Loyola Law School - Loyola Law School

Loyola Law School is the law school of Loyola Marymount University, a private Catholic university in the Jesuit and Marymount traditions, in Los Angeles, California. Loyola was established in 1920. It is named in honor of St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits. The Frank Gehry-designed campus is located near downtown Los Angeles. It is separate from the Westchester main university campus.

Academics

U.S. News & World Report ranked Loyola Law School 65th in its "America's Best Graduate Schools 2017" feature, which ranked the school 8th for trial advocacy and 5th for tax law. It ranked the school 13th for diversity.

Loyola ranks higher on alternative guides such as The Princeton Review in addition to the Cooley rankings (also known as the Brennan rankings). The Cooley Rankings ranked Loyola Law School 26th in the nation in 2010.

For specialty rankings:

• Loyola's part-time evening program is ranked 11th in the nation by U.S. News & World Report
• Loyola is ranked 10th in the nation for Tax Law, and its fairly new Taxation LL.M. program ranks 8th in the nation by U.S. News & World Report
• Loyola's trial advocacy program is ranked 6th in the nation by U.S. News & World Report
• Lawdragon, which ranks and evaluates lawyers and judges, named Loyola #17 in its list of the 25 Leading Law Schools
• Listed as an "A" (#8) in the January 2011 "Best Public Interest Law Schools" ratings by The National Jurist: The Magazine for Law Students.
• Listed as an "A-" in the March 2011 "Diversity Honor Roll" by The National Jurist: The Magazine for Law Students

Distinct from most law schools, which typically reside in one or two centralized buildings, Loyola has a separate law school campus. The campus, sitting on a full city block just west of downtown Los Angeles, is made up of an open central plaza surrounded by several contemporary buildings designed by Frank Gehry. Its recently renovated library is one of the largest private law libraries in the western U.S., with a collection of nearly 560,000 volumes.

Including its day and evening J.D. programs, Loyola has the largest and most diverse student enrollment of any California law school. It was the first California law school with a pro bono graduation requirement, under which students perform 40 hours of pro bono work. After Hurricane Katrina, Loyola was also one of a handful of schools to open its doors to students of law schools in New Orleans who were forced to relocate for a period of time after the hurricane.

Degrees offered include the Juris Doctor (JD); Juris Doctor/Master of Business Administration (JD/MBA); Masters of Law in Taxation (LLM); Masters of Law in American Law & International Legal Practice (International LLM)

It has been an American Bar Association (ABA) approved law school since 1935. It is a member of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS).

Loyola is a member of the Order of the Coif, a national law school honorary society founded for the purposes of encouraging legal scholarship and advancing the ethical standards of the legal profession.

2010 adoption of B curve grading system

Before 2004, Loyola used a unique "numeric grading system" where GPAs ranged from 70 to 100. In 2004, Loyola adopted the more familiar 4.0 "letter grading scale" used by other law schools, applying a low 2.667 forced median GPA. However, all other Los Angeles area law schools applied a median GPA between 3.0 and 3.3. In May 2010, Loyola corrected this imbalance by raising their median GPA one-third of a point to 3.0 â€" retroactive to all classes taken since 2004. Loyola claimed the controversial move as necessary to enable its students to be competitive with those from UCLA, USC, and Pepperdine law schools.

The change in grading policy attracted national attention. In June 2010, Loyola's plan to retroactively change grades was the subject of a New York Times article. Comedian Stephen Colbert also mocked Loyola's change in grading policy on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report."

Treatment of students who apply to transfer

In 2008, Loyola students revealed to the legal tabloid Above the Law that Loyola had recently adopted a policy of excluding any student from participating in the school's on-campus interviewing (OCI) program if he had applied to transfer to other law schools. The exclusion applied even if a student's transfer application was still pending during OCI and even if the student had already paid tuition to Loyola for the next semester. In response to the Above the Law article, Loyola Dean Victor Gold wrote in a campus-wide e-mail that Above the Law "misrepresents our policy, omits some key facts, and gets others wrong." The purpose of the policy, Gold wrote, was to prevent transferring students from "double-dipping" by interviewing both at Loyola and at their new school. Furthermore, any student whose transfer application was rejected could apply for reinstatement in the OCI program. However, Above the Law noted that Gold did not dispute that Loyola banned tuition-paying students whose applications were still pending from participating in OCI.

Bar passage rates

Based on a 2001â€"2007 6 year average, 72.4% of Loyola Law graduates passed the California State Bar. The first-time pass rate for Loyola Law School graduates on the July 2010 California Bar Examination was 84%, nine percentage points above the 75% pass rate for first-time takers from all ABA-accredited schools in California. And Loyola Law School graduates represented the largest group of successful first-time takers with 297 alumni passing.

Post-graduation employment

Class of 2013

According to Loyola's official 2013 ABA-required disclosures, 50.1% of the Class of 2013 obtained full-time, long-term, JD-required employment nine months after graduation (excluding solo practitioners). Loyola's Law School Transparency under-employment score is 36.8%, indicating the percentage of the Class of 2013 unemployed, pursuing an additional degree, or working in a non-professional, short-term, or part-time job nine months after graduation. Loyola claims 13.37% of its graduates were employed in "JD Advantage" jobs, but the school does not define "JD Advantage."

Class of 2012

According to the law professor blog, The Faculty Lounge, only 41.4% of the Class of 2012 was employed in full-time, long-term positions requiring bar admission (i.e., jobs as lawyers), ranking 169th out of 197 law schools.

Class of 2011

As of February 15, 2012, 78% of the Class of 2011 (317 out of 403 graduates) was employed within nine months of graduation. Of these, 36 jobs were Loyola funded positions in government (12), judicial clerkships (1), public interest (18), and academia (1).

Of those who were employed, 63% (255 out of 403) had jobs where bar passage was required and 6% (24) had jobs described as "JD Advantaged". Sixteen percent of the Class was listed as "unemployed and seeking work."

Media coverage

In 2009, Loyola reported that 95.1% of its students were employed within 9 months after graduation. However, Loyola does not disclose what percentage of its graduates work part-time or on a temporary basis. In 2009, Loyola reported to U.S. News & World Report that 66.6% of Loyola students were employed at graduation.

Costs

The total cost of attendance (indicating the cost of tuition, fees, and living expenses) at Loyola Law School for the 2014-2015 academic year is $77,100. The Law School Transparency estimated debt-financed cost of attendance for three years is $282,792.

Student Debt

According to U.S. News & World Report, the average indebtedness of 2015 graduates who incurred law school debt was $148,035 (not including undergraduate debt), and 80% of 2015 graduates took on debt. And only 60.6% of 2015 graduates obtained full-time, long term positions requiring bar admission (i.e., jobs as lawyers) within 9 months after graduation.

Programs and clinics

Alarcón Advocacy Center

In 2011, Loyola opened the Alarcón Advocacy Center. One of its programs, the Project for the Innocent, made headlines in fall 2011 when it helped secure the release of Obie Anthony, who had spent 17 years in jail for a murder he did not commit. Students in the project conducted witness interviews, drafted the petition for habeas corpus and appeared at evidentiary hearings to question witnesses. Through their work a Los Angeles Superior Court ordered Anthony's release on September 30, 2011, citing prosecutorial misconduct.

Other programs

• Center for Conflict Resolution, which provides mediation, conciliation, and facilitation services, as well as conflict resolution training
• Center for Juvenile Law and Policy, serves as a holistic law firm representing youths in juvenile court. A small group of students each year are selected as participants in a year-long clinic run by the Center, receiving trial advocacy and procedure training from the Center's staff of attorneys and social workers
• Civil Justice Program, which convenes periodic conferences, seminars and presentations, promotes and publishes scholarly research, and initiates cross disciplinary projects
• Disability Rights Legal Center (DRLC), (formerly the Western Law Center for Disability Rights), specializes in Americans with Disabilities Act litigation; DRLC is run by a mix of Loyola professors, law student externs, and lawyers, and its centers and programs include the following:
  • Civil Rights Litigation Project
  • Education Advocacy Project
  • Disability Mediation Center
  • Community Outreach Program
  • Inland Empire Program
  • Options Counseling and Lawyer Referral Service
  • Pro Bono Attorney Program
• Entertainment Law Practicum, which provides students with hands-on experience in the entertainment industry while earning units toward their degree
• Journalist Law School, providing fellowships to journalists for a legal study practicum [11]
• Program for Law & Technology, a collaboration with the California Institute of Technology[12]
• Public Interest Law Foundation (PILF), which is a student-run organization focused on getting students involved in public interest causes as well as raising money for public interest grants
• Sports Law Institute, which provides a sports law-related curriculum and annual symposia

Law reviews

Loyola currently has three student-run and edited law reviews:

• Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review is a publication devoted to the advancement of legal scholarship. Publishing articles on all legal topics, the Review seeks to identify and advance new legal research by scholars, practitioners, and students. Recent issues of the Law Review have included articles on parent-child privilege, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, Eighth Circuit reversal rates, and noneconomic damages.
• Loyola of Los Angeles International & Comparative Law Review is dedicated to the advancement of legal scholarship and seeks to publish scholarly, professional articles of high caliber, based on accurate and in-depth research, which advance legal scholarship in the field of international law, aid in the resolution of contemporary international legal problems, and contribute to the continuing education of the legal community. In April 2008, ILR held a symposium entitled Transformation in Iraq: From Ending a Modern War to Creating a Modern Peace.[13] Using Iraq as a test case, the symposium sought to assess the legitimacy and viability of modern occupation law against both changed contemporary realities and recent developments in moral and political thought. Speakers included Harvard Professor Noah Feldman, Yale Professor Jules L. Coleman, University College London Professor Ralph Wilde, and Ambassador Feisal Amin Rasoul al-Istrabadi.
• Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review publishes scholarly articles which frequently cover topics in constitutional law, sports law, intellectual property rights, communications regulation, antitrust law, employment law, contract law, corporate law, as well as the emerging fields of computer and Internet law. ELR has also featured symposia on such topics as independent filmmaking, international rights of publicity and the use of law and identity to script cultural production.

Trial advocacy and moot court

Loyola's trial advocacy and moot court competition programs are varied and well regarded:

• Byrne Trial Advocacy Program, was ranked 5th in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, and has also won numerous regional and national competitions.
• Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition
• National Moot Court Competition, sponsored by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and American College of Trial Lawyers
• Giles Sutherland Rich Moot Court Competition
• Scott Moot Court Competition, Loyola's student-run moot court competition
• Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot
• Environmental Moot Court

Study-abroad programs

Loyola offers study-abroad programs for J.D. students in Beijing, China, Cyprus, Greece, and Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica.

Notable people

Faculty

• Allan Ides, Professor
• Laurie L. Levenson, criminal law professor and media commentator
• Justin Hughes, Professor

Alumni

Lawyers and activists

• Gloria Allred, J.D. 1974, lawyer, radio talk show host and media personality; named one of Loyola's "50 Inspirational Alumni"
• Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr., J.D. 1962, high-profiled defense lawyer (Deceased)
• Ricardo Cruz, former Chicano Civil Rights Movement lawyer
• Mark Geragos, J.D. 1982, high-profiled defense lawyer
• Thomas Girardi, founding partner of Girardi & Keese
• Irving A. Kanarek, aerospace engineer and defense attorney for Charles Manson
• Melanie E. Lomax, Civil Rights lawyer and former head of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners
• Hunter Lovins, co-author of Natural Capitalism
• Edward L. Masry, lawyer portrayed in the movie Erin Brockovich
• Carmen Milano, was a Cleveland lawyer, before being disbarred and becoming a member of the Mafia in the 1980s.
• Barbara M. Rubin, Partner and Chair of Entertainment Department at Glaser Weil, LLP; Executive Director of Loyola Law School's Entertainment Law Practicum;
• Robert Shapiro, defense lawyer; name partner of Glaser Weil Fink Jacobs Howard Avchen & Shapiro
• Edward Tabash, Board of Directors for the Center for Inquiry. Constitutional expert on Church State Issues.
• Michael Trope, divorce trial lawyer co-founder of Trope and Decarolis in Los Angeles.
• Laura Allison Wasser, celebrity divorce lawyer

Non-legal

• Bob Myers, J.D. 2003, general manager for the Golden State Warriors in the NBA
• John Edward Anderson, president of Topa Equities, Ltd., founder of Kindel & Anderson law firm, namesake of UCLA Anderson School of Management (Deceased)
• Tony Blankley, editor at The Washington Times (Deceased)
• Joe Escalante, punk-rock musician
• Pat Haden, former NFL quarterback and current athletic director at the University of Southern California
• Darren Levine, martial artist and entrepreneur
• Wilfred Von der Ahe, co-founder of Vons supermarket chain
• Henry C. Yuen, co-founder, and former CEO and Chairman, of Gemstar-TV Guide International.
• Josh E. Gross, publisher of Beverly Hills Weekly

Political

• Ben Cayetano, J.D. 1971, former governor of Hawaii
• William P. Clark, Jr., J.D. 1957, former Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court, Deputy Secretary of State, National Security Advisor and Secretary of the Interior
• Mike Gatto, J.D. 2004 (evening program) California State Assemblyman representing the 43rd Assembly District
• Tom Harman, J.D. 1968, California State Senator representing the 35th Senate District
• Robert Joseph Miller, J.D. 1971, former governor of Nevada
• Kevin Murray, J.D. 1987, former California State Senator representing the 26th Senate District
• Nick Pacheco, a former member of the Los Angeles City Council
• Eric J. Perrodin, Mayor of Compton, California
• Tony Rackauckas, J.D. 1971, District Attorney of Orange County and former Superior Court Judge
• Richard Bloom, J.D. 1978, Member of the California State Assembly from the 50th District and former Mayor of Santa Monica
• Libby Schaaf, J.D. 1993, 50th Mayor of Oakland, California

Judicial

• Lynn "Buck" Compton, former California Court of Appeals Justice, former Los Angeles chief deputy prosecutor known for the prosecution of Sirhan Sirhan and member of the Band of Brothers
• Rick Distaso, judge and former prosecutor
• Otto Kaus, former Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court
• R. Gary Klausner, federal district court judge sitting in the Central District of California
• Kathryn Doi Todd, of the California Courts of Appeal
• Manuel Real, federal district court judge sitting in the Central District of California
• John F. Walter, federal district court judge sitting in the Central District of California
• William F. Rylaarsdam, of the California Courts of Appeal
• Michael T. Sauer, Superior Court judge and former appellate lawyer