Santa Clara University

Law Briefs

School of Law gains membership in prestigious honor society

The latest honor to be bestowed upon SCU’s law school is admission into Order of the Coif, a prestigious national legal society open only to the top law schools in the United States.

“It’s been likened to Phi Beta Kappa,” said Dean Donald Polden, referring to the national undergraduate honor society. “This is all part of a trend that’s been occurring for several years during which the national visibility of the school has been heightened, and the prestige and image of the school is recognized in a wider circle of high quality law schools.”

In granting membership to the law school, Order of the Coif found that the law school’s growing production of important legal scholarship and its ambitious academic programs and course of study placed it in an elite group of American law schools.

The school’s admission means that the top ten percent of each year’s graduating law school class is eligible for membership in the Order, a resume-enhancing option for those who qualify.

The Order is known for its triennial book award, considered the top award in legal academic circles. The Order also supports a national lecture series.

Polden says the credit for the membership should go to the law school faculty and staff, and to former Dean Mack Player, who made it a goal to join the Order after taking his position in 1994.

Player pointed to such improvements as reduction in the student- faculty ratio, increase in faculty scholarship and library resources, and increased bar passage rate as items that helped the school’s application.

He credited his predecessor as dean, Gerald Uelmen, for getting the funding to achieve the improvements, and the law school’s faculty for pursing excellence at the law school.

The school’s application for Coif membership was based on accreditation reports prepared by the American Bar Association and the Association of American Law Schools, an exercise that occurs every seven years.

“The Order of the Coif is basically a recognition of quality,” Player said. “Accrediting is a minimal standard. Coif is a level of excellence.”

Order of the Coif began in the U.S. in 1908, and is based on the practice by judges in early England of selecting the most outstanding and distinguished members of the bar there.

Law students from the class of 2004 who qualified for membership were notified of their admission after final grades were posted.

A number of faculty members are also members of the Order, including George Alexander, Donald Chisum, Brad Joondeph, Kerry Macintosh, Gary Neustadter, Tyler Ochoa, Gary Spitko, Eric Wright, and visiting professor Clark J. Freshman.

The law school joins 80 other schools that belong to Order of the Coif, which chooses members from the nation’s 188 accredited law schools. Other Californa law schools included in the Order are Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Hastings College of Law, UC Davis, McGeorge School of Law, USC, Loyola Marymount and the University of San Diego. “They’re good company to be in,” said Polden.

“Fewer than half of all American law schools have been admitted to membership in the Order of the Coif,” said Polden, “and it is a tribute to the faculty, staff and outstanding graduates of the school that we have been elected to the membership.”

For more information, see www.orderofthecoif.org