Now that the media storm has settled, University of California, Irvine’s Donald Bren School of Law can get back to business.
The university suffered an embarrassing frenzy of bad publicity in recent months after Chancellor Michael Drake revoked and then reinstated Duke University law professor Erwin Chemerinsky’s job as founding dean of its new law school, set to open in 2009.
Chemerinsky is looking on the bright side.
“I can honestly say that we’re the best publicized new law school, everyone knows about us now,” he said.
These days, Chemerinsky is juggling his teaching job at Duke while laying the groundwork for the startup law school, which includes recruiting faculty and administrators and managing funds.
The experience is fun but it’s no easy task, he said.
“It’s exciting to be the founding dean of a new law school but because we’re new, everything is a challenge,” Chemerinsky said. “As the founding dean I’m in charge of so many different constituencies and I just need to be actively involved in developing this school.”
Named after benefactor Donald Bren, chairman of The Irvine Company, the school is the fifth law school in the UC system and the first public law school to open in California in 40 years.
About 60 students will be admitted into the school’s first class, Chemerinsky said.
The admittance process will be competitive, he said.
The school will hold classes in existing buildings on UC Irvine’s campus. Chemerinsky said the school would begin a fundraising campaign for a building of its own, which he hopes to have constructed in five years.
The Donald Bren School of Law will focus on interdisciplinary learning, according to Chemerinsky.
The law school will offer law degrees, master of law degrees and doctorates of science and law. It will have classes that will integrate law with technology, social policy, international business, healthcare and other fields, according to Chemerinsky.
The goal is to foster lawyers with a variety of specializations from constitutional law to corporate law, he said.
“I want the school to focus on experiential learning in law and a variety of other areas. Interdisciplinary learning will help us provide better trained lawyers in everything from business to litigation,” Chemerinsky said.
He also wants to forge strong ties with Orange County’s businesses.
“The new law school will depend heavily on the business community’s input. They know what’s needed out there,” Chemerinsky said.
Chemerinsky said he’d like local lawyers and business leaders to be adjunct faculty members or participate in guest speaker panels.
A strong local business connection should help the school attract donations. But it will be a challenge convincing people, law firms and other businesses to invest in the university, he said.
“We don’t have an alumni base yet so we need to look for economic support and the business community could be a good resource for that,” Chemerinsky said. “We can only be a great law school if we have the support.”
The opportunity to have a law school at UCI, often considered the educational center of OC, already has stirred support as many believe it will contribute to the business community.
Businessmen and philanthropists with high hopes for the law school include Bren, who donated $20 million in August. Bren, a strong supporter since the university’s inception, has donated more than $60 million to UCI during the past several years.
“My hope is that this school will educate a new generation of talented students in both law and other important interdisciplinary studies and produce well-rounded and highly qualified professionals and leaders,” Bren said in a statement.
Earlier this month, Mark Robinson Jr., senior partner of Newport Beach’s Robinson, Calcagnie & Robinson Inc., donated $1 million to start the Mark P. Robinson Jr. Endowed Fund for Excellence, which will be used to help the law school prepare.
“Some people say we have a lot of law schools, but we don’t have a lot of accredited law schools,” Robinson said. “Having a University of California law school in Orange County elevates the potential for connecting the citizens of Orange County with the law.”
Robinson served on the UCI search committee that hired Chemerinsky. He currently serves on the law school’s dean’s advisory board.
“If it follows the path of other UC law schools, it’s going to elevate the quality of lawyers that are produced in Orange County and even for the county,” he said.
The school’s success ultimately depends on its founding faculty members, Chemerinsky said.
The school is actively searching for staff, according to Elizabeth Loftus, a UCI psychology professor who sits on the law school’s recruiting committee.
Loftus, Joseph DiMento, another UCI professor, and Chemerinsky’s wife, Catherine Fisk, are founding faculty members.
Fisk, also a law professor at Duke, was offered a tenured position at University of Southern California but chose to come to UCI, Chemerinsky said.
“The more she heard me get excited about UC Irvine the more she got excited,” he said.
Loftus said that the school has met with other distinguished and well-known professors from top-tier law schools but declined to disclose names.
“We’re very interested in interdisciplinary scholarship. We’re hoping that we’ll be able to recruit faculty that have law degrees but also have doctorates in other areas like psychology or engineering,” Loftus said.
Professors
A major issue that stands before the school’s recruiting efforts is luring established law professors to come to a new law school that has yet to be accredited.
“How do you woo somebody at a top law school who has all of the security from an accredited school to come to one that has yet to prove itself?” Loftus said.
Loftus believes that UCI’s status as a nationally ranked university will help attract talented professors, especially ones who want to be a part of something from the ground up.
OC’s high cost of living also could affect the school’s recruiting efforts.
“The cost of living here can be a terrible deterrence, but now we have a housing program where hundreds of faculty can live in campus housing,” Loftus said.
As for Chem-erinsky, he plans to move to University Hills after his children finish school in the summer.
Chemerinsky worked at USC for 21 years teaching public interest law, legal ethics and constitutional law before he and his family moved to Duke University in Durham, N.C., in 2002.
“We’re so excited to move back to Southern California and especially Orange County. It’s pretty much the closest thing to paradise,” Chemerinsky said.
Once Chemerinsky moves to OC, he will be able to devote more of his time to networking in the community.
Establishing the school’s presence in the community is a priority, he said, especially as it competes with the other law schools already set up in OC.
Fullerton’s Western State University College of Law opened in 1966, Orange-based Chapman University opened its law school in 1995 and Whittier College moved its law school from Los Angeles to Costa Mesa in 1997. Whittier Law School is currently suing the American Bar Association after it refused to remove probation on its accreditation earlier this year.
UCI had long range plans to open a law school when it was founded in 1964. Since then, the university has struggled with various obstacles to get one off the ground.
In 1989, UCI formed a task force to start a law school but state budget issues put its proposal on the backburner.
Regents ap-proved UCI’s law school in 2006. Earlier this year the university formed a law dean search committee, which recommended Chemerinsky.
That same month, Drake offered Chemerinsky the job to become the law school’s founding dean.
When Chemerinsky accepted the position it stirred opposition from area conservatives including Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich, who tried to rally up Republicans to protest the promotion.
Chemerinsky is known for working on high-profile cases involving the separation of church and state and abortion rights. He helped write the Los Angeles city charter and served on the city’s reform panel after the Los Angeles Police Department Ramparts Division scandal.
He is also an active opinion writer, which is what caused the academic brouhaha after the Los Angeles Times printed an article he wrote criticizing a plan by former attorney general Alberto Gonzales that could make it harder for death row inmates to appeal.
UCI withdrew the job offer after Chemerinsky’s opinion piece on Gonzales appeared.
University officials questioned whether Chemerinsky’s controversial status would affect the startup school’s ability to garner support during its crucial beginning stages.
Media reports played the case as a matter of academic freedom. UCI officials worried about whether an academic engaged in highly charged issues was best for the law school.
It didn’t take long for the university to try to remedy the situation.
On Sept. 17, UC Irvine officials announced that Chemerinsky was back as founding dean, causing more media attention.
Tuned Out
Chemerinsky dealt with the media storm by tuning out, he said.
Looking back, he said he wished it never happened but that it was a great learning experience that would foster a better working relationship with Drake because of it.
“We worked many things out in the course of a week that would’ve taken years in normal circumstances,” Chemerinsky said.
Chemerinsky wants to just put everything behind him and focus on his role, he said, which is something he never expected to do.
Chemerinsky grew up in Chicago and earned his bachelor’s degree at Northwestern University. He initially wanted to become a teacher and then his passion shifted to law.
But he wanted to pursue a career that would encompass both his passion for law and for education, he said.
After earning his law degree from Harvard Law School, Chemerinsky practiced law as a trial lawyer at the Department of Justice and at Washington, D.C.-based Dobrovir, Oakes & Gebhardt.
Over the years, Chemerinsky’s had offers to head other law schools including UC Davis School of Law and University of North Carolina School of Law.
UCI was the perfect fit, he said.
“Very few people have the opportunity to be the founding dean of a law school. It’s such an honor. I want to take advantage of this time,” Chemerinsky said. “This is going to be a great school, one of the best.”
