Spring Break
College of Law to open next week
Aditi Dubey
Issue date: 8/11/06 Section: News
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"We will be starting in a week and our class has been given their assignments for the orientation already," Jennifer Rosato, acting dean of CoL, said. "Both with the quality of the class and with the number, I'm very happy. We have a very accomplished and diverse class."
The students come from different educational and cultural backgrounds. According to the admissions dean, there are a variety of majors represented. Out of the 185, 21 percent are students of color, 33 percent have graduate degrees and 50 percent have had full-time work experience prior to coming to CoL. A good amount of scholarships have been offered to the applicants as well. All the scholarships are merit-based and students are getting from anywhere between $700 annually to full-tuition. The student body has been divided into three sections of approximately sixty students each. The median LSAT score of the inaugural class is 156 and the median GPA stands at 3.4.
"We're all set and ready to go," Rosato said. "We've got the faculty ready to come teach them and we're going to be even more comfortable when we move into the new building at the beginning of the new calendar year."
Currently, CoL is seeking provisional accreditation from the American Bar Association.
"Well, the accreditation process for the American Bar Association really doesn't begin formally until operation of law school for a year," Rosato said. "We won't have an actual ruling on the provisional accreditation until spring of 2008 at the earliest."
Rosato further said that the University is conscientiously complying with the standards of ABA in order to gain accreditation smoothly. She explained that a university does not need a top or bottom LSAT requirement to gain accreditation and that the latter was more based on whether the law school has a quality class of students.
"The students cannot sit for the bar exam after they graduate unless we have provisional accreditation, which we expect to have," Rosato said.
Rosato also said that the admissions process of CoL is comparable to any other in the country.
The University of Pennsylvania Law School currently has an enrollment of 243 students, with 38 percent of them being students of color and 15 percent holding graduate degrees. The median LSAT score and GPA of the class of 2008 are high and the student to faculty ratio is that of 13:1. Comparably, Northeastern University School of Law has an enrollment of 210 students. 33 percent of the students are students of color adn the student to faculty ratio is 17:1. The median LSAT score at NUSL is 161 and the median GPA is 3.36, for their class of 2008.
"We look at things like where students came from, what their background experience is, in addition to the other indicators that every law school looks at," Rosato said. "We feel that this will help to enrich the classroom. In terms of numbers, we're really glad."
CoL has tied up with 91 employers to provide co-op internships to its students. There are many different kinds of employers that have been roped in; some are corporations, others are public interest law projects, government offices, law firms and non-profit organizations among other things. Some of the law firms participating as co-op employers are Margolis Edelstein, Stradley Ronon Steven & Young, and Dilworth Paxson LLP etc. The public interest law projects will include co-ops with AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania, Community Legal Services, Inc. and Support Center for Child Advocates.
According to Rosato, the co-op sponsors that were chosen were the ones that were diverse so that there was a number of different settings that are available for students. Students going on co-op are able to choose from these options.
"The co-op is one of the most unique and special aspects of the legal education that we are going to provide here as opposed to other law schools in the country," Rosato said. "And the co-op employers that we have are the one that have either had students in the past or are very interested in having students and want them to learn while they are on the job."
Rosato further said that through these co-ops, students are going to learn about not only what happens at their corporation or at their law firm but also build skills in research, in writing, in oral presentation and all the other skills that a lawyer needs when they get out in the outside world.
The co-op sponsors were approached by Oxholm and according to Rosato, many of the sponsors accepted the offer readily.
"They were very enthusiastic, many of them, to come on board and teach our students," Rosato said. "For the local legal community, it's going to be a big plus and many of these corporations know of Drexel co-op and know how good it is and they expect the same quality for the co-ops of the Drexel college of Law."
The only other law school to offer co-op internships is NUSL. According to their website, NUSL is tied up with 700 co-op employers with about 40 states and countries represented in the co-op program. Approximately 200 students are employed each quarter in a variety of legal practices, with majority of the placements being in the Greater Boston area.
Rosato feels the CoL is unique because the curriculum is designed so that the students understand from the beginning that practicing law in the profession of law involves different aspects that aren't separated from on another.
CoL administration has high expectations of its inaugural class.
"I think they are going to do well," Rosato said. "If we've done our job as teachers, as the administration of the College of Law, we will have prepared our students as well as or better than law school could because we are combining and integrating skills, with knowledge, with ethics throughout their education, which is something that not very many, if any, law schools have been able to do so far."
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