Thank You and Happy Holidays | A Year-End Message to Friends of UC Irvine School of Law

Dear Friends of UC Irvine School of Law, 

2024 marked the 15th year since our first class of students arrived at UC Irvine School of Law in August 2009. As we approach the end of this year, we have gathered some of the year’s notable moments in this roundup of top stories. I also invite you to visit our honor roll of community partners, where we thank those who have made such a difference this year.

We are immensely grateful for the many ways the community supports our students, our faculty and our school. We wouldn’t be such a strong and innovative law school if we weren’t embedded in the special, dynamic legal market that exists in Southern California. Our alumni leaders, board members, community partners, local bar associations and the lawyers who serve as lecturers and adjunct faculty — as well as the many firms, judges, government agencies, corporations, nonprofits and public interest organizations who mentor our students and hire our graduates — are instrumental to our mission and one of the reasons we are one of the nation’s best public law schools.

As you’ll see in the year-end roundup, it was a big year for us. We celebrated the relocation from Seattle of the renowned Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality. The occasion was made even more memorable by the establishment of the Sylvia Mendez Presidential Chair for Civil Rights. We also marked the fifth-year anniversary of our Graduate Tax Program, which remains ranked in the top five in the nation. We continued to see success with our summer program in New York City, our semester program in Washington, D.C., and a new summer exchange program in Seoul and Irvine. We expanded our global connections, entering into new agreements with universities in South Korea, China, Spain and Vietnam, and are in the process of establishing agreements with universities in Brazil and India. We launched and continued partnerships with Thrive Scholars and the Point Foundation, and we entered into scholarship agreements with almost all of UC Irvine’s undergraduate schools. We hosted hundreds of speakers and visiting scholars, as well as several symposia, colloquia and events, including significant events in collaboration with the Orange County Bar Association, the Federal Bar Association, and the Latina Lawyers Bar Association. Numerous employers and partner organizations interviewed our students. We were grateful for the expanded partnership with UC Irvine’s Anteaters in Law and the many alumni who returned to campus or joined us at Summer Socials and our UC Irvine Law On the Road program in New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles.

Our commitment to excellence remained unwavering. Our faculty accomplished much, and we continued to be an interdisciplinary research powerhouse, ranking in the top 20 in the nation. You can see from our stories that full-time faculty continued their role leading some of legal education’s most important organizations; they received national recognition and awards for their research, scholarship, teaching and public service; and they testified before Congress, spoke at universities around the world, and were widely cited in the media for their expertise. Exceptionally talented new faculty joined our ranks, and we were pleased to welcome home former dean L. Song Richardson. Those who served as part-time lecturers — leading practicing lawyers, judges and entrepreneurs — were indispensable, going above and beyond to ensure that our students are introduced to the most important trends and developments in the legal field. So many of our achievements this year would not have been possible without the hard work of our dedicated staff too, who do much behind the scenes.

One of our founding missions was to instill the values of public service: to better train students while making California stronger too. This year, our students exhibited an exceptional commitment to giving back. Over 90 percent of our students have participated in the Michael G. Ermer Pro Bono Program at some point during their time at UC Irvine Law. Our pro bono program remains one of the largest in the United States with over 100 pro bono projects each semester. Collectively the school provided over 93,000 hours of hands-on legal work, including over 54,000 clinical hours through our more than 20 live-client clinics, over 11,000 volunteer hours through our pro bono program, and another 27,000 hours through our externship and field placement programs. These numbers do not include the work of our faculty and students through our more-than-dozen research centers, institutes or initiatives, or the work done through student organizations. The scale of our commitment to making a difference and helping those less fortunate — while having students learn concrete, practical skills that will serve them well as lawyers and leaders — continues to make us distinct among the nation’s best schools. No surprise, we remain a top law school for practical training for students and ranked No. 2 in California and No. 13 in the country (preLaw Magazine 2024). Indicative of our commitment to ensuring our students are properly prepared, this year we ranked No. 7 for our Lawyering Skills (legal research and writing) program, and we tied with Stanford, ranking No. 12 in the nation, for having the best clinical training program.

The scale of our commitment to making a difference and helping those less fortunate — while having students learn concrete, practical skills that will serve them well as lawyers and leaders — continues to make us distinct among the nation’s best schools. 

Austen Parrish, Dean and Chancellor’s Professor of Law 

If one of the visions of the leaders who helped found the school was to attract talent to Orange County’s burgeoning legal market, that vision has been more than realized. In August, we welcomed another extraordinarily gifted, diverse and inspiring class of students to our J.D. and graduate degree programs, many who are the first in their families to attend college and law school. And our students demonstrated that mix of smarts, drive, aptitude and hard work — without pretentiousness or entitlement — to thrive. This year, UC Irvine Law ranked No. 12 in the nation — and No. 1 in California, indeed the only law school in California ranked as a top school — for having the most 2023 J.D. graduates employed in full-time, long-term, bar passage-required jobs (Reuters 2024). Ninety-seven percent of our 2023 J.D. graduates secured full-timed employment that require bar passage or prefer a J.D., within ten months of graduation. In addition, we are No. 18 in the nation for federal clerkships (Law 360 2024) and No. 20 in the nation for the percentage of 2023 graduates in the largest 100 law firms (Law.com’s 2024 Go-To Law School Hiring Report).

The Law School made an impact in Orange County and beyond in other ways too. Our Saturday Academy of Law — a partnership with local firms, the OCBA Charitable Fund, and others — supported almost 225 ninth-grade students from high schools in Santa Ana, Anaheim and Garden Grove school districts. Our summer Pre-Law Outreach Program hosted more than 40 undergraduate students from disadvantaged backgrounds who wanted to learn more about pathways to the legal field. We continued our partnership with El Centro Cultural de México and our off-site clinical offices in Santa Ana. Reflecting the vibrancy and diversity of Southern California, preLaw Magazine in 2024 ranked UC Irvine Law No. 1 in the U.S. for our support of Asian and Asian American students, No. 9 for Hispanic students, and No. 25 for Black students. Princeton Review ranked us No. 18 among the most diverse law schools in the nation.

But more than anything, we continued to see the wisdom of our founders who believed that creating a world-class law school here in Orange County would make a difference. Alumni are the lifeblood of any law school, and I am proud to be dean of a school where so many of our graduates continue to lead by example and remain engaged, long after they graduate, taking on leadership roles in the profession. Our inaugural classes are only 12 years out, but in that short time our alumni have done remarkable things. As just a few examples from this year alone, Christina Zabat-Fran ’12 assumed the presidency of the Orange County Bar Association, Kelly Lucinda Galligan ’15 served as president of Project Youth OC, Trey Wilson ’18 assumed the presidency of the Thurgood Marshall Bar Association, Jiaxiao Zhang ’17 was named to Public Law Center’s Board of Directors, Denny Chan ’12 was appointed to the California Civil Rights Council, Betty Kim ’21 became Vice President of the Asian Pacific American Women Lawyers Alliance, and Kristie Kang ’22 and Robyn Lin ’21 were appointed to the governing board. Shirley Diaz ’18, fresh off her presidency of the Hispanic Bar Association of D.C., was sworn in for a second term as the Council of Affiliates Delegate on the Hispanic National Bar Association’s Board of Governors, while Kellye Ng ’16 was sworn in to serve on the Board of Governors of the Southern California Chinese Lawyers Association. These leadership and community roles only scratch the surface — and I apologize because I’ve missed many.

These achievements are just a few highlights of an extraordinary year for our faculty, students, staff and alumni. As we look ahead, I am excited about the future, I am filled with gratitude for the generous support of our vibrant community, and I am honored and humbled to lead this amazing law school. Thank you for all that you do to support our students and faculty, and for your own leadership in the profession. Your dedication to the Law School continues to inspire our efforts and drive our success. 

With gratitude and warm wishes for the new year, 

Austen Parrish 
Dean and Chancellor’s Professor of Law 
UC Irvine School of Law 

P.S. For those that have already made a gift to support the school, including student scholarships, thank you. If you haven’t yet, it’s not too late to do so here. Also, connect with us on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and sign up for our monthly newsletter for the latest news and events at UC Irvine Law.