The School has approximately 850 J.D. students, 30 students in the LL.M. and J.S.D. programs, and 10 students in the Ph.D. program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy. Its admissions process is highly selective, as well as unorthodox. The school is known to value a high undergraduate GPA more than a high LSAT score (whereas the opposite can be said to be true at the top American law schools). According to U.S. News and World Report, which ranked the law school as the number 8th overall for its 2007 ranking, Boalt has the third-lowest acceptance rate among American law schools; 10% of applicants are admitted. Also unusual among top law schools is Boalt's grading system. Students are graded on a High Honors, Honors, Pass, and No Pass scale. 60 percent of the students in a given class receive a Pass, 30 percent receive the grade of Honors, and the highest 10 percent receive High Honors. In terms of weight, a Pass is worth 2.0, Honors a 3.0, and High Honors a 5.0.

The average age of admitted students is 24 years old, over a range of ages from 20 to 48 years old. Approximately 88% of students receive financial aid. As state institutions, Boalt and UCLA had the lowest tuition of the top 15 law schools in the country in 2005. The tuition for the 2006-07 school year is $25,380.00 for California residents, $37,625.00 for nonresidents, though the sum continues to rise each year.

History

The Department of Jurisprudence was founded at Berkeley in 1894. In 1912, this department was elevated to the School of Jurisprudence, which was then renamed the School of Law in 1950.

The School was originally located in Boalt Memorial Hall of Law, built in 1911 with funds largely from Elizabeth Josselyn Boalt donated in memory of her late husband, John Henry Boalt. In 1951, the School moved to its current location in the new Boalt Hall, at the southeast corner of the central campus, and the old Boalt Hall was renamed Durant Hall.

In 2001, Dean of the Law School John Dwyer left amid a scandal concerning a 3L student, who claimed he had made inappropriate sexual advances on her during her 1L year.

Centers at Boalt Hall

• Berkeley Center for Law & Technology (est. 1995)
• California Center for Environmental Law and Policy
• Center for Clinical Education (est. 1998)
• Center for Social Justice (est. 1999)
• Center for the Study of Law and Society (est. 1961)
• Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity
• Death Penalty Clinic (est. 2001)
• Institute for Legal Research (formerly the Earl Warren Legal Institute) (est. 1963)
• International Human Rights Law Clinic (est. 1998)
• Kadish Center for Morality, Law and Public Affairs (est. 2000)
• Robert D. Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance (est. 1994)
• Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic (est. 2000)

Law Journals at Boalt Hall

• Asian American Law Journal
• Berkeley Business Law Journal
• Berkeley Journal of African-American Law & Policy
• Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law
• Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice
• Berkeley Journal of International Law
• Berkeley La Raza Law Journal
• Berkeley Technology Law Journal
• Boalt Journal of Criminal Law
• California Law Review
• Ecology Law Quarterly

List of noted alumni

• Earl Warren, 1914 - Governor of California, Chief Justice of the United States
• Walter Gordon, 1922 - Governor of the Virgin Islands, judge, member of National Football Foundation Hall of Fame
• Roger J. Traynor, 1927 - Chief Justice, California Supreme Court, 1964-1970
• Melvin Belli, 1929 - attorney
• G. William Miller, 1952 - U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Chairman of the Federal Reserve
• Edwin Meese III, 1958 - U.S. Attorney General
• Pete Wilson, 1962 - U.S. Senator, Governor of California
• Theodore Olson, 1965 - U.S. Solicitor General
• Neil Goldschmidt, 1967 - U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Governor of Oregon
• David B. Frohnmeyer, 1967 - Oregon Attorney General, University of Oregon President
• Leigh Steinberg, 1973 - sports agent
• Barry Scheck, 1974 - Co-founder of the Innocence Project
• Lance Ito, 1975 - judge, presided over O. J. Simpson criminal trial
• Brian Liddicoat, 1996 - attorney
• Katharine Bartlett, 1975 - dean of Duke University School of Law
• Christopher Schroeder, 1974 - professor at Duke University School of Law
• Catherine Fisk, 1986 - professor at Duke University School of Law
• Larry W. Sonsini
• Charles A. Miller
• Cruz Reynoso, 1958 - Associate Justice, California Supreme Court, 1982-1987

List of noted faculty

• Christopher Edley, Jr. – Dean of the School of Law (2004-), co-founder of The Civil Rights Project at
• Herma Hill Kay – Former Dean of the School of Law, instrumental in the battle for no-fault divorce in California
• Michael Heyman – Chancellor of the Berkeley campus (1980 to 1990), Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution (1994 to 1999)
• Phillip E. Johnson – One of the fathers of intelligent design.
• John T. Noonan, Jr. – Senior Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• John Yoo – Co-Author of the USA PATRIOT Act. Famous for arguing that torture, even torture of children, is legal if authorized by the president.