SCHOOL OF LAW
UCLA
1242 Law
Box 951476
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1476
(310) 825-4841
http://www.law.ucla.edu
By any standard, the UCLA School of Law is recognized as one of the nation's great law schools. This reputation is based on excellence in scholarship, a rigorous educational program, and the quality of a faculty that includes eminent authorities in all major fields of law.The educational program at the UCLA School of Law is rigorous and competitive, but it takes place in a humane environment with a genuine spirit of community. The school's student body is intellectually distinguished, interesting, and culturally diverse.
The school's strong clinical program offers courses in lawyering skills such as interviewing, counseling, negotiation, and trial advocacy. UCLA students, alumni, and faculty have collaborated to pioneer clinical legal education. Students see more focus on the attorney/client relationship; they see more of what ultimately faces them as lawyers and policymakers. Students and faculty often pioneer new programs together, such as the Environmental Clinic, the Program in Public Interest Law and Policy, and a concentration in business law or critical race studies.
An extensive and diversified student extern program, one of the most highly regarded moot court programs in the nation, and a basic philosophy that teaches law students to think clearly and analytically, but with compassion, all contribute to the distinction of the school.
, one of two academic units at UCLA that operate on a semester (rather than quarter) system, offers a three-year curriculum leading to the J.D. degree. The school is accredited by the California Committee of Bar Examiners, is a member of the Association of American Law Schools, and is on the approved list of the American Bar Association. Graduates of the school are qualified to apply for admission to practice in any state in the U.S.
The school is designed to produce lawyers who are well-prepared for the various private and public roles that are assigned to members of the legal profession. Students do not undertake a specific major but have the opportunity to enroll in a wide variety of courses dealing with various legal fields.
The school offers the following degrees:
concurrent degree programs allow students to fulfill the requirements of the J.D. and another graduate degree simultaneously: the M.B.A./J.D. with the John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management; the M.A./J.D. with the Department of Urban Planning, the M.P.P/J.D. with the Department of Policy Studies, and the M.S.W./J.D. with the Department of Social Welfare in the School of Public Policy and Social Research; the M.A./J.D. with the American Indian Studies Program and the M.A./J.D. with the Afro-American Studies Program in the College of Letters and Science; and either the M.Ed., M.A., Ed.D., or Ph.D./J.D. with the Department of Education in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. For details on all degree programs, see Law in the Curriculum and Courses section of this catalog.
In addition to the concurrent programs above, students may design a tailored program from other disciplines in UCLA's curriculum or from another high-quality institution; this must be arranged in consultation with the School of Law and the other selected program.
Program in Public Interest Law and Policy
The School of Law has long attracted students interested in public interest and policy issues. The school has one of the strongest public interest law faculties in the country and sits next to the School of Public Policy and Social Research in a city that is a living laboratory for every conceivable social problem.
Building on these strengths, the school instituted a Program in Public Interest Law and Policy in Fall Semester 1997. Students take a special lawyering skills class, participate in a public interest workshop in their first year, and take required year-long seminars in their second and third years. Through the three-year program, which leads to the J.D. degree, students work closely with the small group of faculty who designed the program.
The program marks a distinct break with the way law schools have traditionally trained lawyers for public interest careers. Recognizing the need for coordinated and sequenced training and hoping to engage the interest of the most dedicated public interest-minded students, the program offers a challenging approach to legal education that helps aspiring lawyers refine their own career goals while training them for legal and policy work in the public interest.
The UCLA School of Law offers one of the finest clinical education programs in the nation. Housed in a technologically sophisticated clinical wing, the program provides extensive and rigorous practical training for student-lawyers interested in litigation and transactional work prior to entry into the legal profession. Through simulated and actual client contact, students learn skills such as interviewing and counseling clients, drafting legal documents, examining and cross-examining witnesses, negotiating commercial agreements and litigation settlements, deposing witnesses, mediating disputes, and arguing before a judge or jury. In addition, students interested in a transactional practice can learn how to finance a start-up company, sell a private company, or cope with a myriad of environmental issues that arise when selling a business.
To give some examples of clinical experience, students in the highly successful Frank G. Wells Environmental Law Clinic work on large and small cases, both federal and state, involving citizen enforcement actions under various environmental statutes, especially actions under the Clean Water Act against polluters of the Santa Monica Bay. Students in Public Policy Advocacy recently exposed the appalling conditions of California public elementary, middle, and high schools and researched the legal accountability of enforcing basic standards in matters such as textbooks and a shortage of trained teachers. Other innovative programs include a complex litigation clinic that concentrates on the discovery process and an Indian Law Clinic where students provide legal assistance to Native American tribes with the focus being on legislative drafting.
In addition to the speciality clinics, students can choose from an extensive array of clinical subjects ranging from trial advocacy and alternative dispute resolution to taking dispositions or renegotiating business agreements. Students in most clinical courses work with real clients under close faculty supervision, either in the school's in-house clinical office or in public interest law settings.
The clinical wing includes a two-story Law Office designed with modern lawyering technology. The student work rooms are equipped with networked computers that have access to legal research databases, the Internet, and leading-edge computer litigation support systems.
The School of Law was a pioneer of clinical legal education, and the program continues on the cutting edge of methods for training lawyers. Clinical faculty members have written numerous influential texts and articles that are used by law schools nationwide.
The school has one of the most extensive, best established, and most diversified student extern programs in the nation. Under supervision of experienced public interest and governmental lawyers and federal judges, students perform legal work in government offices, public interest law firms, nonprofit agencies, and the chambers of federal judges.
In the semester-long program, students develop legal skills in supervised settings and acquire perspectives about the lawyering process or the judicial decision-making process. They also participate in a faculty-led, law school-based seminar in which they reflect systematically in a classroom setting on their experiences in the placement. Students regularly report that the program is an excellent educational experience.
The Business Law Program gives second- and third-year law students a coherent program of focused coursework in an important practice area. Students who successfully complete the program receive an appropriate notation on their transcripts.
The program has several goals. A large part of practice consists of transactions--a term encompassing agreements as diverse as the negotiation of a lease, the financing of low-cost housing, and the mergers of billion-dollar companies. Lawyers structuring those transactions and those engaged in litigation about them need to understand both legal principles and economic dynamics. Yet students interested in such practices are sometimes uncertain how they may best prepare themselves for such careers. The program provides guidance for these students, offering suggested courses and sequences of courses that enable those interested in a career in business law--or another field where such knowledge would be useful--to plan orderly, logical schedules that build from the basic to the advanced.
Business law students take three foundational courses in their second year of law school: financial analysis, business associations, and taxation. Thereafter, students may select one of five cores, or areas of specialization: corporate and securities, commercial and financing, international business, taxation, and a general business field. In each of the fields students choose among a set of relevant courses that build on and reinforce each other. Students then complete the concentration with an advanced transactional course.
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