The University of California, Berkeley School of Law, commonly referred to as Berkeley Law and Boalt Hall, is one of 14 schools and colleges at the University of California, Berkeley. Boalt Hall is consistently ranked both as one of the top 10 law schools and the top public law school in the United States,[1] making it one of the most elite law schools in the country. Over the past several years, Boalt Hall has had an acceptance rate of around 10%, the lowest of any law school in the United States except Yale Law School and Stanford Law School. Admitted applicants generally have an undergraduate GPA of between 3.7 and 3.9 and a Law School Admission Test (LSAT) score of between 163 and 170 (90th and 98th percentile of all test-takers). The 2009 U.S. News & World Report ranked Boalt Hall sixth overall among all law schools in the country.[2] Boalt Hall is renowned for having what is regarded as the best intellectual property program in the world, a discipline in which it has held the top spot in the U.S. News and World Report rankings for 11 years running.[3][4]
In April 2008, the law school's name was officially changed to "UC Berkeley School of Law", with "Berkeley Law" as its shortened form, in order to more closely tie the law school's name with the campus upon which it resides. The administration hopes that this move will increase the law school's prestige, since people will now associate it with the world-renowned Berkeley campus. [5][6]
The Department of Jurisprudence was founded at Berkeley in 1894. In 1912, the department was elevated to the School of Jurisprudence, which was then renamed the School of Law in 1950.
The School was originally located in the center of the main UC Berkeley campus in the Boalt Memorial Hall of Law, built in 1911 with funds largely from Elizabeth Josselyn Boalt donated in memory of her late husband, John Henry Boalt. In 1951, the School moved to its current location in the new Boalt Hall, at the southeast corner of the campus, and the old Boalt Hall was renamed Durant Hall. The current structure is notorious for its bland architecture:
Academics
Boalt Hall's law library was expanded in 1996 with the North Addition, pictured above.
Boalt Hall has approximately 850 J.D. students, 30 students in the LL.M. and J.S.D. programs, and 45 students in the Ph.D. program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy. The School also features specialized curricular programs in Business, Law and Economics, Comparative Legal Studies, Environmental Law, International Legal Studies, Law and Technology, and Social Justice.
The JD program's admissions process is highly selective. Boalt Hall is known to value high undergraduate GPAs, perhaps even more than high LSAT scores (whereas the opposite is considered the norm at other top law schools). According to U.S. News and World Report, Boalt has the third-lowest acceptance rate among American law schools; approximately 10% of applicants are admitted.
The teaching style of Boalt's conservative faculty relies heavily on the Socratic method, a standard curriculum, and a "stone-heavy work load."[7]
Boalt's grading system for the JD program is unusual among law schools. Students are graded on a High Honors (HH), Honors (H), and Pass (P) scale.[8] Approximately 60% of the students in each class receive a grade of Pass, 30% receive a grade of Honors, and the highest 10% receive a grade of High Honors; lower grades of Substandard Pass (or Pass Conditional, abbreviated PC) and No Credit (NC) may be awarded at the discretion of professors. The top student in each class or section receives the Jurisprudence Award, while the second-place student receives the Prosser Prize.
For a typical class in the JD program, the average age of admitted students is 24 years old, over a range of ages from 20 to 48 years old. Approximately 88% of JD students receive financial aid. As state institutions, Boalt and UCLA had the lowest tuition of the top 15 law schools in the country in 2005. The tuition for the 2006-07 school year is $25,380.00 for California residents ($37,625.00 for nonresidents), though the sum has been rising each year.
Rankings
US News ranks Boalt Hall 6th among top law schools in the US, but as the least diverse of the four law schools in the UC system.[9][10] It has the second smallest student body and the smallest student/faculty ratio of all the UC schools.[11] While it is the most expensive law school in the UC system, it is only slightly more expensive than UCLA.[12] However, it grants a median amount in financial aid for the system, and students tend to graduate with the least amount of debt on average than most of the other UC schools, with the exception of Davis.[13][14]
According to Brian Letier's Law School rankings, Boalt ranks 7th in the nation in terms of scholarly impact as measured by academic citations of tenure-stream faculty.[15] In terms of student numerical quality, Boalt ranks 14th in the nation.[16]
Boalt Hall in popular culture
Sandy Cohen, a character on the popular television series The O.C., is a lawyer and a Boalt Hall alumnus. The O.C. at Boalt is a student group that, in addition to screening episodes of The O.C. during the lunch period, offers the Sandy Cohen Fellowship, a summer grant for students who plan to work as public defenders (on The O.C., Sandy Cohen worked as a public defender while living in Orange County). In recent years, The O.C. at Boalt has also managed to bring Peter Gallagher, the actor who plays Sandy Cohen, to Boalt to speak on an annual basis.
David Weissbrodt, 1969 - Former head of United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and U.N. Special Rapporteur on the rights of non-citizens
William L. Prosser – former Dean of the School of Law (1948-1961), author of several well-known treatises and pioneer in the field of strict products liability
Eleanor Swift – led the establishment of Boalt's Center for Clinical Education, which brings clients in need of legal advice to Boalt, where students and faculty provide counsel.
John Wilkins– first African American professor at Boalt
John Yoo – co-author of the USA PATRIOT Act and author of the memo defending expansive presidential wartime powers.
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