There is a new dean heading to the University California at Los Angeles School of Law. University officials announced Friday that Rachel Moran will assume the post, replacing Mike Schill, who took the top position at the University of Chicago Law School at the end of 2009.
Moran is widely known in legal education circles. She has taught at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law since 1983 and is the past president of the Association of American Law Schools. She has spent the past year on the faculty of the fledgling University of California, Irvine School of Law, and will be the first Latina dean of a top law school. (UCLA ranks No. 15 on the U.S. News & World Report list.) Moran won’t take over until Oct. 15, although she will join the faculty as a visiting professor next month.
Moran arrives during a financially fraught time. Last year the school raised tuition 10% for in-state students and 12% for out-of-state students, in part because of an approximately 20% reduction in state support. She will assume oversight of a fundraising campaign that the law school launched in 2008. The school has $77 million toward its target of $100 million in private money for scholarships and faculty.
Moran spoke with The National Law Journal about her appointment and her plans for the law school. Her answers have been edited for length.
NLJ: What attracted you to this position?
Rachel Moran: I’ve spent my entire career in public legal education, and I’m very committed to the values that undergird public law schools. UCLA law is an outstanding law school, and it also has a strong commitment to public values. I thought it would be a good fit for me because I think there is a real sense of community, and that community shares a commitment to access, excellence, innovation and service. I felt it was an opportunity at a time of uncertainty about state support to rededicate to values I think have made the University of California in general and UCLA law in particular great institutions of higher education.
NLJ: What was the interview process like?
RM: The search committee I know received a lot of applications….They arrived at a set of finalists who came out to the campus for a very comprehensive two-day interview. That interview was with not only with members of the law school community, but also with different segments of the campus—other professional deans, deans of other programs, senior administrators, the executive vice chancellor and the chancellor. It was a good opportunity both for the law school and the campus to get a good sense of who I am, but also for me to get a sense of who they are.
NLJ: How do you plan to address the funding issues the law school is facing because of state budget cuts?
RM: One of the things I think has been assumed is that if you end up relying to a greater degree on private support, you necessarily give up on public values. I think what you see at UCLA law is that you have a community of people who really share these longstanding commitments. We have alumni, for instance, who have benefited from the promise California made of accessible higher education. Even though we will have to rely more and more on private money, the important thing is to make sure you have a community that shares these values and wants to perpetuate them in the institution. In that way I think you can preserve public values even as you recalibrate the balance between public and private support.
NLJ: Are there any ideas or initiatives you want to bring to UCLA from Irvine, which has been credited with taking an innovative approach to its curriculum?
RM: I feel that I was fortunate to have two different experiences simultaneously. I was the president of the Association of American Law Schools, which gave me a very broad perspective on the current state of legal education. At the same time, I was at the U.C. Irvine law school and getting a very micro-level exposure to the state of legal education at a particular law school. I think that there are consummate trends, and one is that law schools are having conversations about the correct balance and connections between legal education and skills and practice, as well as legal education and professional identity. I think there is a general sense that legal education has done a good job of teaching things like critical thinking and doctrinal analysis. The Carnegie report on educating lawyers says that law schools have done a better job at teaching skills, but they remain weaker in teaching the role of the lawyer in the larger society.
NLJ: What do you think will be your biggest challenge as dean?
RM: I do think the biggest challenges relate to the uncertainties of the California budget. The good news is that Mike Schill did a great job and UCLA Law School is on a very sound financial footing. But no one can take anything for granted. I feel that the most important thing is to continue the work of the capital campaign and bring it to a successful conclusion.
Karen Sloan can be contacted at [email protected].
