University of California Berkeley School of Law
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/
Berkeley Law is a community of thinkers and doers exuberantly engaged in life. We are one of the nation’s premier law schools, located at one of the world’s great universities, in one of the most vibrant places on the planet.
Berkeley Law offers a superb education in both established and emerging fields of law. Our intellectual property program was the first of its kind, and remains dominant more than a decade later. We were legal pioneers of the green movement, creating the nation’s first environmental law program. Our international law experts are tackling such urgent issues as climate change, deep-ocean drilling, and privacy in an age of high-tech surveillance. And our multifaceted social justice program is a magnet for socially minded faculty and students from across the country.
These are invigorating times at Berkeley Law. We’re in the midst of expanding our faculty by an extraordinary 40 percent, while holding admissions steady. We’ve overhauled our student financial aid offerings to ensure access at the front end and career choice at the back end. And we’re busy expanding our research horizons: since 2000, we’ve created six new centers and institutes, enlarging our capacity for serious scholarship.
When the University of California was founded in 1868—a decade before Berkeley itself was incorporated—the school was a frontier outpost of learning. Almost a century and a half later, UC Berkeley and the UC Berkeley School of Law still stake their claim at the intellectual frontier.
What We Stand For
At Berkeley Law, we are committed to absolute top-tier education and scholarship. And we are equally committed to using our substantial intellectual capital to help solve real-world problems and to create a more just society. One of our distinguishing features is the extraordinary degree to which our students and faculty partner with people beyond the school: identifying challenges, creating alliances, solving problems, and sparking change. Here in Berkeley and around the world.
The Berkeley Law Education
We are one of the most selective law schools in the nation. Of the more than 7,000 prospective J.D. students who apply annually, Berkeley Law enrolls about 270. In choosing our students, we don’t stop at brilliance. We drill down for equally important qualities, including respect for others, maturity, and purpose. We also favor students who already have some interesting work experience or graduate education under their belts.
Our highly distinguished faculty prepares our students for careers in a world of rapid change, complexity, and opportunity. At Berkeley Law, we meet this challenge by offering a curriculum that provides a solid legal and ethical foundation, enriched by courses in emerging fields and hands-on experience.
One of the greatest advantages Berkeley Law offers its students and faculty is easy access to UC Berkeley’s 13 other schools and colleges, 105 graduate programs, and 37 undergraduate programs. Thirty-six of those 37 undergraduate programs rank in the nation’s Top 10, as do all 105 of the graduate programs. And our connections on campus included dozens of concurrent-degree programs, joint-faculty appointments, interdisciplinary courses, and joint-research projects.