Erwin Chemerinsky’s Gift to Southern California

Sixty new lawyers, at taxpayer the expense of funds that would otherwise go to his public law school’s endowment.

A new law school [University of California, Irvine] opening next fall in Southern California is offering a big incentive to top students who might be thinking twice about the cost of a legal education during the recession: free tuition for three years. …

Scholarship winners will be chosen for their potential to emerge three years later as legal stars on the ascendance. Only the best and brightest need apply, but the school hopes to offer full scholarships to all 60 members of its inaugural class in 2009. Subsequent classes will be on a normal tuition basis.

Chemerinsky, who knows something about the difficulty of landing a job at the top of the legal world, is certainly taking a bold stab at leapfrogging the competition with this offer.  And while in Southern California one has to be careful not to trip over unemployed lawyers while strolling on the sidewalk, we’d certainly encourage Overlawyered readers who’ve always wanted to live the dream to apply.

Via Talkleft, which is also encouraging its readers to fill these spots.  Two can play that game!

Edit: Thanks to reader Jwill for a valuable correction.

5 Comments

  • Here are some interesting facts. According to the American Bar Association the US graduated over 40,000 attornyes last year. We graduated only 16,000 physicians. The US has over 70% of the worlds attornyes and only 5% of the population.

  • “The US has over 70% of the worlds attornyes and only 5% of the population.”

    In other news, 76.35% of statistics are made up.

    http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_country_in_the_world_has_most_lawyers_per_capita

  • Maybe you didn’t research this enough, because the title is “60 new laywers at taxpayer expense”

    Most of the funding for this is from private sources, such as a 20m grant from a development fund in Irvine. They are not asking for additional state money.

  • Good to hear Jwill. I’ll amend the post accordingly.

  • We still need more doctor, nurses, engineers and electricians…

    and fewer lawyers.