ADMISSION TO-DO LIST

Greetings from Dean Eastman

Chapman University may be an old and revered institution, dating its founding to 1861 and the precise moment of Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, but the School of Law is relatively young, opening in 1995.  During the first decade of its existence, the Law School achieved full ABA accreditation in near-record time, became a member of the elite Association of American Law Schools, assembled one of the strongest young faculties in the country (including four former Supreme Court clerks), built from scratch outstanding clinical programs in tax, elder law, appellate advocacy, and constitutional jurisprudence, and sponsored award-winning student teams in mock trial, moot court, and mediation and negotiation competitions.

With the many successes of our first decade, I think it is fair to say that Chapman University School of Law has come of age, and we are looking forward to even greater accomplishments as we build on the solid foundation already laid. In 2009, Chapman added three new LL.M. programs in Business Law & Economics, Entertainment & Media, and International & Comparative Law, joining the existing LL.M. degree programs in Prosecutorial Science and Taxation. New emphasis certificates in International Law and Entertainment Law were added to our original certificates in Tax, Advocacy & Dispute Resolution, and Environmental, Land Use & Real Estate Law (ENLURE). 2009 also saw the addition of the new AMVETS Legal Clinic, a pro bono clinic for military service personnel, along with the Entertainment and Transactional Law Clinic, a unique new program for working filmmakers. The new joint JD/MFA degree program with Chapman’s renowned Dodge College of Film and Media Arts complements the joint JD/MBA and MBA/MFA degrees already being offered at Chapman.

We added 19 additional professors to our ranks for the 2008-09 academic year – 9 tenure/tenure track professors (including internationally-renowned legal ethics and constitutional law scholar Ron Rotunda) and 10 visitors. Tom Campbell, formerly law clerk to Justice Byron White, member of Congress, Stanford Law Professor, and Berkeley Business School Dean, began a two-year visit in January 2009 as the inaugural Presidential Fellow. Leading International Human Rights scholar and Princeton Professor Emeritus Richard Falk was with us in the Fall of 2008 as our inaugural Bette & Wylie Aitken Distinguished Visitor, joined by his wife Hilel Elver as a Visiting Associate Professor specializing in international environmental law. And John Yoo, currently a Berkeley Law Professor and former law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, join us in the Spring of 2009 as our 2008-09 Fletcher Jones Distinguished Visiting Professor. Not only are these new permanent and visiting faculty bring added repute to the already impressive group of faculty here, but the significant expansion has yielded for Chapman one of the lowest student-faculty ratios in all of higher legal education, giving to our students a breadth of curricular offerings that is both intellectually and ideologically diverse.

In other words, the newness of Chapman may be behind us, but the excitement is not. There is good reason why Chapman ranks in four of Princeton Review’s Best Law Schools rankings: Quality of Life (#3), Best Classroom Experience (#3), Professors Rock (Legally Speaking) (#7), and, Most Diverse Faculty (#9), and why in 2008-09 we continued to solidify our third tier standing in U.S News & World Report, poised to become a Top 100 law school in the very near future.

I invite you to explore with us the exciting things happening here at Chapman, tour our state-of-the-art facility, browse our award-winning law library, and visit with our students, whose seriousness of purpose is equaled by their fun-loving camaraderie. While you’re here, observe

our students in class, and ask them how they supplement their classroom experience with “live client” clinical training.  Those interested in taxation law are trying real cases in the U.S. Tax Court and counseling clients in the Low Income Taxpayer Clinic. 

Other students are representing clients in the Elder Law Clinic, housed in the beautiful Alona Cortese Elder Law Center located near the School of Law. The Appellate Advocacy Clinic and the Constitutional Litigation Clinic offer students an opportunity to participate in appeals before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and major cases before the Supreme Court of the United States. Our Family Violence clinic expanded greatly in 2008-09 with two new clinical professors funded by a major grant from the United States Department of Justice, courtesy of a congressional earmark obtained by member of Congress and Chapman alumnus Loretta Sanchez.  And this year we opened two additional clinics—one addressing transactional issues that arise in the entertainment industry, the other, made possible with a generous grant from AMVETS, devoted to serving military personnel and their families.  

Our Externship Program offers thirty students each semester the exciting opportunity to work and learn in the offices of judges, prosecutors and public defenders. Many other opportunities spring from the Law School’s location on the main campus of a comprehensive university. Law students enjoy all of the university facilities and services, including sports and fitness facilities and the soon-to-be-completed Olympic aquatic center, main library research and study accommodations, and music and drama productions. Chapman law students thus enjoy the significant advantage of earning a legal education in the intellectually stimulating environment of a dynamic university. And, of course, we’re located in the heart of sunny Orange County, California, within minutes of world class beaches, renowned cultural and arts centers, professional sports complexes and student-friendly nightlife.

Your experience at Chapman will be an enjoyable one. Importantly, it will prepare you to practice in any state and in any field of the law. I am pleased to introduce you to Chapman, a young law school with a youthful energy and creativity that is emerging as an institution of quality in American legal education.

John C. Eastman
Dean and Donald P. Kennedy
Chair in Law