Money well spent?

I’ve been on vacation and seem to have missed this news until now…. At a time when many top law firms are rebranding with “shorter and catchier” names, one top law school has decided to buck the trend by going longer (and, dare I say, duller?). Worried that Boalt Hall too often draws blank looks outside California, law school administrators at the University of California campus in Berkeley launched the “Identity Project,” paying a brand consulting firm $25,000 to come up with a brand new name for the law school. As a Stanford alum and native of the Bay Area, where the campus is variously known as Cal, Boalt, Berkeley and “that school across the Bay,” I was curious to see what kind of spin the creative experts would put on the school’s traditional names. (For some unconventional suggestions, check out AbovetheLaw’s reader poll.)

Earlier this month, the results were released. As of January 2008, the school will be officially known as … drum roll please … UC Berkeley School of Law. Hmm. Far be it for me to suggest that a public law school might have saved a few grand by coming up with that highly original moniker on its own. (Besides, I’m hardly the first to voice the thought.) According to the San Francisco Chronicle, however, “Dean Christopher Edley Jr. said the money was well spent because people will now understand that that the law school is tied to UC Berkeley.”

- posted by vera