People from across the UCLA School of Law community are proud to be marking the law school’s 75th anniversary during the 2024-25 school year. For 12 months, a series of events, publications, projects and programs will bring together friends and colleagues to reflect on their rich history of public service, access to justice, and outstanding legal education.
The celebration is rooted in an ethos that has driven the law school from the beginning.
On September 19, 1949, UCLA School of Law opened its doors and started classes. Working out of temporary barracks known as buildings 3L, 3N and 3P – huts that had been erected on what was then otherwise empty space behind Royce Hall on the relatively new UCLA campus in Westwood – the faculty had just six members and the small entering class of 54 students included five women and several military veterans. They were there to do something that fit the audacious attitudes of the nation after World War II: start the first public law school in Southern California with a mission to serve and, in the words of a University of California publication at the time, to promote “the spirit, the ideals, and the ethical standards of the common legal heritage.”
Original source can be found here.