Graduates of Western State University College of Law in Fullerton have gone on to courthouses and private practices across Orange County and beyond. Now, James Hogg, the school’s new dean, wants to see more of them in board rooms.
Hogg, the former dean and president of St. Paul, Minn.-based William Mitchell College of Law, said he wants to expand Western State’s corporate law focus and bolster the number of graduates who go into corporate practice here and elsewhere.
“I want to expand the concept of the ‘lawyer’s law school’ here,” he said. “That would include out-of-classroom reinforcement training for students.”
As it is, only about 10% of Western State graduates become corporate lawyers. Most of the others,including about a quarter of all attorneys in Orange County,go to work forgovernment or in their own practices.
Hogg took over as Western State’s dean late last month. Building up the school’s corporate law focus is just one ambition: He said he also aims to grow the school’s staff and fast track its status from provisional American Bar Association approval to full accreditation.
With a self-described “practitioner’s outlook,” Hogg also wants to build ties with the California Bar and with the bench, he said.
“I choose to think that the school is an extremely valuable community asset,” Hogg said.
Western State, which also has a branch campus in the Irvine Spectrum, is OC’s oldest law school and second-largest by student body. But Hogg isn’t without competition.
A proposal to build a new law school at the University of California, Irvine, awaits approval by the UC Board of Regents. The school would have a strong corporate focus, but faces competition from the University of California, Riverside, which also wants to build the university system’s next law school.
There’s also Whittier Law School in Costa Mesa, the county’s largest by enrollment, and Chapman University’s law school, still in its infancy.
Hogg’s background is one of corporate law, transactional law and business litigation. He also has expertise in insurance law and has been called as a consultant for conflict resolution in insurance cases.
Western State recruited Hogg from his professor of law position at William Mitchell College of Law. He was president and dean of that school from 1985 to 1995.
Hogg said he expects to expand the school’s list of corporate law course offerings and wants to strengthen ties with businesses in the community.
A native of New Zealand, Hogg earned a doctorate in law from Harvard Law School. He also has taught at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, the University of Chicago, Columbia University and the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I.
His career spans decades and includes 15 years of legal practice and a decade as vice president and associate general counsel for Minneapolis-based Control Data Corp., a former supercomputer and mainframe defense contractor that counted more than 16,000 employees during Hogg’s time there.
The company eventually split into two entities, only one of which,Control Data Systems Inc., now part of British Telecommunications PLC,maintained the focus of the parent company.
Hogg said his wife will be joining him in OC. He has six children and seven grandchildren. Two of his children and two of his grandchildren live in San Francisco, he said. So far, Hogg said he’s enjoying his new surroundings.
“It’s an absolutely beautiful community,” he said. “I’ve been absolutely delighted in what I’ve seen,this is a truly lovely part of California.”
Hogg said he is looking forward to enjoying a climate that has more in common with New Zealand than Minnesota.
“I wouldn’t want to have to compare Minnesota’s climate with that of OC,” he said. “That’s what one might call a non-competition.”
Chicago-based Argosy Education Group, a public company that owns several educational institutions, recently acquired the for-profit Western State. Argosy also owns the University of Sarasota, which has a campus in Orange.
Hogg said that Argosy has “a very special role.”
“There’s lots of expertise in educational psychology and financial backing that’s really important for what we’re doing,” he said.
Western recently made it into the Top 10 most culturally diverse law schools in the nation, as ranked by U.S. News and World Report, ranking No. 5 nationally.
Western State was founded in 1966. The school’s specialty programs include practice-oriented legal studies. n
