Merrifield__S_J__Dies_at_81.htm. Retrieved 2010-03-10. 
  6. ^ [2]
  7. ^ a b [3]
  8. ^ [4]
  9. ^ [5]
  10. ^ [6]
  11. ^ a b [7]
  12. ^ [8]
  13. ^ Weyenberg, Michelle (January 2011), "Best Law Schools for Public Interest", The National Jurist (San Diego, California: Cypress Magazines) 20 (4): 24–28, http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/cypress/nationaljurist0111/index.php#/24 
  14. ^ Larsen, Rebecca (March 2011), "Most Diverse Law Schools (Diversity Honor Roll)", The National Jurist (San Diego, California: Cypress Magazines) 20 (6): 30–37, http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/cypress/nationaljurist0311/#/32 
  15. ^ [9]
  16. ^ [10]
  17. ^ [11]
  18. ^ [12]
  19. ^ [13]
  20. ^ 2006-2007 Fact Sheet
  21. ^ "ABA-Approved Law Schools by Year". ABA website. http://www.americanbar.org/groups/legal_education/resources/aba_approved_law_schools/by_year_approved.html. Retrieved April 20, 2011. 
  22. ^ AALS Member Schools
  23. ^ Order of the Coif member schools
  24. ^ In Law Schools, Grades Go Up, Just Like That
  25. ^ I's on Edjukashun - Loyola, Texas Textbooks & Wal-Mart
  26. ^ Elie Mystal (March 19, 2009) Loyola OCI Follow-Up Above the Law.com. Retrieved February 10, 2011.
  27. ^ a b c d e ibid.
  28. ^ a b "Internet Legal Research Group: Loyola Law School, 2009 profile". http://www.ilrg.com/rankings/law/view.php/51. Retrieved April 13, 2011. 
  29. ^ LSAC Official Guide
  30. ^ a b Efrati, Amir (September 24, 2007). "Hard Case: Job Market Wanes for U.S. Lawyers". The Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119040786780835602.html. 
  31. ^ Law Firms Still Lag in Minority Hiring
  32. ^ National Law Journal - What rankings don't say about costly choices
  33. ^ Employment Trends
  34. ^ Large Law Firm Hiring -- Introducing the "Funnel Cloud"
  35. ^ A Recent Law Grad’s Attempt at Revenge on His Law School Elie Mystal. 10/21/11. AboveTheLaw.com.
  36. ^ [14]
  37. ^ [15]
  38. ^ [16]
  39. ^ [17]
  40. ^ [18]
  41. ^ [19]
  42. ^ [20]
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  44. ^ [22]
  45. ^ [23]
  46. ^ [24]
  47. ^ [25]
  48. ^ [26]
  49. ^ [27]
  50. ^ [28]
  51. ^ "About the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review". llr.lls.edu. http://llr.lls.edu/about.html. 
  52. ^ "About the Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review". ilr.lls.edu. http://ilr.lls.edu/about.html. 
  53. ^ "Transformation in Iraq: From Ending a Modern War to Creating a Modern Peace". ilr.lls.edu/2008Symposium.htm. http://ilr.lls.edu/2008Symposium.htm. 
  54. ^ "About the Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review". elr.lls.edu. http://elr.lls.edu/about.html. 
  55. ^ [29]
  56. ^ a b [30]
  57. ^ [31]
  58. ^ [32]
  59. ^ [33]
  60. ^ [34]
  61. ^ [35]
  62. ^ [36]
  63. ^ [37]
  64. ^ [38]
  65. ^ [39]
  66. ^ [40]
  67. ^ [41]
  68. ^ [42]
  69. ^ [43]
  70. ^ [44]
  71. ^ [45]
  72. ^ [46]
  73. ^ [47]
  74. ^ [48]
  75. ^ [49]
  76. ^ [50]
  77. ^ [51]
  78. ^ [52]
  79. ^ [53]
  80. ^ California State Bar Member Records
  81. ^ [54]
  82. ^ [55]
  83. ^ [56]
  84. ^ [57]
  85. ^ [58]
  86. ^ [59]
  87. ^ California State Bar Membership Records - Mark P. Robinson
  88. ^ [60]
  89. ^ [61]
  90. ^ The Hartford Board of Directors Biographies -- Liam McGee
  91. ^ California State Bar Member Records
  92. ^ California State Bar Member Records
  93. ^ IMDB Biography
  94. ^ . http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-me-judge8may08,0,626864.story?. 

External links

California law schools approved by the American Bar Association
Approved Law Schools
Provisionally Approved Law Schools