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ADMISSIONS > J.D. Degree >
Applications for admission into the first year of the J.D. program are accepted beginning each October 1st. The deadline is February 1 of the following year. First-year applicants are encouraged to submit their applications as early in the process as possible.
Applications to transfer from another law school are accepted beginning each April 1st. The transfer admission deadline is June 15.
New students are admitted only in the fall. Boalt Hall does not operate a mid-year admission program, either for first-year or transfer students.
All applicants must hold a bachelor's degree from an approved college or university before beginning study at Boalt Hall. Applicants are also required to take the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) and to register with and provide official transcripts to the Law School Data Assembly Service (LSDAS).
Applicants' LSAT scores and undergraduate grade point averages (GPAs) are important criteria to evaluate academic ability. Applicants may use the mean LSAT percentile and undergraduate GPA of the previous year's admitted applicant pool (97th percentile and 3.80, respectively, for applicants admitted in 2005) as a guide for assessing their chances of admission. Because Boalt takes other factors into account in making admission decisions, higher or lower scores and grades neither ensure nor preclude admission.
Download an Application
The application and instructions for the J.D. program may be downloaded here:
Note: This file is in Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF). Be sure you have version 5.0 or above of the free Adobe Acrobat Reader Utility downloaded and configured to your Web browser before opening the file.
If you have questions, please contact the Admissions Office by calling our office at 510-642-2274 or by sending email to admissions@law.berkeley.edu.
Application Fee
A non-refundable $75 application fee must be paid by a check or money
order drawn from a U.S. bank or by an international money order (in U.S. currency). Checks should be made payable to UC Regents. Do not send cash or stamps.
The fee payment must accompany a completed application; we will not process or evaluate your application without the fee payment. Note: This fee cannot be used for processing applications to other law schools in the University of California system.
A limited number of Boalt Hall application fee waivers are available to the most needy applicants. The fee waiver application is available here.
The deadline for fee waiver requests is February 1. For advanced standing applicants, the deadline is June 15. Applicants who do not receive a waiver or do not meet the deadline must pay the application fee.
Letters of Recommendation
A recommendation form is provided with the application. Please make photocopies of the form if you are submitting more than one recommendation.
Boalt Hall strongly recommends you provide letters of recommendation from two professors who are familiar with your past academic performance and are able to assess your potential for the study of law. If you have been away from academia for some time, a letter from a supervisor or colleague may be valuable. Although you may submit more than two letters, your file will be deemed complete when two letters have arrived.
If you are applying as a transfer student, letters of recommendation from two law professors are required. We strongly recommend that these letters be written by law professors with whom you have studied.
If you wish to waive your access to any of your recommendation letters, sign the form before giving it to each of your recommenders. In evaluating these letters, no weight is given to whether you have waived access to them or not.
Recommendations may be forwarded to the Admissions Office using one of the methods described below. The order in which they are listed reflects our preference and the ease with which we can process recommendations so submitted.
- Submit your letter through the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) letter of recommendation service. This service is included in your Law School Data Assembly Service (LSDAS) registration subscription. Your letters of recommendation will be copied and sent to Boalt Hall along with your LSDAS report. To use this service, follow the directions outlined in the LSAT/ LSDAS Registration and Information Book. Please provide each recommender with a letter of recommendation form from the LSAT/ LSDAS Registration and Information Book.
- Submit your letters of recommendation with your application materials. Give your recommenders the recommendation form provided with the Boalt Hall application. Request that each recommender (or your school credentials service) place the form in a sealed envelope and sign his or her name across the seal. The sealed envelope should be returned to you for inclusion with your other Boalt Hall application materials. Please do not break the envelope's seal.
- Give your recommenders the recommendation form provided with the Boalt Hall application. Request that your recommenders send their letters of recommendation directly to Boalt Hall under separate cover.
Notification of Application Status
Applicants are encouraged to have their admission file complete and ready for review as early as possible. Applicants are responsible for making sure all materials reach Boalt Hall's Admissions Office by the deadline. The Admissions Office will take no action until the office also receives the application fee, transcript analysis from LSDAS and personal statement. Normally review of an applicant's file is deferred until the two letters of recommendation are received or until the deadline, whichever occurs first. Applicants who wish to have their application considered complete without the letters must indicate this on the application form.
When the Admissions Office has received all of the required application materials, it will send an email confirming that the file is under review. Because of the large number of applications, a fair amount of time may elapse between the submission of an application and receipt of notification that a file is complete. Until applicants receive notice their file is complete, they should assume it is incomplete and that no action is being taken on their application. If you have questions, please send them in writing rather than calling the office. Inquiries other than those prompted by a special concern delay the processing of applications.
Contacting Applicants
Our concern for confidentiality normally precludes discussion of individual files with anyone other than the applicant. Applicants who expect to be unavailable at any point during the application process, however, should appoint someone to act on their behalf and inform the Admissions Office in writing of the appointee's name, address and phone number.
Evaluation
Once each file is complete, it is evaluated on the basis of the admissions criteria. The director of admissions is instructed by faculty policy to admit a certain number of applicants who, under the governing criteria and on the basis of the director's experience, would have a high likelihood of admission if referred to the admissions committee. Similarly, applicants who would have a high likelihood of being denied if referred to the committee are denied by the director of admissions. The remaining applicants are given more extended consideration by the admissions committee, which is composed of faculty and students.
The student role is entirely consultative and the faculty members' decisions are final. Only students who are members of the admissions committee are permitted to read files. Applicants may indicate on the application form whether they consent to have their files read by a student member of the admissions committee. In the evaluation of each file, no weight is given to whether the applicant has consented to student review. In every case, complete confidentiality of all materials is maintained.
As a result of the committee's consideration, some applicants are admitted, some are placed on a waiting list and the remaining applicants are denied. The total number admitted is that which experience has indicated will fill the places available in the entering class. If the number of admitted students who accept an offer of admission falls below the number necessary to fill the class, the waiting list is used to fill the remaining places.
Grade Point Average
In evaluating an applicant's undergraduate GPA, the following factors may be considered: the age of the grades, exceptionally high grades, difficulty of coursework, time commitments while attending college, grading patterns at the school attended and grade trends or discrepancies among the applicant's grades.
Socioeconomic Questionnaire
The law school seeks to identify students whose ability to overcome disadvantages or obstacles promises success in law school and in the profession. To this end, applicants are invited to complete the Socioeconomic Questionnaire included with the application. Completion of the questionnaire is optional and will in no way adversely affect an applicant's candidacy. If a questionnaire is submitted, it will be used to augment the other factors considered during the evaluation process.
Other Factors
In making admission decisions, substantial weight is given to undergraduate GPAs and LSAT scores, but other factors are also considered.
If it appears an applicant has experienced disadvantages that have adversely affected past performance, or that the applicant has successfully overcome such disadvantages, this information will be considered when assessing the applicant's potential to be distinguished in the study and practice of law and to contribute to the educational process and the legal profession.
Race, religion, sex, color, ethnicity and national origin are not used as criteria for admission to Boalt Hall. No weight is given to the political or ideological views of the applicant, how an applicant intends to use his or her legal education, or an applicant's need for financial aid or employment during law school.
Notification of Decision
Letters are sent to applicants as decisions are made. For the majority of applicants, this is usually by mid-April. An admitted applicant has several weeks to respond to the offer, but in no case is an applicant required to reply before April 1.
Acceptance Deposit
Boalt Hall does not require an acceptance deposit. Instead the school relies on the good faith of those admitted to provide candid responses about accepting the offer of admission. The absence of a deposit necessitates the spring and summer reconfirmation of an accepted applicant's intention to enroll.
Reconsideration
Once an applicant has been denied admission, the applicant's files are not reconsidered during that admission cycle. Exceptions are made only in unusual cases in which an error-for which the applicant was not responsible and which the applicant promptly brought to the law school's attention-may have affected the decision. Because files are initially considered on a comparative basis, reconsideration would lay open the possibility of unfairly granting attention to individual applicants. It is therefore avoided.
Deferment of Admission
Students are expected to enroll for the year for which they have been admitted. However, deferment requests may be granted at the discretion of the director of admissions. Examples of reasons a deferment might be granted include admission to a concurrent or combined degree program, serious illness in the family, award of a fellowship or some other extraordinary opportunity.
In This Section
LSAT
LSDAS/Transcripts
Transferring to Boalt
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