WOMEN IN L AW well and what it should do better. “I view my job as law dean as creating with the faculty and students a vibrant intellectual community for the creation and exchange of ideas and knowledge about the law.” KU’s newest dean is a native of New Orleans who earned a bachelor of arts degree in sociology at the University of New Orleans, and a master’s degree in health administration and a law degree from Tulane University.
Dean Gail Agrawal shared some of her thoughts abo of KU Women in Law, Sarah Phillips, 2L from Overl and secretary.
Following law school, she served as a law clerk to Senior Judge John Minor Wisdom on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and as a law clerk to former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Agrawal practiced health law as a member of the New Orleans law firm of Monroe and Lemann, and later spent three years in the law department of Aetna Inc., where she provided counsel to Aetna’s health businesses. She has taught as an adjunct professor at Tulane Law School and Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and served as the W. M. Keck Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School.
WOMEN IN LAW: What motivated you to enter the legal profession? Dean Agrawal: When I was a freshman in high school, I joined the debate team. I had been taking a speech course for the whole year – oratory, poetry reading, dramatic reading, and I thought it was the most boring thing imaginable. In the spring, we
A member of the American Law Institute, Agrawal has served on the
started the debate unit, and I loved it. That was the
boards of the American Health Lawyers Association and the American
first time I ever thought about being a lawyer.
Liver Foundation. She is currently a member of the federal advisory committee on Organ Transplantation, and her research interests are health care delivery and financing, and medical ethics.
I was derailed, or at least delayed, in my attempts to go to college by family and funding. I went to work pretty young, all the time plugging along
U.S. Rep Jerry Moran, R-Kan., a KU law school graduate who served on
on my undergraduate studies. While I was going
the search committee, said, “The law school has an important mission
to school and working in a hospital, I became
within the walls of Green Hall as well as the borders of Kansas. The Dean
interested in health care delivery. I soon decided
Search Committee was presented with the task of narrowing many high-
I would like to run a health care institution. Some
caliber candidates, and the Provost has chosen the best of the best. I am
years later, I was working on a Masters in Public
excited about the future of the school under Dean Agrawal’s leadership,
Health, taking a required course in health law
and I join my fellow alumni in welcoming her.”
when my teacher called me in said, ‘it’s time to talk about your legal career.’ I explained that as
“She emerged as the clear first choice from the strongest field of
a teenager, I used to want to be a lawyer, but I’d
candidates in my 35 years at the school,” said interim dean Michael J.
given up on that goal. The following semester,
Davis. “That field was itself a tribute to KU Law, as first-rate administrators
as I continued my plans to become a hospital
from fine places expressed interest in being our dean. In the end, though,
administrator, the chancellor of the medical school
it was a nice marriage of mutual admiration that induced KU to offer her
called me with the news that Tulane had received
the job, and Dean Agrawal to accept it. I hope you have the chance to
approval for a dual degree program between the
meet her soon. I am confident you will like what you see.”
Law School and the School of Public Health. He said, ‘We’ve decided you would be a good first student. The LSAT will be offered on Saturday (it was Tuesday). It would be a good idea if you went to take it.’ I told the chancellor I didn’t think
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