Santa Clara University School of Law

History

Santa Clara University School of Law was founded in 1911. The school is part of Santa Clara University (founded 1851), the oldest operating institution of higher learning in California and the oldest Catholic university in the American West. It was approved by the American Bar Association in 1937. It joined the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) in 1940.

Prior to the requirement that all Californian law graduates must take the State Bar Exam, Santa Clara Law was one of the five schools whose graduates were exempt from the examination, along with Boalt Hall, Hastings, Stanford, and USC.

Rankings

According to the required disclosures under ABA Section 509, 50.3% of the Class of 2013 was employed in full-time, long-term positions requiring bar admission.

Law school rankings of Santa Clara Law include:

Bar passage rates

Based on a 2001–2007 6 year average, 73% of Santa Clara University Law graduates passed the California State Bar.

Post-graduation employment

According to Santa Clara's official 2013 ABA-required disclosures, 42.2% of the Class of 2013 obtained full-time, long-term, JD-required employment nine months after graduation, excluding solo-practitioners. Santa Clara Law's Law School Transparency under-employment score is 34.5%, 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.

Law School Transparency reports a 41.3% employment score for the class of 2011.

According to the American Bar Association's "Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools," 94.5 percent of Santa Clara students were employed nine months after graduation, with 77 percent of graduates employed in the private sector and 21 percent employed in the public sector.

According to the Princeton Review, the average starting salary for Santa Clara Law graduates is $90,000. According to Forbe's magazine, mid-career median salary is currently $188,000 a year.

According to a study done by online salary-information company PayScale, graduates of Santa Clara Law have the third highest midcareer median salary among all graduate programs in the United States. The report found that Santa Clara Law graduates typically make $76,900 the first year following graduation and attain a midcareer median salary of $197,700.

Costs

The total cost of attendance (indicating the cost of tuition, fees, and living expenses) at Santa Clara for the 2013-2014 academic year is $70,320. The Law School Transparency estimated debt-financed cost of attendance for three years is $262,472.

Students

The top feeder schools into Santa Clara Law in order are UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, San Jose State University, and Santa Clara University.

The top five feeder states in order are California, Texas, Arizona, Washington, and Illinois. In 2013, 2,598 people applied to the School of Law and 246 matriculated. Over 44 percent of the applicants were from outside California, including applicants from all 50 states and 55 foreign countries.

The LSAT scores were 162 for the 75th percentile and 158 for the 25th percentile. The GPA for entering students were 3.55 for the 75th percentile and 3.12 for the 25th percentile.

Santa Clara Law has a chapter 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.

Campus

Over the last century, the Santa Clara University campus, located along El Camino Real in Santa Clara, has expanded to more than 104 acres (0.4 km²; 0.2 sq mi). Amid its many Mission Style academic and residential buildings are the historic mission gardens, rose garden, and palm trees. The campus benefits from the area's mediterranean climate, with more than 300 days of sun a year.

Until 1939, the law school inhabited present-day St. Joseph's Hall at the center of campus. Under the tenure of Dean Edwin Owens, Bergin Hall was constructed and became home to the school in 1939. The new building was built using monies collected through Santa Clara football's successful appearances in the Sugar Bowl and named after Thomas Bergin, Santa Clara's first graduate, a California legal pioneer, and an early donor to the School of Law.

The Edwin Heafey Law Library was constructed in 1963, and expanded in 1973 to include more space for library materials. Heafey was renovated and expanded again in 1988. The collection contains over 400,000 volumes inprint and digital formats. Additionally, the library manages an institutional repository which currently contains over 4,000 digital items including a collection of papers related to the Congressional hearings regarding the Watergate Scandal donated by Congressman Don Edwards. Other digital collections include documents relating to litigation over the Patient Protection and Affordable Healthcare Act (also known as Obamacare) and the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.

Also in 1973, Bannan Hall was built, including space for the Law School on the ground floor. In 2008 Dean Donald Polden announced the law school would have exclusive use of Bannan Hall, and the building was renovated and used exclusively by the law school shortly thereafter.

Notable faculty

Notable alumni

Law School deans

Timeline of historical events, including previous deans.