Gonzaga Law School turns 100 By Dean Jane Korn
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t is a privilege for me to be Dean during the Centennial year for Gonzaga Law School. We are not only looking back at our history but also looking forward to our future. The past is full of wonderful and funny stories. One of the most colorful stories I have heard revolved around the 1976 Heidelberg. Gary Randall told me that he thinks that for some of the more colorful history of Gonzaga Law, the movie rights would have sold for millions. But other stories involved beautiful traditions, courage and change. Women began to be admitted in greater numbers, people worked so hard all day and went to law school every night, the clinic was started and the night school was phased out.
Gloria Ochoa
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Photos courtesy of Gonzaga University Archives
The future of Gonzaga Law is bright as we learn to fold the traditions of the past into our future. Legal education is changing and we will change with it. It is impossible to know how the practice of law will change and evolve during the next 100 years but we need to be able to work with the practicing bar to understand the needs and to respond to them. Our students will be the next generation of lawyers and leaders around the country and it is our responsibility to prepare them for that. Recently, there has been a decided emphasis on experiential learning and we have been ahead of that curve. The future certainly holds more global opportunities for our students. We now have three international opportunities – Florence, China and Guatemala – and are looking at an exchange program with a law school in Brazil. As the practice of law becomes more international, our students need to have cultural competency, language skills and experiential learning in other countries. We are taking this time to reflect on the need to make changes in how we deliver legal education. We need to be more interdisciplinary and look at the possibility of relationships both with other schools at Gonzaga and at partnerships with other law schools. Legal education also has to keep pace with
technology. I hope that law schools never become entirely online but we need to learn to be comfortable with delivering legal education in a variety of formats. We cannot be complacent that what worked for the last 100 years will continue to work for the next 100 years. We have to accept that while change can be hard, it can also be exciting and creative and innovative. We need to embrace change and view it as an opportunity. As we adapt and change, one of the challenges we face is how to keep some of the traditions, while also being able to transform and grow and evolve. We must also be mindful about the rising costs of higher education. While a legal education was seen as a golden ticket to a fulfilling and financially rewarding career upon graduation, this is not necessarily true today. The employment market is challenging and most students graduate with considerable debt. Although law school, like an undergraduate education, is still a very worthwhile investment, it is a long-term investment. It is still true that the unemployment rate decreases with education, while average annual earnings increase by degrees earned. And while this is true in the long run, we need to find a way to help our students in the short term – while in law school with scholarship support and work to decrease the amount of debt for new grads. People used to think of Gonzaga Law as a good regional law school. While we are proud of our past and the many excellent lawyers and leaders in the region who graduated from Gonzaga Law, our graduates need to be able to know they can practice anywhere – in another state or in another country. The Gonzaga student population now hails from approximately 40 different states and this fact has focused the attention of the school on assisting students to expanding the geographic reach of their learning experience. In addition, the ongoing shift in the legal marketplace creates an opportunity for law schools and
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