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UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA SCHOOL OF LAW CLIMBS IN U.S. NEWS RANKINGS

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Thursday, March 30, 2000

WRITER: Kathy R. Pharr, (706) 542-5172, pharr@arches.uga.edu

CONTACT: Dean David Shipley, (706) 542-7140

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA SCHOOL OF LAW CLIMBS IN U.S. NEWS RANKINGS

ATHENS, Ga. -- The University of Georgia School of Law jumped seven spots in the annual rankings of the nation's accredited law schools by U.S. News & World Report, appearing at #29, up from #36 last year. The survey places the UGA law school in the top 17 percent of the nation's ABA-accredited law schools, among the top 11 public law schools in the country, and among the top four public law schools in the Southeast.

U.S. News bases its law school rankings on four criteria: reputation among lawyers, judges and faculty; student selectivity (median Law School Admission Test score and undergraduate grade point average and proportion of applicants accepted); employment success and bar passage; and faculty resources (total expenditures per student for instruction, library and supporting student services; student-teacher ratio; financial aid; and law library volume count).

As it has done for many years, the UGA law school earned high marks in the factual categories of placement (96% of graduates in the class of 1998 employed nine months after graduation); bar passage (88.3% in Georgia); and student selectivity (median LSAT score of 161 and median GPA of 3.55). In several instances, these scores were better than those of schools which ranked higher in the overall survey.

"This is exciting news for us," said David Shipley, law school dean. "Students, faculty, staff and alumni worked hard to recruit an outstanding first-year class; our placement success for the class of 1999 was excellent; and more and more of our graduates are being hired for prestigious federal clerkships. Moreover, the faculty's publication record is strong and getting stronger, and many have presented talks and papers around the nation and overseas during the last year. In my opinion, these developments are critical to our success as we strive to build our reputation as one of the nation's finest public law schools."

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