Departments
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Week of 14 November 1997 |
Vol. I, No. 12 |
Feature
Article
Campaign and caviar
LAW celebrates 125th, rolls up its sleeves
by Eric McHenry
It is the best of times, it is the worst of times. The BU School of Law, according to surveys cited by its dean, Ronald Cass, has a teaching faculty that ranks first in the nation. Its facilities, by contrast, rank 175th.
"And there are only 178 schools altogether," Cass says ruefully. "Right now, if we doubled the space we have per student, we would be at today's median for all law schools, which means that we're way behind the curve and we're nowhere near the schools we compete with for faculty and students."
Eliminating the disparity in quality between human and physical resources will be among the primary goals of a new campaign the school is undertaking, which coincides with its 125th anniversary.
"The campaign will have to raise money for the endowment to get us into the top 10 schools overall," says Cass, "which is where our faculty has positioned us to be."
Overseeing the campaign will be Gary Messinger, a newly hired major gifts specialist whose education as a historian informs his outlook on fundraising.
"Commemorations and anniversaries give people energy," Messin-ger says. "Whether it's the number 2000 in the case of the Western world or whether it's 125 in the case of the Law School, we draw energy from the knowledge that we've prevailed for that number of years, and that gives us a basis for believing we can continue.
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Gary Messinger |
Longevity does not determine importance, he says. In LAW's case, the converse is true. "We will be developing a statement of the reasons this law school provides some services that are not only significant, but that are unique in American society," says Messinger. "In my first week on the job, I've been impressed by a number of strengths of the law school. One is its history of accomplishment. It has contributed numerous governors to the commonwealth, any number of occupants of the bench, leaders in law enforcement, and founders and partners of a large number of important firms."
Messinger also places the school at the vanguard of legal analysis in a number of areas. Extensive faculty publication and the development of innovative courses, he says, make LAW a prominent participant in the national discussion of such matters as law and the electronic environment, law and international trade, and law as it relates to big city life.
"These are just a few of the examples that will help us create our statement as to why the law school is such an important presence," he says. "I think the opportunity to help make those services to society continue and grow is the real basis for the campaign."
From the outset, the school has had an impressive faculty and high admissions standards. Established in 1872, it was the first law school to give an entrance examination, a practice many others soon adopted. This selectivity, however, did not translate to racial or gender discrimination.
In her book Transformations: A History of Boston University, Kathleen Kilgore points out that women consistently made up about one-quarter of LAW's students in an era when women could neither serve on juries nor vote. Lelia Josephine Robinson (LAW, 1881) was the first female member of the Massachusetts Bar, although her admission required an act of the state legislature.
"The law school," says Cass, "was founded on the same principles as the rest of the University, in the sense of being dedicated both to excellence and to openness. The day we opened our doors was the day we had our first woman student, our first African American student, our first Asian student. It's a school that has been open in practice as well as in theory."
Today, congruity in theory and practice continues to be a priority at the school, and not only in the context of open admissions. Cass says the faculty's pedagogy is grounded in a familiarity with both the theoretical and the practical aspects of law.
"I think the school has maintained a very healthy blend of the two," he says. "Our faculty hiring has been of two varieties. First, we have tried to get the best scholars from other schools. We have successfully hired people away from the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell and Northwestern, to pick just three, in the last few years. And in the lateral market we've also picked up some star faculty members who were not at competitive schools, but who had already developed national reputations.
"Also, we've both gotten people who are excellent theoreticians -- we have 16 people with doctorates, beyond the J.D. degree, on the faculty -- and we have picked up people with substantial practice experience. One of our recent young hires, for example, was a partner at a major Chicago law firm."
A lucrative campaign will be necessary, Cass says, both for expansion of the school's limited facilities and to retain the faculty who occupy them.
"We've hired 25 people in the last 8 years," he says, "and there are other schools that pay more than we do hunting all the time for our faculty members."
No definite time frame, plan, or even site yet exists for the construction Cass hopes the campaign will enable. He says a number of options are currently on the table for comparison. The building of a large new facility is one possibility. Some combination of renovation and expansion of existing space is another, perhaps more viable, option. What-ever happens, he says, he'd like to make sure LAW stays on campus, where it's been since 1961.
"We have so many programs with the rest of the University, such good ties with the rest of the University, and are increasingly being integrated with the rest of the University," he says. "I don't want to end that. We could have a first-rate trade school, separated from the University, but not a first-rate academic law school."