Message from Dean Douglas
September 29, 2009
Dear Members of the William & Mary Law School Community:
Greetings from the Law School! We are now in the sixth week of the 2009-2010 academic year, and I am beginning the fourth month of my work as Dean of the Law School.
After receiving the largest number of applications for admission in the Law School's history (almost 5,000), we enrolled a splendid class of 212 first-year law students from throughout the United States and two foreign countries. In terms of LSAT scores and undergraduate grade point averages, this is arguably the strongest class that we've ever admitted. In addition, we have 25 new LLM students this year who have come to Williamsburg from throughout the world.
We have welcomed a new faculty member to the Law School, Scott Dodson. Scott joined us from the faculty of the University of Arkansas Law School; last year, he was a visiting professor at Duke Law School. Scott, whose specialty is civil procedure, is a wonderful teacher and an accomplished scholar.
Our Legal Clinics are booming. We started two new clinics during the past year. Our new Veterans' Benefits Clinic attempts to meet the overwhelming needs of wounded veterans. Our new Special Education Advocacy Clinic serves families whose children have special educational needs.
Our students continue to excel. Last year, our students won national legal writing and trial team competitions. Our Black Law Students Association received recognition as the outstanding BLSA chapter in the nation.
We continue to make steady improvements to the Law School building. Two years ago, we completed an extensive renovation and enlargement of The Wolf Law Library. During the past three months, we completed a marvelous renovation of our McGlothlin Courtroom, and built a new Law School Admissions suite.
The new academic year has brought certain challenges. We face the most difficult legal job market in memory. This will be a particularly difficult year for 3L law students - both at William & Mary and at law schools across the nation. We are hard at work doing all that we can to find jobs for our students.
We also face substantial financial challenges. In recent weeks, the Governor of Virginia announced a 15% cut in state support to higher education in Virginia. This is the fourth cut in state support for the Law School during the past two years - with a total decrease in state support of 32%. Although a one-time use of federal stimulus dollars will help mitigate the effect of this most recent cut during the 2009-2010 academic year, financial challenges await us in the coming years in the wake of this substantial reduction in state support. We will need to rely more heavily on private giving and tuition dollars in the coming years.
This is an important moment in the life of the Law School. We are arguably in the strongest position that we have ever been in - in terms of the quality of both our students and faculty. But we have greater aspirations. We are currently engaged in a major reassessment of the ways in which we teach legal skills throughout the three years of law school to make sure that we deliver the best educational product we possibly can to our students.
Moreover, over the course of the next few years, we need to add a number of new faculty members in order to continue our forward momentum.
I have been spending a good bit of my first three months as dean traveling the country and meeting many of our alumni and other friends. I look forward to the opportunity to speak with each one of you. Please let me hear from you if you have questions about your Law School.
Sincerely yours,
Davison M. Douglas
Dean and Hanson Professor of Law
