About Boalt Professors Review

Update (April 16, 2010): Boalt Professors Review has been retired (and the comments closed) thanks to some terrific work by several Boalt students.

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Boalt Professors Review
(BPR) is a place for students to post questions and comments about professors and classes at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall). Here are some tips and some ground rules for using this resource.

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Course Evaluations:


You asked for a place to write and read substantive course evaluations and now you've got it! To read or write evaluations about a particular professor or course, find the professor's name in the professor index on the left and click on it. Within each professor's section is a list of courses taught by that professor, where you can leave substantive feedback for any courses you've taken. (You can also search for courses using the course category list.) Leave your feedback in the comments section, keeping in mind the ground rules outlined below.

Update: we have not yet begun to add Fall 2008 courses. We hope to have this done sometime before the conclusion of Thanksgiving Break, so you can comment here while you fill out your regular course evaluations.

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Spring 2008 Course Thread:


Our friends at Nuts and Boalts have been running a Spring 2009 Course Thread, where you can feel free to ask all you class and professor related questions.

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Ground Rules


Please keep in mind that this is a public forum that is not password protected. Many of the professors that teach at Boalt may be looking to maintain their stellar academic reputation and, one day, alternative employment. With that said, we would like you to keep your comments civil and productive (i.e., if you disliked a particular part of a course, explain why), to refrain from personal attacks, and to follow the use of asterisks in names to prevent this page from turning up on a google search for that professor's name. In keeping with these ground rules, we reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

THIS IS GREAT! Thank you!

I'd also advise to have BHSA make flyers, or have this word spread to students, so that people can fill out these forms instead of the official course evals. Those are practically useless, given that they do not show comments and bad profs (they know who they are) hide them.

Patrick Bageant said...

You might encourage the posting of the course syllabus, too.

Anonymous said...

This is AWESOME. I'll be filling in my profs each semester.

I'm glad someone finally did this!!

Anonymous said...

how come some professor threads don't allow comments?

Anonymous said...

Is it because only the professors who had courses this past semester are listed?

Matt Berg said...

That's correct. We've only added pages for the professors that are currently teaching this semester. If you want us to get someone else up, you'll have to specifically mention that person in the comments.

Anonymous said...

Sure thing. Here are links to clinical websites with Profs listed:

IHRLC: L. Fl*tcher & R. A*ltholz http://www.law.berkeley.edu/courses/coursePage.php?cID=6069&termCode=B&termYear=2008

L&T: http://www.law.berkeley.edu/courses/coursePage.php?cID=6046&termCode=B&termYear=2008

EBCLC: J. S*lbin & T. St*inbach
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/courses/coursePage.php?cID=6052&termCode=B&termYear=2008

DPC: T A*lper & E. S*mel
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/courses/coursePage.php?cID=6054&termCode=B&termYear=2008

Hope that helps, and no rush-I was just curious and making suggestions. Thanks.

Matt Berg said...

10:22,

I want to avoid adding Fellows who are here only for a short time to the list to avoid making it too cumbersome - it is meant to be a longstanding resource, after all. Looking at the Law and Tech Clinic, it appears as if J. L*nch is a short-term fellow. Do you know about J. Sch*ltz? (I don't want to add him to the database until we know he'll be here for a few years and that the comments will be useful down the road. I similarly want to avoid adding too many visiting professors, remove retired professors, etc.)

Anonymous said...

has anyone even added comments? or am i just really deficient at web-surfing?

Matt Berg said...

4:21,

People have commented on a few different threads. And since it's probably hard to find them without checking every site all the time, I've added two feeds over on the right sidebar: one for comments left on the site generally, and one for comments left on the Fall 2008 course thread. Now, you can subscribe to one or both of those feeds in your favorite feed reader, and you'll be notified whenever a comment is posted.

Anonymous said...

Excellent work. I think classes that are being taught this Spring, but not this Fall, should also be listed. They'll be taught again, probably next Spring, and it'll be good to get current students' feed back now. I'd like to leave feedback about Patent Litigation in particular.

Matt Berg said...

10:01,

Thanks for stopping by. Actually, if you look carefully, the classes we have listed are from the spring, rather than the fall. You've hit on the idea we had - to provide a place for people to comment on professors they're currently taking, because they're likely to teach the course again next spring. We haven't added some classes (Patent Litigation, for example) that appear to be practitioner-taught unless we know for sure that that particular practitioner will continually teach at Boalt. (The idea being to keep the index both useful and manageable.) I don't know who currently teaches Patent Litigation, but if it is someone who regularly does it, post a link here and we'll get it added.

Anonymous said...

10:01 - gotcha, makes sense. Patent Lit is definetely a recurring class, taught the past 8 years or so by Matt Powers et al.

Patrick Bageant said...

Hey guys.

One of our fearless BHSA leaders shared this article with me today.

Thought you might like it read it.

-Patrick

Anonymous said...

Is it possible to just put asterisks on last letter instead of in random places? It makes it hard to read the name otherwise.