UCI Law Opens With Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony on Aug. 24

08-13-2009

WHO: UCI School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky will deliver short opening remarks, as will Mark P. Robinson Jr., chair of the Dean’s Advisory Council and the senior partner with Robinson, Calcagnie & Robinson in Newport Beach, Calif. Cutting the ribbon will be the first student to commit to attending the law school, Acrivi Coromelas, a San Gabriel, Calif., high school English teacher and graduate of Grinnell College and Claremont Graduate University.

WHAT: The founding of UC Irvine School of Law marks the first new public law school in California in more than 40 years.

WHEN: The ribbon-cutting ceremony will be held at 8:00 a.m. PDT on Monday, Aug. 24, outside the law school entrance. At 8:30 a.m., first classes for the 61 members of the inaugural class begin.

WHERE: UCI School of Law, 401 East Peltason Drive, Irvine, CA (corner of Campus Drive and East Peltason). For parking, show identification at the parking kiosk in front of the law school on East Peltason Drive, or at the entrance of the Social Sciences Parking Structure at Campus Drive and Stanford Avenue, one block west of East Peltason. For complete directions, click here.

WHY: From the outset, the School of Law has been envisioned as a necessary addition to help make UC Irvine, founded in 1965, a full-service research university.

Contact: Rex Bossert, assistant dean for communications, 949-824-3063, rbossert@law.uci.edu

About UCI School of Law

UCI School of Law seeks to create the ideal law school for the 21st century by doing the best job of training lawyers for the practice of law at the highest levels of the profession. The law school’s inaugural class – which has a median grade point average and LSAT scores comparable to those of classes at top 20 law schools – is supported by three-year, full-tuition scholarships. Recruited from top schools, the founding law faculty has been ranked in the top 10 in a recent study. Seven new faculty members joined the law school in July, bringing the number of faculty to 22 and the student-faculty ratio to better than 3:1, which is the best in the country. The law school’s innovative curriculum stresses hands-on, interdisciplinary study and public service. So far, the school is approaching $30 million in private donations.