UC Irvine law school thrilled with successful first decade

When fall classes kick off today at UC Irvine School of Law, the more than 200 first-year students on campus will be the largest incoming class in the school’s 10-year history.

The start of the academic year comes just a week after a new study rated the law school’s faculty 12th in the nation for scholarly impact.

UCI Law is also ranked 21st in the all-important U.S. News & World Report rankings, a position many other respected schools in existence much longer would love to hold.

Those figures are just a few of many indicators school leaders and supporters highlight in making the case the institution’s first decade, which will be celebrated with a ribbon-cutting ceremony today, has been a stunning success.

“The goal was to make UCI Law a top law school from the very beginning,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the renowned constitutional scholar who was school’s founding dean. “It has so exceeded whatever we could have hoped for.”

The school, which welcomed its first class of 60 students in the fall of 2009 during an economic downturn, secured full accreditation from the American Bar Association in 2014. That approval came in the earliest possible time under the ABA rules.

UCI Law’s commitment to public service law from its inception as the first new public law school in California in nearly 50 years is another reason it has won plaudits.

Its students have performed more than 80,000 hours of pro bono work, and more than 100 pro bono projects are offered to them.

L. Song Richardson, who succeeded Chemerinsky as UCI Law’s dean, said the importance of the school’s public service mission is why one of the events celebrating the 10-year anniversary will be a day of service on Aug. 25.

In addition, the school has required students to complete a legal clinic to graduate, which has helped produce practice-ready attorneys and resulted in legal victories. In 2015, the school’s Immigrant Rights Clinic played a key role in securing a preliminary injunction against workplace raids in Arizona carried out under the direction of then-Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

“They have defined themselves beyond what most law schools have as committed to lawyers who pursue practice in the public interest,” said Marc L. Miller, dean of the University of Arizona’s law school.

The school and its graduates have also earned the respect of the local legal community.

Orange County law firms previously had to focus their recruiting efforts in other regions and compete with firms in those areas, said Gary J. Singer, former managing partner of O’Melveny & Myers LLP’s Newport Beach office.

But Singer, an early backer of UCI Law who is considered one its founders, said the school has provided firms in the area with a steady stream of new practice-ready lawyers with great pedigrees. That’s the reason why many of the firms have been consistent financial supporters from the beginning, he said.

“The law school has taken many in the legal and business community by storm,” Singer said.

Former state Sen. Joseph L. Dunn, who was a key legislative supporter and another of the school’s founding lawyers, agreed.

“For those us of that have been involved in the dream of a UCI law school since the 1990s, its growth and stature is something that each and every one of us are deeply proud of,” said Dunn, a special advisor to the law school’s dean.

Richardson, the only woman of color leading a top-21 law school, said she is thrilled the school’s success has come while also prioritizing what she called “inclusive excellence.”

The dean highlighted that 45 percent of UCI Law’s graduates identify as people of color, and publications have also given the school high marks for its student diversity.

“It’s incredibly important for us to provide opportunities for first-generation students and students of color,” said Richardson, the daughter of an African-American father and Korean mother.

Despite its successes in many areas, UCI Law is not without critics and skeptics who question how well the school will perform in the long run.

The competitive faculty salaries that have enabled the law school to amass a well-regarded roster of professors, which helps with the rankings, are one focus of the critiques.

Kyle McEntee, executive director of the advocacy group Law School Transparency, said the sustainable law school model of the future does not rely on faculty being paid primarily to be legal scholars.

“California did not need another top-ranked law school, they needed a law school that was willing to do something much different in terms of their economic model,” McEntee said. “For that reason, this school represents a failed opportunity.”

David E. Bernstein, a professor at Antonin Scalia Law School in Virginia, said the high faculty salaries with a slowly growing student body means the UCI Law’s parent university must be providing the school significant financial support. If the university decides to scale back, he said, that could pose a serious challenge.

“I admire how they have established a very well-regarded law school from scratch, but it has definitely come at a big financial price in subsidies from the university,” Bernstein said. “It is not clear if that is sustainable in the long run, and if not, how would they deal with that.”

When asked by the Daily Journal how much the university subsidizes the law school, Richardson did not provide an exact amount.

“We are grateful for the enthusiastic and generous support provided by the University and our community partners to help us build a first class law school and for their continued commitment to our success,” she wrote in an email.

Chemerinsky said the amount of the university’s financial contribution to the law school dramatically decreased as the size of the school increased during his time as dean, which concluded last summer when he left to become dean at UC Berkeley’s law school. Chemerinsky said even as the parent university’s financial support decreases further, the quality of UCI Law will be maintained.

He also said he sharply disagrees with those who argue the law school could have pursued a different economic approach and still become a well-respected institution.

“The only way to have a cheap law school is to have a small full-time faculty and a very large number of part-time lecturers,” he said. “That would be a bad law school, and certainly not one UC Irvine would want.”

Richardson, who served as interim dean for part of 2017 prior to taking on the permanent post Jan. 1, said the law school is still in a phase where it is growing the size of its student body and faculty.

In the midst of its ongoing expansion, one of her top priorities is extending UCI Law’s public service mission deeper into the private sector.

One way the school has begun doing that is through a CEO Fellowship Program, launched this year in collaboration with the Young Presidents’ Organization, known as YPO.

As part of the one-semester class, students work with, and learn from, top leaders at YPO companies in Orange County. The initial class was so successful that it will continue being offered, Richardson said.

She highlighted the school’s new Tax LL.M. program as another example of a broadened reach into the private sphere. The program is accepting applications for its first class in fall 2019,

Richardson said an additional priority is having students engage more closely with “constantly evolving and often opaque technologies” and focus on the opportunities and challenges they present.

As part of those efforts, all first-year students will be required to read Virginia Eubanks’ book “Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor.”

But the dean said even as the school looks forward, she is hopeful UCI Law keeps embracing an overall approach that has been essential to its success so far.

“The one thing I don’t want us to do is lose our culture: that innovative, risk-taking and entrepreneurial spirit that helped us defy expectations in our first 10 years,” Richardson said. “I think that is exactly what will help us defy expectations in our next decade.”