The National Law Journal reports that the UCLA-RAND Center for Law and Public Policy has established a program offering students formal training in empirical legal scholarship, the first of its kind housed entirely within a law school.
The first courses will begin in fall 2010 with about a half dozen students, and is intended for those who want to use their legal education for policy or academic careers. Students will work as research assistants on a project for the UCLA-RAND center during the summer after their first year, and in their second year will take a course in research methods, statistics and data analysis followed by a seminar in which they will conduct their own research. Students will also be paired with law school faculty mentors and will participate in projects for the UCLA-RAND center and in ongoing empirical research with law school faculty. By the end of the program, students will have produced a paper ready for publication or conference presentations. The UCLA-RAND center, a partnership of the UCLA School of Law and RAND Corporation, is the only collaboration of a law school and a major policy research institute in the country.
Read the full article: New UCLA Empirical Legal Studies Program