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Boalt Hall Looking at a Name Change
Would a top-tier law school by any other name smell as prestigious? Administrators in Berkeley sure hope so
The Recorder
October 09, 2007
Boalt Hall School of Law is doing some soul-searching.
Administrators feel the school goes by too many names, and they appear to be looking for a single new brand. Dubbed the "Identity Project," the school has hired San Francisco brand consulting firm Marshall Strategy Inc. to poll students, faculty, alumni and others, a Boalt spokeswoman said.
Locals call the school Boalt Hall. But outside of California, that colloquialism often draws blank looks. Several alums said that when they are traveling, they say their J.D. comes from Berkeley Law School, which they say carries international cachet.
The school officially goes by University of California, Berkeley School of Law, says spokeswoman Susan Gluss. But check out its Web pages, its newsletters and other school materials, and there are "about a dozen different names and iterations."
Boalt Hall plans to unveil a new name in January. Sybil Wyatt, the law school's executive director of communications and marketing who is spearheading the project, could not be reached for comment Monday.
The ruminations come at a time when Boalt Hall (like other state-funded schools) is repositioning itself as a public school that is increasingly reliant on private money. As state support dwindles, schools are working to offset the losses by launching huge capital campaigns, such as Boalt's $125 million project that's headed by Dean Chris Edley.
Folger Levin & Kahn partner Adam Sachs, past president of the Boalt Hall Alumni Association, said that under a single new name the school will likely have an easier time raising its visibility. He said clients of lawyers who went to Boalt may not know that their counsel went to UC-Berkeley.
"When I talk to clients, I tell them I went to Berkeley," Sachs said. "The truth is, the name Boalt is much more of an insider thing."
Fundraising campaigns rely in part on support from alumni. Shartsis Friese partner Arthur Shartsis said that Berkeley's hiring of a consulting firm reflects the school's care in selecting a new name and its efforts to include the views of alumni.
"There's a conversion going on at these schools," Shartsis said. "Schools have become painfully aware that they have to be extremely sensitive to the views of alumni."
The reactions of Boalt alumni who work in the San Francisco Bay Area are mixed. One anonymous poster on the Nuts & Boalts blog wrote that it seemed like a bad move.
"It seems like most lawyers are pretty familiar with the name Boalt," the blogger wrote. "UC-Berkeley Law might be more readily confused with Hastings or USF."
But others say that the school could benefit from a uniform name that carries national and international recognition. Keker & Van Nest partner Paula Blizzard, who earned her J.D. from Boalt in 1999, said that she's had people pause for a minute when they hear she is a graduate of Boalt Hall.
"You can tell for a moment that they haven't quite placed that law school," Blizzard said. "And then when you say 'University of California at Berkeley Law School,' they get it."
Berkeley's law school dates back to 1894. The Boalt Memorial Hall of Law was built in 1911 with a gift from Elizabeth J. Boalt, in memory of her husband, John Henry Boalt, an attorney and judge. The department of jurisprudence gained autonomy in 1912 and was renamed the School of Jurisprudence. It wasn't until 1950 that the school of jurisprudence became the School of Law, with "Boalt Hall" becoming its popular name.
Shartsis, a member of the Boalt Hall Alumni Association, said that to him personally, the school's association with UC-Berkeley is what's key.
"Boalt is an affectionate name and we all know it that way, but it's not sacrosanct," Shartsis said. "If you disassociated us from UC-Berkeley, that would be a problem, in my view."
