2850 Telegraph Avenue, Suite 500
Berkeley, CA 94705-7220
Phone: 510.642.2274; Fax: 510.643.6222
E-mail: admissions@law.berkeley.edu; Website: www.law.berkeley.edu
Learning at Berkeley Law means joining a stimulating intellectual community that is part of a tradition of academic excellence, professional leadership, and public service. Berkeley's location in the San Francisco Bay Area, with influences from Silicon Valley and the Pacific Rim, provides an unparalleled opportunity to study at one of the world's leading institutions of legal education, policy, and research. Its academic program includes specialized study in business, law, and economics; environmental law; law and technology; international and comparative legal studies; and social justice and public interest. The curriculum is complemented by research centers and clinical programs that provide real client work. Berkeley Law offers a broad three-year curriculum leading to the JD degree and postgraduate programs leading to LLM and JSD degrees. The interdisciplinary Jurisprudence and Social Policy (JSP) program leads to MA and PhD degrees. The school is a member of AALS and is ABA approved.
UC Berkeley occupies a beautiful 1,232-acre campus bordered by wooded rolling hills. Berkeley is known for its intellectual, social, and political engagement. With its multinational population, rich diversity of arts, and sense of political adventure, Berkeley reflects and affects the rest of the country. Yet, it is an intimate city of friendly neighborhoods, renowned restaurants, coffeehouses, bookstores, parks, and open spaces. Across the bay lies San Francisco, home to internationally recognized museums, the opera, ballet, symphony, and restaurants. The mild climate makes outdoor activities possible year-round.
Berkeley Law seeks a student body with a broad set of interests, life experiences, and perspectives. The intellectual excellence, varied skill sets, and backgrounds of the students are among its great strengths. Students received undergraduate degrees from more than 100 universities, about half at schools outside California.
Berkeley's faculty members are internationally recognized experts in fields ranging from law and technology, to youth violence and juvenile justice, to environmental law. They include recipients of Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships and a MacArthur "genius" grant, as well as authors of casebooks used worldwide. Lecturers are drawn from prominent law firms and institutions.
The law library is one of the finest law collections in the world. Its extensive holdings include the Robbins Religious and Civil Law Collection of titles in ecclesiastical, civil, comparative, and international law, and extensive collections of foreign, comparative, human rights, and environmental law. The law library is also a depository for United States, United Nations, and European Union documents and is linked to the university system's holdings of more than seven million volumes.
The law library provides online databases, three computer labs with Internet access, spacious reading rooms, and a photocopying service. Multimedia capabilities are available. Wireless access is available throughout the law school complex and much of the Berkeley campus.
The school is composed of four adjoining buildings with classrooms, seminar rooms, auditoriums, the law library, lounges, reception rooms, a café, dining and study areas, and offices.
The campus Housing Office offers apartments, rental listings, residence halls, and student family apartments. One of the residence halls, Manville Hall, is a studio apartment complex reserved for law students. Across the street from the school, International House accommodates students from the United States and abroad.
Requirements: bachelor's degree, LSAT, and registration with LSAC's Credential Assembly Service; application fee: $75; deadline: February 1 (early application strongly preferred).
Applicants' LSAT scores and undergraduate grade-point averages (GPAs) are important criteria for evaluating academic ability. Applicants may use the mean LSAT percentile and undergraduate GPAs of the previous year's admitted applicant pool as a guide for assessing their chances of admission. Because Berkeley Law takes other factors into account in making admission decisions, higher or lower scores and grades neither ensure nor preclude admission.
Students edit and publish 13 legal periodicals: Asian American Law Journal; Berkeley Business Law Journal; Berkeley Journal of African American Law and Policy; Berkeley Journal of Criminal Law; Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law; Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law and Justice; Berkeley Journal of International Law; Berkeley La Raza Law Journal; Berkeley Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Law; Berkeley Technology Law Journal; California Law Review; Ecology Law Quarterly; and Berkeley Journal of Entertainment and Sports Law.
More than 50 student groups focus on a variety of interests, including animal law, disability law, sports and entertainment law, and workers' rights.
Berkeley Law's broad and innovative curriculum is one of the most dynamic among law schools. Opportunities for study in specific areas of the law connect students to our renowned faculty members. The first-year curriculum includes Civil Procedure, Contracts, Criminal Law, Legal Research and Writing, Property, Torts, Written and Oral Advocacy, and two elective courses. The flexible second- and third-year curricula offer a variety of legal topics and course styles, including seminars, individual and group research projects, clinical work, and judicial externships. Students may work on clinical projects providing direct legal services to clients or work with lawyers on large cases or legal matters. The Center for Clinical Education, Berkeley Law's in-house clinical facility, offers the Death Penalty Clinic; the International Human Rights Law Clinic; and the Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic. The East Bay Community Law Center is the community-based component of the program. Other clinical opportunities include the Domestic Violence Practicum and field placements.
Berkeley Law's centers and institutes act as incubators for cutting-edge legal research, where students collaborate with leading scholars and practitioners working on complex issues. Projects are often centered on specific cases or legislation, and can have broad influence on law and policy in such areas as business, philosophy, public policy, sociology, and technology. The centers also sponsor conferences, roundtables, and other presentations on pertinent issues. They push the frontiers of legal scholarship and make Berkeley one of the most exciting places in the world to study law. They include:
Requirements: FAFSA need analysis form; Need Access Application; the deadline for priority consideration is March 2.
The law school seeks to provide need-based financial aid sufficient to permit any admitted student to attend. A majority of the students receive some form of financial aid.
The financial aid awarded by UC Berkeley's Financial Aid Office is need-based and includes mostly federal student loans. The financial aid awarded by Berkeley Law includes federal student loans and other campus-based awards such as work-study. Additionally, the law school administers a variety of grants and scholarships based on financial need and/or need and academic merit.
The Office of Career Development is a resource for students, alumni, and prospective employers. It operates one of the largest on-campus recruitment programs in the country, provides opportunities for legal employment, and maintains an online job database of positions available throughout the nation. The staff conducts career counseling, résumé workshops, and programs on traditional and nontraditional law careers in the private and public sectors.