<p>Boalt Hall School of Law at UC Berkeley has announced a name change to University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. I thought this was a joke when I first heard the news. I was even more amazed when I heard that they paid a "name consultant" $25,000 for the re-naming advice.
Here's some free advice: that was a waste of money.</p>
<p>No kidding. our local LAC changed names 18 years ago to please a few. They paid dearly, as the alumni financial support SHUT DOWN! Just this week the college announced that it would be changing back to the original, primarily to recapture alumni support. </p>
<p>Be careful, Boalt.</p>
<p>Huh. Well, I just say "Berkeley" to everyone anyway, b/c few people outside of the legal field know "Boalt."</p>
<p>Changing the name to something other than UCB School of Law could have been a bad move (i.e. from Boalt to the name of a major donor, to another commemorative-type name, or whatever), but changing it to "UC Berkeley School of Law" increases name recognition and more closely alligns it with the already-very-prestigious Cal name. At this point, it doesn't strike me as problematic.</p>
<p>Good luck to 'em.</p>
<p>too bad Cal lost this weekend. I have been planning on this week for 20 years....</p>
<p>This is not so unusual and is likely a good move since Boalt doesn't carry much meaning to those that count - top undergrads looking at the top schools. I know of several others that are distancing themselves from the less recognizable names - William and Mary doesn't have Marshall Wythe front and center and neither does American University use Washington College of Law as much.</p>
<p>In the world of professional school branding, there are a lot of people who think that Wharton bleeds cachet -- or maybe in this case the reverse that Penn doesn't capitalize on Wharton's cachet -- simply because it's not Penn Business School. It doesn't seem as obvious to me that this isn't a good move for Boalt to make. </p>
<p>Case Western Reserve University has started to simply call itself Case because it sounds more, I don't know, elitist or something.</p>
<p>And name consultants often do a lot more than just give you ideas about naming things, IMO. They check trademark claims. They review legal arrangements related to the names in some cases, etc. And it's quite possible this consultant surveyed, I don't know, 100 important alums who might give a lot of money to see what they thought.</p>
<p>And please don't say that school brand names don't mean a lot. Half of the threads on CC seem parsed to answer the relative brand name cachet of various institutions -- quite apart from the quality of education that they offer.</p>
<p>I wish it didn't work this way, but given that it does. Is all this so odd or wrong?</p>
<p>If anything Penn should rename itself Wharton, not vice versa.</p>
<p>^^^^
Ha, and that's why I said what I said about Penn not being able to capitalize on Wharton's cachet...</p>
<p>Anyway, here's a story that talks about Boalt's decision...it says the consultants were charged with polling of variety of folks about the name change. The fact is $25,000 doesn't buy a lot of polling...After reading this article, I concluded that Boalt's managers are being pretty smart about the whole issue, actually. And to do this without hiring a consultant would be stupid. I once worked at a computer company -- one fairly well known -- that named itself and didn't hire consultants. And after pouring tens of millions into advertising its name, it learned that its name was already being used by a much smaller European computer firm...That was an expensive trademark buyout. Anyway, polling is absolutely the right thing to do in this case and in this case was meant apparently to preserve peace with alumni...</p>
<p>When lawyers in California ask where I went to law school, I've generally said "Boalt". When anyone else has asked, I've said "U.C. Berkeley."</p>
<p>The Dean says they'll still use the name Boalt "within the family."</p>
<p>I wonder if they'll de-emphasize "King Hall" at Davis.</p>