University Times

(This is the second of a two-part look at Pitt's law school as it celebrates its centennial.)

Breaking down barriers and building bridges. If Peter Shane, dean of Pitt's School of Law, were to choose a metaphor to describe the future of the law school heading into its second century, that would be it.

Shane would choose those images because he believes the strength of the law school in the future is going to depend more and more on barriers being broken down and bridges erected between it and other sections of the University, the practicing bar, the judiciary and the public interest community.

A law education in the future, according to Shane, will involve more interdisciplinary courses, more co-taught courses, more joint degrees and a generally increased effort to give law students an education that goes well beyond technical law.

"It's hard to be a good tax lawyer now without knowing some economics," Shane points out. Likewise, for example, it is becoming more difficult to understand environmental law without studying such things as environmental risk assessment, and to understand health law without knowing something about health care.

One barrier already being breached is the one between the theory of law and the practice of law. Those two basic elements of a legal education are being drawn closer together through legal clinics, such as the one Pitt's law school operates to assist poor people. Clinics allow students to see the theories they are learning in the classroom put to use in the everyday world.

"I don't want us to de-emphasize legal history and juris prudence," says Shane. "But I think that law students who have practical experience based upon their curriculum think differently about their learning because they see the legal implications involved when dealing with human beings." Shane sees international law as another growing trend in legal education. Fifteen years ago, he says, the international aspects of most law schools were looked upon as little more than exotic add-ons. Today, though, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the North American Free Trade Agreement are expanding foreign markets and giving the study of law a distinct international look.

"Global transactions are going to become so commonplace in the future that the need to have some understanding of how other legal systems operate, how international institutions operate on the public side and how international transactions are conducted on the private side is going to increase," he explains.

Yet another wall that is crumpling in the study of law is the one between public and private lawyers. Historically, the lawworld has divided itself into public lawyers and private lawyers. Public lawyers represent government or deal with clients who are facing regulatory or statutory problems involving government. Private lawyers deal with such things as money, contracts, torts and private property transactions.

"I think it is becoming increasingly clear that those two groups of people have to interact more because even if all a person wants to do as a lawyer is help his or her clients make money, you can't do it without some thorough understanding of the way social policy is made," says Shane.

Similarly, if a lawyer's ambition is to change the world and make communities safer, better and more prosperous places to live and work, they still will have to know something about money and how markets operate.

Elements of a legal education that Shane does not see changing, even though computers and other advances in technology are altering the way they are done, are basic skills in writing, research and analysis.

"If I could do anything to improve a student's chances of life success by virtue of their three years in law school," Shane says, "it would be enhancing their ability to communicate and do research. Although some of the tools may change, that will not. I'd be shocked if that's not true a hundred years from now." To help finance the changing needs of a legal education, the law school is in the process of launching the most ambitious fund-raising drive in its history. The centennial fund campaign has a goal of $10 million. It will run through Dec. 31, 1996. Money raised during the campaign will be used to enhance the school's legal clinics, expand the legal writing program, establish endowed professorships, create academic centers, improve the law library, and establish scholarship and loan forgiveness programs.

Gifts totaling $1.5 million already have been pledged. They include $1 million for scholarships donated by the Equitable Resources Corp. of Pittsburgh in honor of the company's retired chief executive officer Don Moritz, a member of the Pitt law class of 1951; $350,000 from the McKuen Foundation for legal clinics, and $150,000 from the Alcoa Foundation to be used for a new international program for foreign-trained lawyers.

Law professor Richard Seeburger has been named chair of the centennial campaign committee. He will be assisted by the law school's alumni and development director Mark Gaffey and associate director Nancilee Burzachechi.

Dean Shane and former law school deans Mark Nordenberg and Edward Sell also will meet individually with alumni to solicit gifts and to discuss their ideas for other fund-raising opportunities.

The goal amount of $10 million will be divided among the six areas of need in the following manner.

Legal Clinics With a goal of $3 million, enhancement of legal clinics to provide students with practical experience in the law is among the biggest ticket items on the centennial campaign list. And it is, the dean believes, one of the most important when it comes to producing well rounded, sophisticated lawyers. "If I had my way, every student would have the benefit of some such experience as part of their law school education," Shane says.

"It is very easy to think about the problems of professional ethics in the abstract," he adds. "But they look an awful lot different when you're sitting with a human being across from you who is bringing to bear a very difficult problem with all of the emotions they are feeling. Your sense of the challenge of the role, how to play it, how you're required to play it, is very different." Shane points out that clinics also traditionally provide services to groups that generally are deprived of legal counsel and serve to impress upon law students a sense of the importance of public service.

"I think that is very important, both for the kinds of lawyers they become and also for the community's sense of what the law school cares about," Shane says.

In addition, students who have a clinical education acquire a certain range of experience that makes them more attractive to potential employers, a consideration that is becoming more and more important in light of the weak job market for lawyers.

Endowed Professorships Another $3 million of the centennial campaign is slated for the establishment of endowed professorships. Right now, according to Shane, the law school has reached a point where many of its faculty members would be competitive for named professorships at other institutions. The law school, however, has only one named professorship, the W. Edward Sell Professorship in Corporate Law.

Without named professorships, Shane says, undergraduate institutions and other law schools don't perceive the quality of what exists at Pitt.

"Our investment in chairing professors is partly to reward people who deserve it, but partly it is a direct attempt to enhance our national visibility," he explains. "The fact is that the more positive a resonance we can evoke for the name University of Pittsburgh nationally, the more valuable the degree." The law school currently graduates 230-240 students per year. Shane says that although many of them would like to stay in Pennsylvania, they often must move to find a job. The better known Pitt's law school becomes nationally, the easier it will be for those students to find jobs in other areas of the country.

Legal Writing and Research Writing and research being two of the most important elements of a legal education, $1 million of the centennial campaign is being designated for improving those two basic skills.

"Right now we have a wonderful writing program for our first-year students, but we don't really have enough people to give our students as much hands-on instruction as they could use," says Shane. "And we don't really have the capacity to assist students with their writing projects in the second and third year except on a very helter-skelter basis. What I would like us to do is add to our first-year program a writing center that would respond to the needs of second- and third-year students with editing assistance and so forth." Endowed Scholarships and Loan Forgiveness Of all the law school's needs at the moment, Shane feels the most critical is the need for additional student aid. Consequently, a goal of $2 million in endowed scholarships and loan forgiveness has been established as part of the fund drive.

According to the dean, every dollar of capital endowment generates about 5 cents in income. To increase the school's financial aid budget by $1 million each year would require raising $20 million for scholarships. "That is just not a realistic strategy," Shane says.

Raising $2 million in endowed scholarship funds, however, is very realistic and would give the law school $50,000 a year for scholarship and loan forgiveness programs. More scholarships and a loan forgiveness program mean that students in debt don't have to confine their job choices to high-paying positions.

"They can think about being legal services lawyers," Shane points out. "They can think about working for nonprofit institutions that might only be able to pay them $20,000 to $30,000 to start because we can relieve some of their debt burden." New York University (NYU) already has such a program. The NYU program forgives 10 percent of a student's debt for every year he or she works at a public- interest job for a low enough salary.

"So, if you are a NYU graduate, and you take a legal services job for 10 years your debt is gone," says Shane. "But I don't think we're likely to have the resources available to do that, certainly not in the beginning." Library Development and Building Renovation Aside from a few room renovations and other small projects, Shane says the law school is well set for the next decade as far as physical facilities are concerned. Two of the more pressing physical needs, though, are the upgrading of computer research facilities in the Barco Law Library and additional space for expanding collections. A goal of $500,000 has been set for those items in the centennial campaign. Academic Centers A goal of $500,000 also has been set for the purpose of creating academic "centers," similar to the school's International Law Center, around areas in which the Pitt law faculty and curriculum are particularly strong. The endowment for such centers would underwrite conferences, lectures, scholarly publications and visiting scholars.

To help diversify its revenue sources and increase its ties with the practicing bar and judiciary, the law school also has developed a program of continuing education for lawyers and judges.

According to the law school's long-range plan, the advent of mandatory continuing legal education for lawyers in Pennsylvania has created an opportunity for Pitt's School of Law to heighten its public image and intensify its relationship with the practicing bar and the judiciary.

In the Pittsburgh area, the plan notes, there is no other potential supplier of continuing legal education that has the resources available at Pitt. The continuing education initiative is expected to net at least $100,000 per year.

Another new recruiting goal of the law school involves the inauguration of a Master of Laws (LL.M.) program for foreign students. This program is designed to take advantage of the growing need for attorneys with knowledge in international law and to enhance the law school's reputation in the global arena. According to the long-range plan, the law school and the Office of the Provost have reached an agreement that allows the law school to keep 80 percent of the tuition raised for the first eight students to enroll in the program and 60 percent for every student above that figure. The agreement should allow the program to be entirely self-supporting, according to the plan.

Aware that some people may question the law school's need for more money and suggest that the school should instead cut faculty and staff, Shane argues that that is not realistic. He points out that the faculty of Pitt's School of Law already is smaller than the faculty at many similar institutions. Next year, the law school will have 34 tenured or tenure-track instructors and another eight full-time instructors on long-term contracts to serve about 700 students. Shane says that at his former school, the University of Iowa, there were over 40 tenure-track faculty alone for the same size student body.

Suggestions that the law school cut back by narrowing its focus also are not realistic, according to Shane. The study of law, as opposed to other disciplines, requires a very broad education, he maintains.

"To some extent, our very best people can be brought together in different configurations to do some very high quality work that would be responsive to different kinds of things," Shane says. "But lawyers, even with their various types of expertise, are still, relatively speaking, generalists and need to be educated that way."

–Mike Sajna