By Lemery Reyes, Silicon Valley Business Journal
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/03/13/cal-tops-stanford-for-no-1-ip-law.html
U.C. Berkeley and Stanford may be football rivals, but the East Bay university has bragging rights when it comes to the hiring of their IP law students.
We asked the top 25 IP firms the following question: What local law school do you look to for hiring?
About 48 percent, or 12 out of 25 survey respondents, from our upcoming top IP firms list look to U.C. Berkeley’s law school as their No. 1 school for hiring. Stanford University and Santa Clara University ranked in second and third place. (Interestingly enough, U.S. News ranked those same top three IP law schools on their national list, too.) Some of our survey respondents listed multiple schools.
Here is the overall tally of how the local schools fared:
University of California Berkeley: 10
Stanford University: 9
Santa Clara University: 7
University of California Hastings College of the Law: 5
University of California Davis: 1
University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law: 1
University of San Francisco: 1
I spoke with U.C. Berkeley law’s Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati Professor of Law Robert Merges about why Cal is tops for firms hiring IP law students.
“I think the reason that employers are so keen on our graduates is that we have such a comprehensive program, which means that when our students graduate, they are at a level which usually takes law firm associates several years to achieve,” said Merges, who joined the U.C. Berkeley law school faculty in 1995 and is also co-director for the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology.
“They start the race a lap or so ahead, and that is because we start exposing our students to IP during their first year of law school, and they can take advance classes in their second year to advanced seminars in their third year.”