The University of California, Irvine School of Law (UCI Law) is the law school at the University of California, Irvine, a public research university in Irvine, California. Founded in 2007, it is the fifth and newest law school in the UC system. At the time of its founding, it was the first new public law school in California in over 40 years.
In September 2007, Erwin Chemerinsky was named as the law school's first dean. Chemerinsky served until 2017 when he was hired to be dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. L. Song Richardson became interim dean in July 2017 and full dean in January 2018. Song Richardson served as the dean until 2021 when she was hired as President of Colorado College. Bryant Garth became interim dean in July 2021. Austen Parrish was named as the law school's third dean in April 2022.
History
Initially, it was announced that the school would be named for Donald Bren, chairman of the Irvine Company, due to his $20 million donation towards its founding. In 2008, Bren and UCI agreed that the school would not bear his name, in order to be consistent with other UC schools and the trend away from naming law schools after major donors.
In the summer of 2011, the American Bar Association granted the school provisional accreditation. As law schools need to exist for two years before being granted provisional accreditation, this was the earliest point at which the school could become accredited. The school was granted full accreditation in June 2014.
Chemerinsky hiring controversy
In hiring an inaugural dean, the university approached Duke University school of law Professor Erwin Chemerinsky, and signed a contract with Chemerinsky on September 4, 2007. This offer was rescinded by then UCI Chancellor Michael V. Drake because he felt the law professor's commentaries were "polarizing" and would not serve the interests of California's first new public law school in 40 years. Drake claimed the decision was his own and not the subject of any outside influence. The action was criticized by liberal and conservative scholars who felt it hindered the academic mission of the law school, and expressed disbelief over Chancellor Drake's claims that it was the subject of no outside influence.
The issue was the subject of a New York Times editorial on Friday, September 14, 2007. Details emerged revealing that UCI had received criticism on the hire from California Chief Justice Ronald M. George, who criticized Chemerinsky's grasp of death penalty appeals, as well as a group of prominent Orange County Republicans and Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, who wanted to derail the appointment. Drake traveled over a weekend to Durham, North Carolina, and the two reached an agreement late Sunday evening. On September 17, Chemerinsky issued a joint press release with Drake indicating that Chemerinsky would head the UCI law school, stating "Our new law school will be founded on the bedrock principle of academic freedom. The chancellor reiterated his lifelong, unqualified commitment to academic freedom, which extends to every faculty member, including deans and other senior administrators."
Faculty
In 2010, University of Chicago Law professor Brian Leiter, in his "Leiter Law School Rankings", ranked the UC Irvine faculty 9th in the nation in terms of scholarly impact. In 2012, Professor Gregory Sisk and his colleagues in the library of St. Thomas Law School in Minnesota prepared a new scholarly impact study, using the same methodology as Leiter's 2010 study and with Leiter consulting. The 2012 study calculated scholarly impact in terms of citations by full-time teaching faculty over the period from 2007 through 2011, and ranked the UC Irvine Law School faculty as 7th, up two places from the 2010 ranking.
In September 2015, Sisk updated the rankings to include data from 2010 to 2014. Based on this new data, UC Irvine was ranked 6th in the nation.
UC Irvine's student-faculty ratio is 7.3 to 1, making it one of the lowest ratios among law schools in the country.
Rankings and scholarships
To help attract "high-quality" students, the school raised funds for full scholarships for all members of its inaugural class. Over 2,700 applications were received to join the inaugural class, 4% were accepted. Classes officially began on August 24, 2009. The school's inaugural class was composed of 34 women and 26 men, with a median LSAT of 167 and median undergraduate GPA of 3.61.
UC Irvine's initial LSAT and GPA statistics rival Southern California's other top law schools, UCLA and USC, which are both ranked among the nation's top 20 by U.S. News & World Report.