L.A. Law

UCLA FIRSTS Every other Friday, The Bruin will
highlight social, political and scientific advancements that
originated at UCLA and set standards for both the university and
the nation.

By Nitin Dhamija
Daily Bruin Contributor

In 1952, 50 students graduated from the UCLA School of Law. In
2000, that number was 356.

Jean Bower Fisler, a 1952 law school alumna, was one of five
female students in the law school’s first graduating
class.

“I am proud to be the member of the first class of the law
school,” Fisler said, “I feel like a piece of UCLA
history.”

Plans to build a law school at the university began in 1947,
when then California Gov. Earl Warren signed Assembly Bill 16,
which provided more than $1.6 million for its construction.

In the next two years, the law school held its first class in a
temporary building, with a single classroom, a 30,000-volume
library, an administrative office and offices for the five members
of the faculty.

For those first couple years, Fisler attended lectures in the
temporary law building, but concluded her final year in the
newly-completed law school building in 1951. The first class of
students graduated the following year.

The building took nearly two more years to complete.

UCLA Archives Students in a moot court in 1952, the first year a
graduation at the UCLA Law School took place. Delivering the
keynote address at the building’s dedication, Roscoe Pound,
dean-emeritus of the Harvard School of Law, came out of retirement
to serve as a visiting professor at the law school.

He lectured during the years Fisler went to school.

“We had no upperclassmen to look to for advice,”
Fisler said. “Yet we all still share a very special bond even
after all this time.”

She added that law school students in 1951 benefitted from the
construction of a law library and increased faculty members.

During the first few years, Fisler and other Californians paid
$35 per semester, non-residents paid $185 per semester.

Along with the financial changes, the 50 years of the
school’s history brought forth academic, ethnic and
technological changes under the supervision of a number of
deans.

During the tenure of Dean Richard Maxwell, who served from
1958-1969, the law school became a nationally-ranked
institution.

“The areas of teaching and research in which the law
faculty is now engaged cover almost every field of interest in
which legal scholarship is a factor,” wrote Maxwell in 1967
for UCLA on the Move.

UCLA Archives The UCLA Law Library was a little less crowded in
its early days due to much lower enrollment. In 1952, the law
school turned out only 50 graduates.

“Although the school’s alumni are still a relatively
young and relatively small group, among them are a half-dozen
judges, members of national, state, and city government and several
law professors,” he continued.

Dean Murray Schwartz, who succeeded Maxwell, started a clinical
education program, which is still used today to assist students
with practical lawyering skills, like holding moot courts.

In the early 1980s, a UCLA Law School graduate, took charge of
the school. Susan W. Prager, dean from 1982 to 1998, was not only
the first woman dean at the school, but was also the first in the
UC system.

As the longest-serving dean in the history of the law school,
Prager expanded the clinical program and helped add the Hugh and
Hazel Darling Law Library during her 16-year stay.

During her last year at UCLA, Prager, who became Provost of
Dartmouth College in 1999, witnessed a complete change in the
makeup of students since the law school’s opening.

In 1998, the law school produced a female majority of graduates
for the first time.

Over the years, the school grew in prestige as well as size as
the number of faculty members and applicants to the school
increased.

With it, law firms and agencies coming to campus to recruit
students also rose, and so did the salaries graduates received.

The average starting salary for 1977 graduates was $20,000 while
the median starting income for a 1998 graduate rose to $85,000,
according to law school statistics.

Currently, Dean Jonathan Varat leads the school.

“From modest but ambitious beginnings 50 years ago, the
UCLA School of Law quickly developed into … one of the
nation’s most innovative, prestigious and productive law
schools,” wrote Varat, in UCLA Law.