Dean's Message

THE LAW SCHOOL IS NOW ENTERING THE
third year of Financial Self-Sufficiency. Under that arrangement, the Law School has relinquished its share of dwindling state support in return for greater flexibility on tuition. Today, the Law School is financed much like the law schools at Harvard or Yale. We, like they, depend primarily on tuition and secondarily, but crucially, on private giving.

Financial Self-Sufficiency has changed the financial structure of the Law School but not our institutional priorities. We remain committed to attracting and retaining the best faculty in the nation and to ensuring the opportunity of qualified students to attend the Law School regardless of financial circumstance.

Fortunately, our alumni continue to support those goals. More of our graduates participate in annual giving than is true of any other top law school. This year, the Foundation used these alumni gifts to provide scholarship support to forty percent of our student body and to provide crucial financial support for faculty. Additionally, the Foundation matched the money raised by the Public Interest Law Association to fund students engaged in public service and underwrote symposia, debates, and guest speakers that enlivened the intellectual and cultural life of the institution.

Behind these accomplishments stand a truly remarkable group of dedicated people. The staff of the Law School Foundation routinely outperform much larger organizations in other academic institutions. Their efforts deserve our praise and our thanks.

Dean John C. Jeffries, Jr.