Northeastern University Provost Stephen W. Director has announced the university’s appointment of Jeremy R. Paul as dean of the School of Law, effective August 2012. A highly accomplished legal scholar with extensive experience in various practice settings, Paul comes from the University of Connecticut where he is currently dean of the School of Law and the Thomas F. Gallivan Jr. Professor.
“Jeremy’s experience within and outside of academia, along with our School of Law’s distinguished leadership in experiential learning and commitment to social justice, will position us well to address the dramatic challenges that legal education is facing nationwide,” said Provost Director in a memorandum to Northeastern faculty and staff.
Among his accomplishments as dean of the University of Connecticut’s School of Law, Paul has recruited a diverse group of outstanding faculty for tenure-track positions while building a sound reputation as a successful fundraiser.
He has also launched a junior faculty support program backed by a private gift, and partnered with the Connecticut Bar Association to secure faculty membership and create the Tapping Reeve Legal Educator Award that recognizes major contributions to legal education. He has also implemented a pro bono pledge program.
“I am proud to assume leadership of a law school so passionately committed to the values implicit in democracy and the rule of law,” Paul said. “Northeastern’s commitment to experiential learning is crucial for today’s graduates, who will hold multiple jobs in a variety of settings. No law school dean could seek a more rewarding challenge than helping to build the nation’s leading center where classroom lessons provide students with the eyes they need to make sense of the world and workplace experiences remind students how valuable classrooms can be. I look forward to working with a distinguished university leadership team; a talented, diverse, and accomplished faculty and staff; self-evidently bright and idealistic students; and fiercely loyal graduates to build upon the substantial strides Northeastern has made in recent years.”
A strong proponent of legal education that integrates theory and practice, Paul has built an Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship Law Clinic, which gives students the opportunity to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He has also launched the Center for Energy and Environmental Law including a certificate program, as well as both in-house clinics and externship clinics at the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
Paul has embraced a global approach to legal education. He has lectured extensively abroad, including in China where he helped recruit outstanding candidates for an S.J.D. program for international students.
“The legal profession is at a critical crossroads,” said Joseph E. Aoun, president of Northeastern University. “The challenges are unprecedented and the solutions must be innovative. Jeremy Paul is the ideal leader to build on Northeastern’s model of experiential legal education infused with a commitment to social justice.”
Since joining the University of Connecticut in 1989, Paul has served as associate dean for academic affairs and as the School of Law’s first associate dean for research. As a member of the faculty, his teachings focused primarily on constitutional law, property and jurisprudence.
Prior to his tenure at the University of Connecticut, Paul had been on the faculty of the University of Miami’s School of Law, where he taught real property and jurisprudence, as well as administrative law and landlord/tenant law. He has also taught at the Boston College Law School as visiting professor.
He has been published in the Texas Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the University of Southern California Law Review, and the Washington Monthly, and is the co-author (with Michael Fischl) of the best-selling book, Getting to Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams.
Paul’s accomplishments and commitment to service extend beyond academia. He has served on the board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut and of the Connecticut Bar Foundation. He is also a member of Connecticut’s Access to Justice Commission and is the vice chair of the editorial board of the Connecticut Law Tribune.
Paul has served as a clerk to Judge Irving R. Kaufman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and as professor-in-residence at the Appellate Staff of the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. He was also assistant to the president of TravelersGroup Inc., where he oversaw various projects, including aspects of the integration of Travelers Insurance Co. into the larger TravelersGroup Inc.
Paul graduated from Princeton University’s political economy program, with honors, in 1978, and received his J.D. from Harvard Law School, cum laude, in 1981. He is admitted to practice in the state of New York and is a member of the Bar of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, and the Bar of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Dear Dean Paul,
I was struck by your resemblance to the actor who portrayed John Adams. I hope your experiences in Boston will be less tumultuous than those of John Adams as a defense lawyer for the Redcoats!
My request. Please dialogue with faculty, graduates and students about the role of the law school as a training ground for future lawyers. If you haven’t read Taleb’s book, The Black Swan, and thus already know what I am saying, there is a tendency to “tunnel” in every institution. It gets better and better at jargon, narrowing its focus, and assuming that outside of its tunnel, everything works the same way. Not so!
Good luck as the new dean!
Paul Sullivan, NUSL 1976
Dear Dean Paul:
Congratulations, and welcome to NUSL. You are arriving at our cherished school at a pivotal moment in legal education, and I am confident that NUSL will push even further in its tradition of graduating JDs with practical, real-world skills in a market where first-year lawyers need them most.
For the new layer, no skill is more essential than legal research and writing. As a first-year lawyer who, in 2011, entered a bleak job market, my research and writing skills transformed my two-week temp position into a dream-job associate position at a fantastic trial boutique. And what do I do as a new lawyer? The same thing nearly every new lawyer spends their 12-hour workdays doing—researching legal issues and writing about them.
Northeastern has already revolutionized its real-world legal education once, elevating its students to professional-level status with its co-op program. Now, NUSL is poised to strike lightning twice—in an economy where general skills are prized more than general knowledge, and in a profession where well-researched and persuasively-written briefs win cases, Northeastern could establish itself as the one law school really doing things differently. The co-op program is proof enough that law is as much a trade as an intellectual pursuit; indeed, we all hear stories of the legal apprenticeships of old, and those who have worked trades (or have gone on co-op) will tell you that learning-by-doing is the best way to build expertise quickly.
I hope NUSL takes this opportunity to vastly expand its treatment of legal research and writing. I was lucky to have attended Northeastern’s journalism school before graduating from its law school, but most students never have that chance. A two-hour writing course once a week and for only one year is just not enough. Writing class should be a near-daily requirement, and should be mandatory through all three years. And not just to teach IREAC; NUSL students should learn the Strunk-and-White basics, the elements and building blocks of language, and the legal documents which comprise our daily professional lives. Graduates should walk into their interviews and say, “Oh sure. I know how to draft complaints, answers, discovery, motions, briefs, client letters, contracts, settlement agreements, you name it. No, not from co-op—well, not just from co-op—but from class.”
This is not only an opportunity for expanded practical education, but a stunningly progressive move for a law school which prides itself on legal and social justice. The LSSC program already addresses many of the social ills preventing access to justice. But what about the legal vernacular itself? Legalese removes the layperson from the law just as ignorance does. NUSL could pioneer legal writing stripped of “wheretofores” and “hereins” and “now-comes-the-plaintiffs.” A lofty ideal, perhaps, but imagine the average person opening their credit card disclosures and understanding them. The words lawyers use are not just their tools, but the bridge between a system perceived by most to be unknowable and the people subject to it (referred to hereinafter as “Everybody”).
For the good of our graduates looking for work, for the good of the profession, and for the good of Everybody, I hope NUSL under your leadership will broaden, strengthen, and significantly emphasize its legal research and writing program. No law school course is more important, and no skill more necessary.
Best of luck Dean Paul, and I look forward to a NUSL which continues to innovate, inspire, and compete.
Ryan Menard, NUSL 2011