Loyola Law School

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, 5th for tax law and 21st for legal writing. It ranked the school 9th 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:

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 – 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 2001–2007 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.

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.

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

Law reviews

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

Trial advocacy and moot court

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

Study-abroad programs

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

Faculty

Lawyers and activists

Non-legal

Political

Judicial