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A Top-Ranked Law School with Free Tuition. No, Really.

A new law school is opening at the University of California Irvine next fall. And it’s waiving tuition for three years to lure top applicants:

The financial carrot is part of an ambitious strategy by Erwin Chemerinsky, a renowned constitutional law scholar and dean of the new school… to attract Ivy League-caliber students to the first public university law school in the state in 40 years.

Scholarship winners will be chosen for their potential to emerge three years later as legal stars on the ascendance. Only the best and brightest need apply, but the school hopes to offer full scholarships to all 60 members of its inaugural class in 2009. Subsequent classes will be on a normal tuition basis.

“Our goal is to be a top 20 law school from the first time we are ranked,” Chemerinsky said. The school hopes to enroll 600 students and employ 40 to 50 professors.

The new school has already seen its first scandal, as dean Chemerinsky was hired away from Duke University, but then fired for his liberal politics. Protests led UC Irvine to rehire Chemerinsky.

Via The Associated Press.

Erik Even: