UC Davis School of Law


The University of California, Davis School of Law, referred to as UC Davis School of Law and commonly known as King Hall and UC Davis Law, is an American Bar Association approved law school located in Davis, California on the campus of the University of California, Davis. The school received ABA approval in 1968. It joined the Association of American Law Schools in 1968.
UC Davis School of Law is the smallest of the five law schools in the University of California system, with a total enrollment of just under 600 students. The school is located in a building named for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and commonly referred to as King Hall.

Rankings and academics

In 2016, US News & World Report ranked UC Davis 30th among all law schools in the United States.
For diversity among the five law schools in the UC system, UC Davis was named the second-most diverse after UC Hastings by US News & World Report. Princeton Review placed UC Davis Law tenth in the nation for faculty diversity in the 2009 version of its annual law ranking. It is listed as an "A-" in the March 2011 "Diversity Honor Roll" by The National Jurist: The Magazine for Law Students.
It is listed as an "A" in the January 2011 "Best Public Interest Law Schools" ratings by The National Jurist: The Magazine for Law Students.
UC Davis Law has the smallest student body of the UC law schools. It has a slightly higher student/faculty ratio than UCLA or Berkeley.
UC Davis has been ranked as the fifth most-expensive public law school in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. It is also ranked first for providing the most financial aid.
UC Davis grants the second-most in financial aid in the country. UC Davis Law's King Hall Loan Repayment Assistance Program, founded in 1990 to help alumni working in relatively low-income public-service law careers to repay student loans, was the first loan repayment assistance program established at any UC law school.
According to Brian Leiter's Law School rankings, Davis ranks 23rd in the nation for scholarly impact as measured by total academic citations of tenure-stream faculty.

Bar passage rates

Based on a 2001-2007 6 year average, 79.4% of UC Davis Law graduates passed the California State Bar exam. In 2009, 89% of first-time test takers passed the California bar.
For July 2012, 78.9% of first-time test takers passed the California bar exam. For July 2013, 85.0% of first-time test takers passed the California Bar Exam.
For July 2014, 86% of first-time test takers passed the California bar exam.

Employment

According to King Hall's official 2017 ABA-required disclosures, 79% of the Class of 2017 obtained full-time, long-term, JD-required employment nine months after graduation. King Hall's Law School Transparency under-employment score is 10.2%, indicating the percentage of the Class of 2017 unemployed, pursuing an additional degree, or working in a non-professional, short-term, or part-time job nine months after graduation.

Costs

The total cost of attendance at King Hall for the 2013-2014 academic year is $68,346 for California residents and $80,591 for non-residents. The Law School Transparency estimated debt-financed cost of attendance for three years is $265,806 for residents.

Coffee Cart Fire

For many years, a coffee kiosk called Cargo Coffee operated in what was then the courtyard in front of the main entrance to King Hall. Cargo Coffee sold beverages such as coffee, milk, water, tea, and occasionally soft drinks. It did not sell alcoholic beverages. It accepted all major credit cards as well as debit cards, although there was reportedly a minor controversy concerning its practice of adding a small surcharge to the price of coffee when a customer utilized a debit card in order to pay for the coffee The record does not appear to indicate that Cargo Coffee was beloved by the UC Davis community, but its coffee was widely regarded as adequate and, it being the only coffee cart located in the immediate vicinity of the UC Davis School of law during the first years of the Obama Administration, it did a fair amount of business with law students, many of whom were sleep deprived and therefore exceptionally likely to purchase coffee
However, between the hours of 5:00 and 6:00 a.m. on the morning of April 29, 2010, the coffee kiosk caught fire. This was the morning that the 1Ls were scheduled to take their final exam for torts and therefore many of them arrived to the law school uncharacteristically early in order to study. They had in many cases planned to purchase coffee from Cargo Coffee, as they were, historically speaking, wont to do. However, they were greeted with the site of dramatic flames leaping skyward from the increasingly charring husk of what was once the Cargo Coffee kiosk. Plastic-scented smoke pervaded the law school building that day, potentially causing many of the 1Ls to perform less admirably on the aforementioned torts final than they otherwise would have done. To date, no rigorous study has determined how many law students in the UC Davis Class of 2012 were unable to secure biglaw offers due to the presence of noxious fumes during their torts finals, but those who have examined the issue estimate that the number is nonzero.
The burning of the coffee kiosk, which occurred at a volatile time in American history less than a decade after 9/11, is regarded by students at the time as the defining event of their law school experience. To this day, it is common for alumni from the Class of 2012 to ask one another where they were when they learned that the coffee kiosk had burned down.
Source: https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/cargo-coffee-kiosk-burns-down-outside-king-hall/
Source: https://localwiki.org/davis/Cargo_Coffee

Theories Regarding Origin of Conflagration

Much like the Reichstag Fire, there have been over the years many competing theories, including some conspiracy theories proposed to describe the origin of the 2010 Coffee Cart Fire. As set forth above, there is broad agreement that the fire began prior to 6:00 a.m., at a time when the kiosk would have been neither open nor preparing to open. Thus, it is difficult to see how the fire could have been started as a result of the electrical or other malfunctioning of the equipment that one tends to find inside of a coffee shop including but not limited to an espresso machine or a device used for steaming milk. Moreover, if the operation of typical coffee and/or milk preparation equipment or other electrical equipment within the coffee kiosk caused the fire, then it stands to reason that there would be an employee present to disclose to the authorities what happened and how the fire began. Had there been employees present when the fire started, they could have said to the Davis Fire Department, when asked, either we know how the fire started, or we didn't start the fire. This was not the case, because apparently when the authorities arrived at the law school on the morning of the fire, no designated representative of the coffee kiosk was there to provide any percipient witness testimony as to the potential origins of the blaze. This suggested that the fire was not started as a direct or proximate result of the conscious utilization of coffee or milk preparation equipment within the confines of the coffee kiosk by a human.
According to the following article from April 30, 2010 in The California Aggie - source: https://theaggie.org/2010/04/30/suspicious-fire-burns-down-coffee-kiosk-by-king-hall/ - the fire was "suspicious." There were no injuries and no damage was reported apart from damage to the kiosk. The owners of the kiosk, according to the California Aggie article, estimated the damage from the loss to be $30,000. It is unknown whether this estimate took into account a full and up-to-date accounting of all inventory located within the designated confines of the coffee kiosk. The California Aggie article does not provide a detailed accounting of the basis for the estimate. A member of the Yolo County arson team quoted in the article said that there were "suspicious materials" at the scene that "may indicate arson." Specifically, he represented to the California Aggie as follows: “It was suspicious in nature, but we cannot reveal any more information than that because it could impact the investigation" It is not precisely known what the "suspicious materials" were, but it is likely that they included the sorts of things that arsonists would use in order to deliberately burn coffee kiosks, such as, for example, matches. The California Aggie article also confirmed the widely used nature of the then-erstwhile kiosk, noting that "most law students buy coffee, tea or pastries from the kiosk on a daily basis." It has never been finally ascertained how many pastries were destroyed in the fire.
Because the fire occurred on the morning of a torts final exam, and because grades in American law schools are typically based entirely on a student's performance on the final exam, a conspiracy theory began to circulate that the Coffee Kiosk Fire of 2010 was intentionally started by a student desperate to avoid sitting for the torts final. This theory has never been established, although it has never been formally debunked in any peer-reviewed study. Additionally, there has been speculation that the fire was started by a splinter group of militant Mormons based out of a compound near Dixon, California due to their staunch opposition to caffeine, however this theory too is widely rejected.
According to the following article from UCDavis.edu dated May 7, 2010 - source: https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/coffee-hut-fire-being-treated-arson/ - the fire was considered to be arson, and there is no mention of student involvement or the activities of any religiously affiliated group.

Expansion

The law school completed a $30 million expansion project in 2011. The project has added an additional wing to the law school's current building, increasing assignable space by nearly 30 percent to provide for additional classrooms, offices, and a new courtroom, named the Paul and Lydia Kalmanovitz Appellate Courtroom in honor of a $1 million gift to the project from the Kalmanovitz Charitable Foundation. The courtroom is used by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, California Supreme Court, and California Court of Appeal.

Noted people

Faculty

He currently serves as Co-Reporter for the American Law Institute's Restatement of Foreign Relations Law: Jurisdiction and as a member of the State Department's Advisory Committee on International Law.

Alumni