University of Illinois College of Law

University of Illinois College of Law
Established	1897
School type	Public
Endowment	US$1.176 billion (systemwide)
Dean	Bruce P. Smith
Location	Champaign, Illinois, USA
Enrollment	662
Faculty	127 (full- and part-time)
USNWR ranking	21
Bar pass rate	97.0% (Illinois 2009)
Annual tuition	In-state, full-time: $31,262 per year, Out-of-state, full-time: $39,262 per year
Website	law.illinois.edu

The University of Illinois College of Law (UIUC Law) is the law school of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the flagship campus of the public University of Illinois university system. The College of Law was established in 1897, and offers the J.D., LL.M., and J.S.D. degrees in law. Known for its academic rigor^{[citation needed]} and considered to be among the country's leading law schools, the College of Law also hosts visiting scholars, visiting researchers and a number of legal research centers. The school's prestige, small class size, and strong placement into Chicago law firms make its admissions process highly selective.^{[citation needed]} The school offers 10 scholarly areas of research, teaching, and coursework, called specialty programs. These are not majors or concentrations in the traditional sense but areas of academic interest and strength within the College of Law. The specialty programs include; Business Law and Policy; Comparative Labor and Employment Law Policy; Constitutional Theory, History and Law; Criminal Law and Procedure; Health Law and Policy; Intellectual Property and Technology Law; International and Comparative Law; Law, Behavior and Social Sciences; Law and Philosophy; and Legal History. The school boasts the 14th largest law library in the country, and a long list of notable alumni in law firms, politics, the judiciary, and academia, including: Albert Jenner, Jr., name partner at law firm Jenner & Block, LLC., and Philip McConnaughay, Dean of Penn State University Dickinson School of Law. In the 2010 U.S. News and World Report ranking of American law schools, the College of Law was ranked 21st in the country.

History

Law Building, North Side

The College of Law was founded in 1897 and is a charter member of the Association of American Law Schools. The law honor society known as the Order of the Coif was founded at the University of Illinois College of Law in 1902.

University of Illinois College of Law is one of the most prestigious law schools in the Midwest and one of the best public law schools in the country. It is on the south end of the main University of Illinois campus in Champaign, near the football stadium and Assembly Hall. In this relatively quiet setting, the College of Law has built up a strong reputation for itself, earning a great measure of respect among members of the legal community, especially in the fields of Bankruptcy, Intellectual Property law, Law and Economics, International Trade law, Antitrust, and Human Rights law.^{[citation needed]} Accordingly, Chicago firms, only a few hours away, look to the law school each year to hire top-quality graduates.^{[citation needed]}

2011 investigation into manipulation of admissions data

On September 11, 2011, the News-Gazette reported that the University of Illinois College of Law posted inaccurate information on its website about the LSAT scores and GPAs of its incoming first-year law students. The school removed the inaccurate information and placed an assistant dean on administrative leave. However, the school declined to reveal that person's identity. On September 19, 2011, the University of Illinois College of Law posted the corrected information on its website. The actual LSAT and GPA medians for the class of 2014 were 163 and 3.70, respectively. The numbers that had previously been disseminated were a median LSAT of 168 and a median GPA of 3.81.. On November 7, 2011, the law school announced that a report commissioned from Jones Day and Duff & Phelps had found admission data for six of the seven previous years to have been manipulated by the Assistant Dean of Admissions Paul Pless, and that Pless had acted alone and would no longer work for the College. According to an university official, "Numbers were altered specifically and strategically to meet class profile goals and college ranking targets".

Academics

Alma Mater

The College of Law offers the Juris Doctor (J.D.), the first professional degree in law, as well as the Master of Laws (LL.M) and Doctor of Juridical Science (J.S.D.), academic graduate degrees in law.

The College also offers joint degree programs with the JD; students may earn the JD along with the Ph.D in either arts and sciences or education (JD/Ph.D.), Master of Business Administration (JD/MBA), Master of Science in Finance (JD/MSF), Master of Science in either chemistry or natural resources (JD/MS), Master of Arts in either education or journalism (JD/MA); Master of Computer Science (JD/MCS); Master of Education (JD/MEd); Master of Human Resources and Industrial Relations (JD/MHRIR); Doctor of Medicine (JD/MD); Master of Urban Planning (JD/MUP); and Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (JD/DVM). A Top 10 public law school, Illinois hosts a highly visible faculty^{[citation needed]}. Illinois faculty have long been known for groundbreaking work^{[citation needed]} in legal fields as diverse as bankruptcy, constitutional law, elder law, taxation, international law, property law, labor law, business law, criminal law, and family law. Nearly half of the College of Law faculty hold advanced graduate degrees beyond their juris doctorates in fields such as medicine, economics, engineering, business, and psychology.^{[citation needed]} As a group, the College of Law faculty is (as of 2011):^{[citation needed]} (i) consistently placed in the Top 20 among U.S. law schools in studies of scholarly impact; (ii) ranked 7th in the nation in per-faculty-member productivity for the last three years, as measured by the number of articles posted by faculty on SSRN; (iii) ranked 9th in total productivity, joining much larger schools in the Top 10 listing of the most productive American law schools; (iv) ranked in the Top 10 on SSRN for the number of downloaded Illinois faculty papers; (v) quoted more than 60 times per month in national print and electronic media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Associated Press, National Law Journal, NPR, and FOX.^{[citation needed]}

There are currently 662 students in the J.D. program. Thirty-six students from nine countries are enrolled in the one-year international LL.M. program. Students come from 42 states, 14 countries, and 189 undergraduate institutions. Over 30 percent of students are people of color, which is the highest percentage among public universities in Illinois and in the Big Ten.

The flagship law review is the University of Illinois Law Review; the law school also publishes two specialized law journals, the Elder Law Journal and the Journal of Law, Technology & Policy, which ExpressO has ranked as the #4 Science & Technology law journal. The College is also the home institution for the Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal, and for Law and Philosophy.

The Albert E. Jenner, Jr. Memorial Library is the College's law library. It is the 14th largest academic law library in the United States, with some 750,000 volumes.

The U.S. News & World Report law school rankings ranked the law school #21. The graduating class of 2012 has a median GPA of 3.8 and median LSAT of 166.

Alumni

Academia

• William Bennett Bizzell 1912—fifth president of the University of Oklahoma and president of Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M University)
• Ralph L. Brill—Professor of Law at Chicago-Kent College of Law and legal writing innovator
• John E. Cribbet 1947—accomplished legal scholar, dean of the University of Illinois College of Law, and chancellor of the University of Illinois
• Philip J. McConnaughay 1978—current Dean at The Pennsylvania State University's Dickinson School of Law
• William D. Underwood —eighteenth president of Mercer University

Judges

Federal

• Wayne R. Andersen 1970—United States federal judge on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
• Harold Albert Baker 1956—United States federal judge on the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois
• Owen McIntosh Burns 1929(LL.B.)—United States federal judge on the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania
• James L. Foreman 1952—United States federal judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois
• James F. Holderman 1971—United States federal judge on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
• Frederick J. Kapala 1976—United States federal judge on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
• Alfred Younges Kirkland, Sr. 1943—United States federal judge on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
• David Laro 1967—senior judge of the United States Tax Court
• Walter C. Lindley 1910—United States federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
• George Michael Marovich 1954—United States federal judge on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
• Prentice Henry Marshall 1967—United States federal judge on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
• William A. Moorman 1970—judge of the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims.
• Philip Godfrey Reinhard 1964—United States federal judge on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
• Stanley Julian Roszkowski 1954—United States federal judge on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
• Harlington Wood, Jr. 1948—United States federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit

State

• Thomas R. Chiola 1977—judge of the Illinois Circuit Court of Cook County, first openly gay elected official in Illinois
• Arno H. Denecke 1939—Chief Justice Oregon Supreme Court
• Lloyd A. Karmeier 1964—Justice Supreme Court of Illinois
• Ray Klingbiel 1924—Chief Justice Supreme Court of Illinois
• Howard C. Ryan—Chief Justice Supreme Court of Illinois
• Roy Solfisburg 1940(LL.B)—Chief Justice Supreme Court of Illinois

Other

• R. Grant Hammond (LL.M)—judge of the New Zealand Court of Appeal

Politics

• John Bayard Anderson 1946—U.S. Congressman and Presidential candidate
• William W. Arnold 1901—U.S. Congressman
• Terry Lee Bruce 1969—U.S. Congressman
• John Porter East 1959-U.S. Senator
• Tom Fink 1952—Speaker of the House, Alaska House of Representatives; Mayor of Anchorage
• Otis Ferguson Glenn 1910—U.S. Senator
• William J. Graham 1893—U.S. Congressman
• William Perry Holaday 1905—U.S. Congressman
• George Evan Howell 1930—U.S. Congressman
• Jesse Jackson, Jr.—U.S. Congressman
• Tim Johnson—U.S. Congressman
• Samuel H. Shapiro—Governor of Illinois
• William L. Springer 1935—U.S. Congressman
• Michael Strautmanis—Chief Counsel and the Director of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs on the Barack Obama presidential transition team
• Samuel H. Young 1947—U.S. Congressman

Other

• Leonard V. Finder—newspaper editor and publisher
• Reginald C. Harmon 1927 — First United States Air Force Judge Advocate General
• Albert E. Jenner, Jr. 1930 (LL.B.)—one of the name partners at the law firm of Jenner & Block
• Thomas R. Lamont 1972 – United States Assistant Secretary of the Army (Manpower and Reserve Affairs)
• Michael Masser — composer and producer of popular music
• Jerome W. Van Gorkom 1941 — CEO of TransUnion, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Management 1982-83, best known as the named party in the landmark corporate law case of Smith v. Van Gorkom, 488 A.2d 858 (Del. 1985).

External links

• Official website
• The University of Illinois College of Law is at coordinates 40°6′14.9″N 88°13′53″W