Law Schools, Rankings

In The Wake Of Rankings Drop, Berkeley Law Sees Budget Slashed

Please see the update to this story.

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Berkeley Law hasn’t been having the best year. They fell four spots in the annual U.S. News & World Report ranking — marking their ouster from the top 10 for the first time since 2005. They did manage to snag a noted constitutional law scholar, Erwin Chemerinsky as the new dean… but it came after a sexual harassment scandal forced Sujit Choudhry out of the position. So they’re due for some good news.

Unfortunately, the new budget UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ has revealed calls for $2 million in cuts to the law school, as well as higher fundraising benchmarks. The Daily Californian reports the law school is planning on cutting the number of associate deans from seven to three to the tune of ~$1.5 million in savings.

UPDATE (8/16/2017, 1:15 p.m.): A representative of Boalt Hall reached out to Above the Law and let us know that a correction has been made to the Daily Californian report, and to provide additional context to the decision to streamline from seven associate deans to three:

For the current fiscal year, the law school made a total of $2 million in cuts through a wide variety of actions, including delayed maintenance, eliminating some vacant positions, and trimming non-payroll expenses across multiple departments. Those cuts came at the request of central campus, which asked most UC Berkeley departments for help in closing a large campus deficit. One of the cuts we chose involved reducing the number of associate deans from seven to three—back down to a level where we existed for many years. That administrative streamlining resulted in very modest financial savings relative to our overall savings. Those associate deans remain employed at the law school and have returned to their teaching duties full-time.

The Daily Cal article, and blog posts based on it, imply that the law school is reeling. Nothing could be further from the truth. Despite these non-student-facing cuts, our overall annual budget grew again slightly this year.

In fact, three wonderful faculty members are joining us this fall, and we already have a commitment from another new faculty member for next year

The new budget also points specifically to the USNWR rankings drop as part of the motivation for the cuts. I guess this is a bad time to point out Berkeley also fell out of the top 10 in the Above the Law rankings…

Dean Chemerinsky naturally has a slightly different take, pointing to overall budgetary issues as the main reason for the cuts:

“A tuition freeze, maintaining the size of our faculty, and inflationary increases in operating costs were the main factors,” Chemerinsky said in a statement, adding that student recruitment was not affected by the drop.

“Our entering class this year is as strong as it’s ever been,” he said.

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Of course every school wants to be as high as possible in all of the rankings, but budget cutting as a result of a decline (and still within the T14, no less) seems particularly draconian. Hopefully Dean Chemerinsky can steer to school into a brighter future.

Budget cuts hit Berkeley Law after scandal, drop in ranking [Daily Cal via TaxProf Blog]

headshotKathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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