Fall 2011
In August, UCLA School of Law received a transformative $10 million gift – the single largest in the school’s history – from our 2009 Public Service Alumnus of the Year Lowell Milken ’73. The gift, along with leadership gifts from friends and alumni like Charles Williams, David Epstein, Ralph Shapiro, Michael Masin and Dan Emmett, has enabled the law school to meet and surpass its ambitious $100 million fundraising goal well ahead of its five-year schedule. When the Campaign for UCLA School of Law was publicly launched in 2008, the expectations for success were very high, and I am pleased to report that we have exceeded them.
Lowell’s gift supports a core area of excellence by establishing the Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy. The Institute will allow us to initiate a range of curricular innovations, promote critical research, provide financial support for our students and enhance training in real-world transactional skills to prepare students for the challenges of today’s global economy. Our business law and policy program is already a standout among U.S. law schools; this gift will help to make it among the best in the world.
Our programs are growing more dynamic and rigorous, and our student body is certainly up to the challenge. Joining our strong second and third year classes, this fall we welcomed 321 students to the J.D. class of 2014 from an applicant pool of 7,317 – the fourth largest in the history of the law school. The class has a record-high median LSAT score of 168 and an increased median GPA of 3.78. Prior to coming to UCLA Law, our students enjoyed successful careers in a wide range of fields outside of law; the class contains an intelligence linguist, an actor, a patent agent, and an engineer, to name a few. In addition, 7% of the incoming class already holds advanced degrees. Also of note, the law school welcomed the largest-ever incoming LL.M. class, with 92 students.
In addition to our remarkable students, our faculty – already among the finest in the country – continues to grow in size and quality. Professor Laura Gomez, who taught at UCLA Law for 12 years and was a co-founder of the Critical Race Studies Program before she left in 2005, has rejoined our faculty. She teaches in the areas of race and the law, law and society and constitutional law, among others. We also added two impressive junior faculty members to our ranks. Acting Professor Samuel Bray, whose work focuses on the law of remedies, joins us from the Stanford Constitutional Law Center, where he was the executive director. Acting Professor Alexander Stremitzer, whose teaching interests include theoretical and experimental law and economics, was previously assistant professor of Economics at the University of Bonn and visiting assistant professor at Yale. I have no doubt that our newest faculty members will make significant contributions to our school in both their teaching and their scholarship.
And, our friends and alumni are also making a difference. This year, 30.2% of all law school alumni made a gift to the law school, placing us 4th in alumni participation rates among our fellow top-tier law schools. The Law Firm Challenge and the Reunion Challenge greatly contributed to this success. In its ninth year under the leadership of Jim Barrall ’75, the Law Firm Challenge broke new records on all fronts, with 79% of alumni at 95 participating firms making a gift to the school, and 50 of these firms reaching 100% in their support. In its second year, Rick Runkel ’81, in his role as chair, enabled the Reunion Challenge to make notable progress, with donations this year totaling more than $790,000. Congratulations to the winners of this year’s challenge, the class of ’71, for raising more than $200,000.
We are exceptionally proud of all of our accomplishments, and I am excited about what the future holds for UCLA Law.
Thank you for taking a moment to catch up on all the good work the UCLA Law community is doing.
Warmly,
Rachel F. Moran
Dean and Michael J. Connell Distinguished Professor of Law