The University of California, Los Angeles School of Law (commonly known as UCLA School of Law or UCLA Law) is the law school of the University of California, Los Angeles.

History

thumb|left|200px|The Hugh and Hazel Darling Law Library, UCLA School of Law

Founded in 1949, the UCLA School of Law is the third oldest of the five law schools within the University of California system. It was established by legislation from State Assemblyman William H. Rosenthal in 1947.

In the 1930s, initial efforts to establish a law school at UCLA were not successful as a result of resistance from UC president Robert Gordon Sproul, and additionally because UCLA's supporters eventually refocused their efforts on adding medical and engineering schools.

During the mid-1940s, the motion for the creation of the UCLA School of Law emerged from outside of the UCLA community. Assemblyman Rosenthal conceived of and fought for the creation of the first public law school in Southern California as a convenient and affordable alternative to the expensive private law school at USC. Rosenthal's first attempt in 1945 failed, but his second attempt was able to gain momentum when the State Bar of California and the UCLA Alumni Association announced their support for the bill. On July 18, 1947, Governor Earl Warren authorized the appropriation of $1 million for the construction of a new law school at UCLA by signing Assembly Bill 1361 into state law. These developments had a considerable impact on Berkeley Law, which then changed its name, finally got its own subsidy for its law review, and battled with the other faculty at the Berkeley campus to avoid ejection of its faculty from the Academic Senate (because the amendments to the regents' standing orders affected faculty at all UC professional schools offering courses only at the graduate level). Dean Maxwell "presided over happier, more harmonious years of institutional growth," and, after four years of construction, completion of the Hugh and Hazel Darling Law Library in January 2000.

In 1973, students created a network of student-run legal clinics first known as El Centro Legal de Santa Monica, which continues to provide pro bono services around Los Angeles with 15 separate clinics.

Academics

UCLA Law has approximately 1,000 students in its Juris Doctor (J.D.) program and 200 students in its Master of Laws (LL.M.) program. It also offers a Doctor of Juridical Science (S.J.D.) program for students who already have a J.D. and hope to become law professors, as well as a Master of Legal Studies (M.L.S.) program for those who do not seek a law degree, but find a legal education an important complement to their professional obligations. The Master of Legal Studies degree also offers a Concurrent Degree Program for David Geffen School of Medicine students (MD/MLS).

The school allows students to represent clients while under supervision. UCLA Law's clinics also provide services to many people who cannot afford to pay for their legal services, including veterans, the homeless, and individuals appearing in criminal and immigration courts. In 2017, the school opened the Documentary Film Legal Clinic and Music Industry Clinic, which provide legal services to aspiring visual journalists, musicians, and entrepreneurs in the arts, and the Veterans Justice Clinic at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center.

Students can elect to specialize in law and policy, business law and policy, entertainment law, environmental law, public interest law, critical race studies, and law and philosophy. The roughly 300 students who begin law school at UCLA every year are organized into sections. Students take all of their first-year courses with their sections.

Several joint degree programs are available, which require four years of study and result in the simultaneous award of a Juris Doctor and master's degree in Afro-American studies, American Indian studies, law and management; public health; public policy; philosophy, social welfare, and urban planning.

Faculty and students

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  • 122 undergraduate schools represented
  • 63% female; 35% male; 2% non-binary
  • 58% students of color
  • 64% California residents; 36% non-residents
  • 9% majored in engineering, technology, science or math
  • 18% are the first in their families to have completed college

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UCLA School of Law has a faculty of over 100 members with expertise in all major disciplines of law, representing "one of the most diverse in the country." Thirteen members of the school's tenured faculty have been recognized for being the most-cited scholars in their areas of specialty. The school faculty is ranked 11th for scholarship, up from 15th in 2010 and 13th in 2013.

In 2023, 6,457 students applied to attend UCLA Law, and 315 were enrolled. The median LSAT score for members of the entering class in 2023 is 170.

The Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP) works with the intersection of Immigration Scholarship and practice. It works with the Immigrant Family Legal Clinic and the Immigrant's Right Policy Clinic.

Campus

thumb|right|UCLA School of Law's south entrance facing Charles E. Young Drive East

UCLA School of Law is located on the UCLA campus in the Westwood area of Los Angeles.

The school proper is housed in a three-story brick building known simply as the Law Building, with the law library tower extending to five stories. The oldest parts of the Law Building's interior are notorious for a "high school atmosphere" and "dark, drafty classrooms". However, the Law Building 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.

Reception

Rankings

In 2025, U.S. News & World Report ranked UCLA as 12th among U.S. law schools, including 5th (tied) in trial advocacy, 6th in environmental law, 8th in criminal law, 10th (tied) in tax law, and 26th in Law Schools With the Most Graduates in Federal Clerkships.

The Hollywood Reporter has repeatedly ranked UCLA as the number one school for entertainment law.

In 2022, UCLA joined a growing list of law schools that said they would no longer actively participate in the U.S. News rankings.

Bar passage rates

In October 2020, UCLA Law's bar passage rates were 97% in California and 100% in New York.

American Bar Association data shows that more than 95% of 2019 graduates had secured full-time, long-term, JD-required employment within 10 months of graduation.

People

Alumni

Current faculty

  • Khaled Abou El Fadl – Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor of Law and scholar of Islamic Jurisprudence; chairman of Islamic Studies Department at UCLA
  • Stephen Bainbridge – corporations and business law
  • Ann E. Carlson – U.S. environmental law and policy
  • Kimberlé Crenshaw – founding coordinator of the "Critical Race Theory Workshop" movement; also teaches at Columbia Law School
  • Ariela Gross – contract law, constitutional law, enslavement and racialization in U.S. legal history
  • Cheryl Harris – civil rights, civil liberties, and critical race theory
  • Richard L. Hasen – election law and campaign finance; director, Safeguarding Democracy Project
  • Lynn M. LoPucki – Security Pacific Bank Professor of Law; her Bankruptcy Research Database provides data for empirical work bankruptcy
  • Hiroshi Motomura – immigration law
  • David Nimmer – copyright law
  • Frances Olsen – feminist legal theory
  • Angela R. Riley – indigenous rights, chief justice of Citizen Potawatomi Nation (2010–present)
  • Seana Shiffrin – philosophy of law
  • Eugene Volokh – author of textbooks on First Amendment law and academic legal writing; author of over 45 law review articles; founder of The Volokh Conspiracy blog
  • Adam Winkler – author of Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America and We the Corporations: How Corporate America Won Its Civil Rights
  • Ken Ziffren – entertainment attorney; founder of UCLA Law's Ziffren Center for Media, Entertainment, Technology and Sports Law

Former faculty

  • Richard L. Abel – member of the faculty since 1974; scholar of the sociology of law
  • Brainerd Currie – professor (1949–1952); expert on the conflict of laws in the United States
  • Jesse Dukeminier – professor (1963–2003); property law, wills, trusts, and estates
  • James L. Malone – associate dean (1961–1967); later became Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs (1981–1985)
  • Mari Matsuda – first female Asian-American law professor to obtain tenure at any law school in the United States, while teaching at UCLA Law in 1998
  • Richard C. Maxwell – dean of the School of Law (1958–1969)
  • Jennifer Mnookin – evidence (law) (2005–2022), became chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2022
  • Melville B. Nimmer – professor (1962–1985); U.S. copyright law and father of David Nimmer
  • Cruz Reynoso – professor (1991–2001), former associate justice of the Supreme Court of California (1982–1987)
  • Michael H. Schill – dean and professor (2004–2009), property law and urban planning; became president of the University of Oregon in 2015 and president of Northwestern University in 2022
  • Lynn Stout – professor (2001–2012); corporate law, securities, and derivatives

References