| University of California, Los Angeles School of Law | |
| Motto | Fiat lux (Latin) |
|---|---|
| Parent school | University of California |
| Established | 1949 |
| School type | Public |
| Parent endowment | $1.88 billion (June 30, 2009) [1] |
| Dean | Rachel Moran |
| Location | Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Enrollment | 1,011[2] |
| Faculty | 116-138[2] |
| USNWR ranking | 16[3] |
| Bar pass rate | 85%[2] |
| Annual tuition | $44,922 (CA resident) $54,767 (CA non-resident)[4] |
| Website | www.law.ucla.edu |
| ABA profile | ABA Law School Data |
The UCLA School of Law is the law school of the University of California, Los Angeles. It has been approved by the American Bar Association (ABA) since 1950.[5] It joined the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) in 1952.[6]
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Founded in 1949, UCLA School of Law is currently one of five law schools within the University of California system. The others are UC Berkeley School of Law, King Hall at UC Davis, UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, and UC Irvine School of Law.
UCLA Law's first dean was L. Dale Coffman, who recruited elderly Harvard dean Roscoe Pound as one of the school's first professors.[7] The school was forced to operate in a Quonset hut for its first two years until a proper building was constructed. In September 1949, Pound insisted on delivering the school's first ever keynote address in the Latin language, in the Quonset hut.[8]
The UCLA Law Review, the law school's flagship scholarly journal, was first published in 1953. Additionally, the first scholarly journal in the nation focused on issues affecting Latinos, the Chicana/o Latina/o Law Review, was first published in 1971 as the Chicano Law Review.
The school offers the standard Juris Doctor degree as well as several programs of specialization within the degree (which are indicated by notations on a student's diploma). Students can specialize in Business Law and Policy, Entertainment Law, Public Interest Law, Critical Race Studies, and Law and Philosophy. The roughly 300 students who begin Law School at UCLA every year are divided into sections in order to encourage a sense of community. Students take all of their first year courses with their sections.[9]
The Socratic method is still in use by most professors, but some faculty allow for a slightly more relaxed classroom atmosphere than at other top-tier law schools.[10] The school also has traditionally offered a strong clinical program, which is housed in its own wing (built at a cost of $9 million).[11] Each year, the clinical program puts students through realistic simulations of trials, depositions, and client meetings; these are staffed with a pool of nearly 500 volunteers drawn from all over the Southland who play parties, witnesses, judges, and jurors.[12]
Several joint degree programs are available, requiring four years of study, and resulting in the simultaneous award of a Juris Doctor and a Master’s Degree in one of the following areas: Afro-American Studies, American Indian Studies, Law and Management, Public Health, Public Policy, Social Welfare, or Urban Planning.[13]
The school also offers a Master of Laws (LL.M.) law program, which involves one year of post-law-graduate studies. This program is popular among foreign students, who then take the California bar exam.
Finally, it offers a Doctor of Juridical Science (S.J.D.) degree, designed for students who already have a J.D. and hope to become law professors.[14]
UCLA School of Law has over 100 faculty members with expertise in all major disciplines of law; it "is one of the most diverse in the country."[10] Since 2002, the faculty has published 48 new books, 45 chapters, and over 150 journal articles.
Admission to UCLA Law is highly competitive. The admission rate for the Class of 2013 was 16.4%, making the school among the most selective in the country. To fill a class size of 310 students, 1,436 students were admitted out of a pool of 8,748 applicants.[15] The median LSAT score for the Class of 2013 was 168, and the median GPA was 3.77.[16] The top quartile of the incoming class achieved a 3.87 GPA or higher, and the top quartile scored a 170 on the LSAT.[17] The Princeton Review gives UCLA Law an admissions selectivity rating of 96 out of 100.
The student body is "extraordinarily diverse."[18] Over 32% of the UCLA law students are students of color: 5.3% of the student body identify as African-American, 17.8% as Asian, 8.4% as Hispanic or Latino(a) and 1.3% as Native American. The student body is 49% female and 51% male.
The students enrolled in the fall 2009 came from 110 undergraduate schools; by number of students enrolled, the top undergraduate schools were UCLA, UC Berkeley, University of Southern California, UC San Diego, Stanford University, University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, UC Santa Barbara and Harvard University.[19] Thirty-one percent of UCLA law students hail from out-of-state, coming from 33 states and 9 foreign countries.
The school sponsors a chapter 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.[20]
UCLA School of Law is located on the northeastern edge of the UCLA campus in the Westwood area of Los Angeles.[21] The school is approximately five miles from the Pacific Ocean.
The school proper is housed in a five-story brick building known simply as the Law Building. The oldest parts of the Law Building's interior are notorious for a "high school atmosphere" and "dark, drafty classrooms,"[22] but it has been extensively improved by the addition of the clinical wing in 1990 and the new law library in 2001. A few offices, like the Office of Career Services, are housed in an adjacent building, Dodd Hall.
The campus sits on the sloping foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains, between the communities of Brentwood to the west and Holmby Hills to the east. The entrance to the Playboy Mansion is a short way up Sunset Boulevard, in Holmby Hills. Just beyond Holmby Hills is Beverly Hills.
In 2011 US News & World Report ranked UCLA as tied for 16th of U.S. law schools.[3] In 2010, it had the largest student body in the UC system after Hastings, and the smallest student/faculty ratio.[23] It was the second least expensive law school in the UC system, Hastings being the cheapest.[23] While in 2008 it granted the most in financial aid, students still tended to graduate with more debt on average than at the other UC law schools.[24][25]
According to Brian Leiter's Law School rankings, UCLA ranks 15th in the nation in terms of scholarly impact as measured by academic citations of tenure-stream faculty during the years 2005-2009.[26] In terms of overall student numerical quality, UCLA ranks 14th in the nation.[27]
Based on a 2001-2007 6 year average, 87.7% of UCLA Law graduates passed the California State Bar.[28]
Based on a 2001-2007 6 year average, 98% of UCLA Law graduates were employed 9 months after graduation.[28]
As of 2008[update], 94.9% of students have already secured employment by the time they graduate; 99.1% of 2008 graduates secured employment within nine months of graduation. The median starting salary in private practice for the Class of 2008 was $160,000. 8% of graduates were employed in public-interest fields of law, one of the higher rates in the country. While these UCLA-trained attorneys earn significantly less than their private practice counterparts, their median starting salary, around $46,000, is also one of the highest in the country.[29]
The International Human Rights Law Program, founded in 2008, is an organization for human rights education, scholarship, advocacy, and policy-oriented research.[30] It includes the Sanela Diana Jenkins International Justice Clinic,[31] which assists in the apprehension and prosecution of alleged war criminals in Bosnia, initially focussing on the relations between Ratko Mladic, formerly head of the Bosnian Serb Army, and others accused of involvement in the Srebrenica massacre.[32] Haris Silajdžić, President of Bosnia and Herzegovina, will work closely with the program.[33] The faculty director is Richard Harold Steinberg and the executive director is David Kaye.
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