Campaign for Boalt Hall
An urgent agenda requires bold action. And we’re moving on all fronts: Reforming financial aid to ensure access and enable career choice for our students. Expanding the faculty to broaden our academic offerings and reduce our faculty-student ratio. Creating new policy think tanks to tackle some of society’s thorniest problems. And producing a vibrant new complex for our students and faculty on our anchor site at the southeast corner of campus.
The Campaign for Boalt Hall is the primary vehicle for securing our gains to date and for fueling our momentum through the coming years. In short:
The campaign is gutsy: We set our goal at $125 million—nine times more than we raised in our entire previous campaign.
The campaign is visionary: Investments will broaden the school’s influence into new spheres of scholarship, practice, and public policy.
The campaign is vital: The goodwill and generosity of our alumni and friends will enable us to turn ideas into action and opportunity into accomplishment—more strategically and innovatively than ever before.
The Campaign for Boalt Hall is focused on these five priorities:
Access and Inclusion
Expanding financial aid and loan forgiveness
Goal: $15 million
To ensure that the students we admit get the chance for the education they deserve—and the careers they want—we have conducted a comprehensive overhaul of our financial aid program, resulting in one of the most generous suites of offerings of any top law school in the country. We’ve nearly doubled the size of need-based grants for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. And we’ve beefed up our loan-forgiveness program to provide 100 percent debt forgiveness to graduates who take public-services jobs at salaries up to $58,000—and partial relief to those earning as much as $100,000.
Scholars and Teachers
Recruiting and retaining top faculty
Goal: $15 million
Great law schools are defined by great professors. We are expanding the size of our core faculty by 40 percent to improve faculty-student ratios, broaden our curriculum, and add brainpower to our multidisciplinary research centers. The number of world-class scholars who’ve chosen to teach here affirms our status as a premier law school. But competition for talent is fierce, and attracting the very best often requires financial incentives such as mortgage assistance, relocation expenses, seed money for research programs, or the promise of an endowed chair.
Expertise and Engagement
Advancing the work of our research centers
Goal: $15 million
One way we make good on our dedication to serving the public interest is through the results-oriented research of our centers and institutes. Our eight major think tanks—six created in the past four years—are exploiting their uniquely advantageous position within the world’s premier research university. By collaborating with experts on campus and beyond, they are addressing complex issues that cluster at the nexus of law and such diverse fields as business, social justice, technology, race and diversity, criminal justice, and the environment.
Renovation and Construction
Housing our ambitions
Goal: $60 million
The rapid expansion of our faculty and recent launching of six new research centers have us thinking creatively about our space. To meet our multiplying needs, we decided to tackle the problem on two fronts. First, we’re transforming 25,000 square feet within our existing facility—upgrading classrooms, lecture halls, and seminar rooms, plus creating faculty offices and vibrant collaborative space for students. Second, we are constructing a building on the south side of our site that will house most of the library, as well as new classrooms and informal space for students and faculty. The goal: To create a law school complex commensurate with the quality of the work that occurs within it.
The Boalt Hall Fund
Maximizing our options
Campaign goal: $20 million
To deliver the education, scholarship, and outreach required of a premier law school in an increasingly fast-paced environment, the law school needs to be nimble. Gifts to the Boalt Hall Fund are important because they are immediately available to be spent at the dean’s discretion. While other gifts provide essential support to specific initiatives, gifts to the Boalt Hall Fund allow the dean to leverage every philanthropic dollar for maximum benefit—by allocating funding where it’s most needed, when it’s most valuable, and how it’s most effective.
