UCLA-RAND Center for Law and Public Policy launches first empirical legal scholarship program

The UCLA-RAND Center for Law and Public Policy has established the first program housed entirely within a law school to offer students formal training in empirical legal scholarship. The Empirical Legal Scholars Program will foster empirical research by providing law students with the coursework and guidance to critically examine existing research and produce high-quality scholarship of their own. It includes the hallmarks of a graduate program – formal instruction, faculty mentorship and practical experience – and is designed for students who want to use their legal education for policy or academic careers.

“There has been an explosion of empirical legal scholarship at law schools, but unfortunately it has not been matched by the increased training of law students. The UCLA-RAND Empirical Legal Scholars Program is designed to fill this void,” Joseph Doherty, director of the UCLA Law Empirical Research Group, said. “By providing the training of a graduate program, completely housed in a law school, students can now gain practical day-to-day empirical research experience while also completing their legal studies.”

Formal instruction will include a second-year course in research methods, statistics and data analysis, followed by a seminar in which students conduct their own original research. Each student will be paired with a law school faculty mentor by area of interest in order to deepen his or her substantive understanding of that particular field. Students will also be integrated into ongoing empirical research with UCLA Law faculty as research assistants and into the projects of the UCLA-RAND Center as fellows. By the end of the program, each student is expected to produce a paper that is suitable for conferences and/or publication.

The Empirical Legal Scholars Program is under the umbrella of the UCLA-RAND Center for Law and Public Policy, a partnership of the UCLA School of Law and RAND Corporation. The center – the only alliance of a law school and a major policy research institute in the nation – was created to support collaborative research in many different fields and to evolve with the doctrinal, institutional and professional changes in the law.

“This new partnership expands upon the RAND Institute for Civil Justice’s 30-year tradition of independent empirical legal research, and will provide our researchers with the opportunity to not only guest lecture at a top law school in the country, but also to mentor law students who will work on UCLA-RAND projects under the guidance of our experts,” James N. Dertouzos, acting director of the RAND Institute for Civil Justice, said.

While the partnership kicked off with a joint conference on Transparency in the Civil Justice System in November 2007, the formal partnership agreement between the two institutions was signed in September 2009. The agreement cements a long history of collaborative research between UCLA School of Law and the RAND Corporation.

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