October 13, 2021
Dear Berkeley Law Alumni,
As I write this in early October 2021, I feel a great sense of joy at being back in the Law School building for in-person instruction. This term, I am teaching Federal Courts and I realize every day how wonderful it is to personally interact with my students. I know from hallway conversations that our students and faculty share this excitement.
The last 18 months have tested our community’s resiliency and we have excelled by all measures, including online instruction. The rise in the COVID Delta variant posed many challenges. To ensure safety, everyone dons masks while inside and our ability to provide food at events has been curtailed. But overall, the first half of our Fall semester could not have gone more smoothly.
Our Entering Classes
The biggest news for this quarterly report concerns our entering classes. As one of my colleagues put it, they are an embarrassment of riches in many ways. We had hoped to have an entering J.D. class, the Class of 2024, of 320 students. We received over 8,000 applications, a dramatic increase from the 5,500 the year before. We admitted a smaller percentage of applicants. But we had the highest yield in memory and 385 1Ls are now attending classes. This is a wonderful reflection of the quality of Berkeley Law, but also a challenge in many ways. We created additional large mods of all of the 1L required classes. We hired additional Legal Research and Writing instructors. We are hiring additional staff in many departments.
More important than its size, the class is enormously impressive. It has a median LSAT of 169, which is the highest in our history. The median undergraduate GPA is 3.84. Over half of the students self-identify as students of color, including a 50 percent increase in our Latinx students, and we continue to see strong enrollments of Black, Asian, and Native American students. Almost two-thirds of the 1L class are women.
We also have a wonderful embarrassment of riches in our LL.M. class. We had hoped to enroll a class of 220 and have 280 students. This, too, requires creating some additional classes. And this cohort also has very impressive academic and professional credentials, and they bring strong geographic diversity with representatives from over 50 countries.
Our Faculty
As I wrote earlier, we have added three superb new faculty this year: Professors Jennifer Chacón (previously at UCLA School of Law), Professor Jonathan Glater (previously at UCLA School of Law), and Professor Osagie K. Obasogie (a professor in the School of Public Health who previously taught at UC Hastings College of the Law). We have hired 20 new faculty since 2017 and are looking to hire six additional professors this year. It very much contributes to the sense of excitement and moving forward in the school.
Every three years, professors at St. Thomas School of Law in Minnesota do a ranking of scholarly impact of faculties across the country. The new study, which was published in September, ranks Berkeley Law sixth in the country in faculty scholarly impact. Also, 13 of our professors were ranked in the top 15 in their field, including several in the top five. Of course, this is just one measure of the quality of scholarly excellence, but it does demonstrate what we already know: the Berkeley Law faculty is outstanding. Here is a link to our faculty scholarship brochure, which describes their recent publications.
Another reflection of the quality of our faculty, though a disquieting one, is the number of our faculty receiving offers and visiting offers from other top law schools. We have many faculty visiting at places like Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, Columbia, and NYU. One of our constant challenges is retaining terrific faculty.
Public Service
In previous communications I have often referenced our commitment to fulfilling our public mission. Our students, faculty, clinics, and research centers continue to advance knowledge and identify legal solutions to many critical issues. Our work covers a wide array of topics, but let me point you to recent stories about our efforts on criminal justice, the civil jury system, and veterans’ assistance. I am extremely proud of these endeavors.
Alumni News
Alumni Reunion - On September 23-25, we celebrated Alumni Reunion. When we began planning for this event last spring, we hoped that we could celebrate our alumni community in person, especially the graduates in reunion milestone years, the classes ending with 0, 1, 5, and 6. As was the case a year ago, the public health situation made that inadvisable. But we went forward with a number of virtual enrichment programs and these received high marks from attendees. Many of the sessions are available on our YouTube channel. I encourage you to watch them — Climate & Disasters: Living the Future; Ethical Limits of Advocacy; Supreme Court Review; and the Dean’s Town Hall.
I especially enjoyed the opportunity to reconnect with alumni at the Dean’s Town Hall session to describe all that is going well at the Law School, as well as the challenges we face. I talked about our terrific students and faculty and programs, especially those that advance our public mission. But I also was candid about our challenges, particularly the financial reality of receiving very little money from the campus or the State, and needing to compete for faculty and students with law schools that have far more resources and much greater endowments than we do. I also noted that our return to the workplace has brought our lack of physical space back to the top of my list of concerns. We need to face this immediately.
As we close out the book on the 2021 reunion, I have proposed that, after two years of online reunions, next year’s reunion be a celebration for all of our classes. I look forward to sharing the dates and details for what I hope will be a very special and happy occasion — in person!
California Bar Swearing-In Ceremony
We are looking forward to reinitiating on-campus alumni events, albeit with all necessary precautions in place (including masks and requiring proof of vaccination). The first will be the California Bar Swearing-In Ceremony at the International House on the afternoon of Tuesday, December 14. Graduates who have recently passed the California Bar Exam are welcome to attend this event in person. Family and friends will be able to watch the ceremony via livestream. Registration information will be sent to all Class of 2021 graduates soon and will also available on our alumni webpage in November.
Transcript
The latest edition of Berkeley Law’s biannual magazine, Transcript, was recently mailed to graduates and friends. You can also find the virtual edition of the magazine here - https://transcript.law.berkeley.edu/issue/fall-2021/. I encourage you to read as it is another way of learning about life at Berkeley Law.
Podcasts at Bear With Me @ Berkeley Law
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I must end on a sad note. On Sunday, September 19, Professor Lucinda Sikes died suddenly. Lucinda was a beloved teacher at Berkeley Law for many years and was the heart and soul of our legal writing program. She will be enormously missed and I know that her memory will be a blessing to the many students who had the great pleasure of being in her classes.
With best wishes,
