Interesitng development at the UW law school as of yesterday:
Dear Students, Faculty, Staff, Alumni, and Friends of UW College of Law:
As
a result of changes at the University of Wyoming, I can no longer be
effective in representing the interests of the College of Law as your
dean. As a
result, I have submitted my resignation as dean. I will continue to
serve as a faculty member, and I look forward to working with you to
make the University of Wyoming College of Law an even better law school.
Ours
is a very special law school. As I tell prospective students all the
time, I cannot imagine why anyone attends a law school other than UW
College of
Law. Our law school has a strong tradition, plus exciting new
programs. In just the four and a half years that I have been here, we
have seen many exciting developments, including:
- Continued growth of our energy and natural resources program, an area particularly important in Wyoming, including a rich curriculum that includes a fourth of our elective courses, a new energy competition that sends students to two national competitions (where they have already had substantial success), establishment of the Center for Law & Energy Resources in the Rockies, launching of our joint degree (with the Haub School) in environment and natural resources, a course offering a tour of Wyoming energy and mining facilities, and ground work for the establishment of an Energy & Natural Resources Clinic that will be added to our curriculum in the fall of 2014. Few, if any, law schools can match our extensive energy and natural resources course offerings, even though almost all other law schools are larger, some much larger, than our College of Law.
- Expansion of our experiential education program in response to student and market demands to include new clinic-like courses. Due in large part to generous private gifts, we have added programs in estate planning and international human rights law. Through the support of the Wyoming Attorney General, we will be adding a year-long energy and natural resources clinic next fall.
- Adoption of a “clinic guarantee” that promises each student the opportunity to practice law under a faculty member before graduation. About a dozen of our students brief and argue cases to the Wyoming Supreme Court every year. My colleagues at other schools are amazed at the practice opportunities provided to our students through the generosity of the Wyoming Supreme Court’s student practice rule and the professionalism of the practicing attorneys who oppose our students in litigation and other environments.
- Growth of the Rural Law Center, which sponsors popular CLE seminars attended by citizens from across Wyoming and provides legislative and other assistance to those in Wyoming’s rural communities.
- Adding two new funds to support our experiential education programs, the John M. Burman Fund and the Kepler Fund for Professional Education.
- Establishment of the Summer Trial Institute, a “boot camp” intensive trial advocacy program that is an attraction to prospective students and the envy of those associated with other law schools.
- Creation of the Center for the Study of Written Advocacy, with two of the top five legal writing professors in the nation.
- Initiation of a unique partnership with one of Korea’s elite law schools, Kyung Hee University, which has brought both students and professors to our law school and has provided the opportunity for us to teach an International Business Transactions course, via satellite, to students at both campuses and thus provide our students with experience in international transactions that they can put to use in energy and other practices in Wyoming and elsewhere.
- Raising our Wyoming Bar examination pass rates (with pass rates above 80% in the most recent Wyoming bar exam and in all states), after a brief, but difficult period on the Wyoming bar exam, in part via a bar exam preparation class offered for the first time in the spring of 2013.
- Bringing Civil Pretrial back into the active curriculum, to better prepare our graduates for litigation practices.
- Substantial success by several competition teams at the regional and national levels, including several regional championships and national Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight finishes (including both of our teams qualifying for the Elite Eight of the National Energy & Sustainability Moot Court Competition this year) and two national runner-up finishes (in the National Environmental Law Moot Court Competition and the National Client Counseling Competition, the ABA’s largest national competition, with approximately a thousand participating teams).
- Doubling (and almost tripling) our scholarships, including new scholarship programs provided through private giving from alumni and other friends, e.g., the Brimmer Scholarship, the Barrett Summer Trial Institute Scholarships, the Energy and Natural Resources Scholarship, the Loretta Kepler Scholarship, and the Jack and Lynnette Cassari Scholarship.
- Holding the line on tuition increases, so our students can graduate with reasonable debt loads, not the crushing debt experienced by students at many other law schools.
- Increasing our enrollment of international students, who pay full non-resident tuition and enrich our teaching and learning environment by broadening our horizons. During a trip through our law school, one might hear French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, or other languages, in addition to English.
- Maintaining enrollments within our target zone (to provide graduating classes of seventy some students) in an era when most law schools have plummeting enrollments (with a forty percent national reduction in law school applications in the past ten years).
- Expanding our continuing legal education programs and other services to alumni and other members of the bar, mostly in Wyoming but also in Colorado and other states.
None
of these is “my” achievement, of course, and I do not mean to claim
credit for them by listing them here. Rather, all of these
accomplishments were
made possible through the dedication of you -- the faculty, staff,
students, alumni, and other supporters of the College of Law. To take
just one example, I will always be amazed that seventy or so top
attorneys, judges, and court reporters volunteer to come
to Laramie at their own expense to teach in our Summer Trial Institute
every year. I personally want to thank you each one of you for all of
your efforts on behalf of the College of Law and its students.
Special
mention must be made, though, of the hard work of the staff and faculty
of the College of Law. During my four and a half years as dean, I have
never
been able to distribute raises to our staff and faculty. Also, during
that same period of time, the University of Wyoming has managed budget
cuts by reducing staff positions. As such, the College of Law staff,
which was incredibly small when I accepted this
position, has decreased dramatically during those four and a half
years. Despite a long period of no raises and decreased staff, the
staff and faculty of the College of Law have added the new programs
noted above. Through their incredible efforts, the College
of Law is an even better institution than it was before almost half a
decade of flat salaries and reduced staffing. I am confident that it
will be an even better institution five years from now, if we are able
to provide additional support to the staff, faculty,
and students.
The
strength of the law school, despite severe resource limitations, was
recently confirmed. As many of you know, the ABA/AALS site visit team
recently concluded
its visit to the College of Law. Based upon my exit interviews with the
site visit chair and the entire site visit team, I expect the report to
be quite favorable. Based upon the exit interviews, though, it is
likely that the site visit report will express
substantial concern over the limited resources, especially staff and
administrative resources, provided to the College of Law by the
University. We are almost certainly trying to run the law school with
the smallest administrative staff of any law school in
the country. Several site team members noted that the staffs at their
home law schools were much larger than the staff at UW, even though
their law schools were only moderately larger than UW. The site visit
report is also likely to express concern about
the law school building (other than the William N. Brimmer Legal
Education Center, including the two new moot courtrooms, which are
extraordinary facilities), especially the lack of facilities for our
three centers and the remote offices for our clinic programs.
Quite simply, we are in need of either a new building (other than the
William N. Brimmer Legal Education Center) or a substantial addition to
the current building to house our centers and clinics within the main
law school complex. The site visit report could
note other, more minor, concerns, but overall the site visit team was
very impressed with our integrated approach to legal education that
teaches our students about the theory of law and provides them with the
skills they will need in practice. They were also
impressed with our faculty and its scholarship and teaching, with the
students, and with the staff -- though the small size of the staff is a
major concern.
It
is crucial for the College of Law to continue to offer a comprehensive
legal education, not an education that is overly focused in one
particular area
of the law. This helps us attract students who have a wide variety of
interests, which we must do to thrive in a very competitive environment
for law students. It also helps us prepare these students for practice
in a wide variety of legal specialties. We
cannot allow an emphasis on one area of the law to detract from our duty
to prepare great attorneys for the citizens of Wyoming. As such, it is
incumbent for the College of Law to provide a comprehensive legal
education.
It
is also crucial for the College of Law to comply with the ABA Standards
for Approval of Law Schools, including Standard 205(b), which provides
that the
“dean and the faculty shall formulate and administer the educational
program of the law school, including curriculum [and] methods of
instruction.” In executing this important responsibility, we have
always welcomed the suggestions of others who have the law
school’s best interests at heart. This is reflected by our active
Advisory and Alumni Board, by holding regular Town Hall Meetings with
students, by my frequent attendance at Board of Trustee meetings and
conversations with individual Trustees, by a meeting
we held with general counsel from several energy corporations, who
provided advice about how best to prepare students for energy practice,
and by the open door policy of our administration, which is always
receptive to suggestions for improvement of the College
of Law. However, the faculty and the dean must govern the College of
Law, if it is to continue to enjoy the accreditation that allows the
College of Law to maintain its reputation, allows its graduates to take
the bar exam in Wyoming and in every other state,
and allows its alumni to take advantage of opportunities available only
to graduates of ABA-accredited law schools.
Recent
events cause me concern in this regard. Important decisions affecting
the College of Law have been made without meaningful consultation with
me or
others on the faculty. If the concerns that have led to this lack of
consultation are with me, my resignation will remove this impediment and
clear the way for the effective faculty governance of the College of
Law that the accreditation standards require.
I cannot continue to serve as your dean while critical decisions are
made about the College of Law without the input of the administration
and faculty of the College.
Let’s
pull together to defend and build the law school that we all love.
With your help, we can continue to make the University of Wyoming
College of Law
an even better law school for its students and for the state of Wyoming.
Thank
you for your support of the College of Law and of me. The work you
have done for the College of Law is amazing. It has been an honor and a
pleasure
to serve as your dean. I look forward to continuing to work with you
as a member of the faculty.
Sincerely,
Steve
Stephen D. Easton
Dean and Professor of Law
University of Wyoming
College of Law
Dept. 3035, 1000 E. University Avenue
Laramie, Wyoming 82071
(307) 766-6416; FAX (307) 766-6417
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