Dean, Golden Gate University School of Law

Dean, Golden Gate University School of Law

Position Description

Golden Gate University (GGU), a private, not-for-profit institution with a notable record of expanding access to professional education, is seeking a Dean with vision and administrative skill to lead its 116-year-old School of Law in San Francisco.

A HISTORY OF CLEAR PURPOSE

GGU School of Lawtraces its mission to a civic response to the extraordinary changesbrought to San Francisco by the Gold Rush. Today, as we experience rapid economic and technological change, we remain committed to that mission, providing a high-quality, pragmatic, and professional education to working adults in innovative ways.

In the wake of gold being discovered at Sutter’s Mill in 1847, San Francisco’s populationgrew from a settlement of around 1,000 people in 1848 to a city of over 40,000in five years. In 1853, the San Francisco Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA)opened its doors offering the resources of a library, reading room, and lecture series to those (mostly) young men with an interest in self-advancement through education. The lecture series grew into more formalized and regular classes, then into the city’s first night school. In 1901, the YMCA Evening Law School was opened. This forbearer of GGU, the first California law school to offer evening classes, expanded access to the study and practice of lawin Northern California.

In 1923, the San Francisco YMCAdecidedthatits higher education programsshould be incorporated as a degree-granting college with a name of its own. In a transition that reflects the beginnings of numerous other colleges and universities that grew out of the YMCA movement (Northeastern University, Concordia University, Roosevelt University, Franklin University, Detroit College, now the Michigan State University College of Law, and numerous others) Golden Gate College was incorporated to carry on the mission of extending legal education beyond those whose wealth enabled them to attend full-time day courses.

Whenthe State Bar of California adopted its first accreditation standards for law schools, Golden Gate met the new requirements and was accredited in 1939. In 1956, the Law School was given provisional accreditation by the American Bar Association. Full accreditation was granted in 1971. In 1980, the Law School joined the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). In 1972, the college expanded to full university status.

Throughout its history, GGU Law School has produced distinguished alumni who have helped to build the legal communities of the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. Jesse W. Carter (1913) was elected to the first Board of Governors of the newly formed State Bar in 1917 and appointed to the California Supreme Court in 1939. Phillip Burton(1952) served as a United States Representative from California from 1964 to 1983. Lee D. Baxter (1974) was appointed to the San Francisco Municipal Court in 1987 and then to the San Francisco Superior Court in 1992. The Honorable Cynthia Ming-Mei Lee (1974) has served on the San Francisco Superior Court since 1988 and was the presiding judge from 2013 to 2015, during which time she established San Francisco’s first Veterans Justice Court. Morgan Christen (1986) served on the Alaska Supreme Court for three years before being appointed to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 2012. Renowned trial lawyer Patrick Coughlin graduated from GGU Law in 1983 and recently represented the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Trump University. Simona Farrise (1993) is nationally recognized for her representation of victims of mesothelioma.

EXPANDING THE PROFESSION

Another point of pride at GGU is how the Law School, for more than 100 years, has expanded the boundaries of legal education:

• It was Northern California’s first evening law school and its third law school.
• It accepted women earlier than most law schools, with its first female graduates in 1928.
• It was the first exclusively part-time evening law school west of St. Paul to receive ABA accreditation.
• Judith McKelvey, appointed GGU Law School dean in 1973, was the second woman in the US to serve as dean of an ABA-accredited law school.
• The LL.M. program in taxation, which received ABA acquiescence in 1980, was the first such LL.M. program west of the Mississippi.
• Frederic White, appointed GGU Law School dean in 2004, was the first African American to serve as dean of an ABA-accredited law school in California.

Today, GGU Law Schooloffers full-time day and part-time evening programs leading to a Doctor of Jurisprudence (J.D.). The Law School also offers a doctorate in International Legal Studies and LL.M. degrees in seven legal specializations including Environmental Law, Intellectual Property, Taxation, U.S. Legal Studies, International Legal Studies, and Estate Planning and Trust and Probate Law. The latter is the only LL.M in Estate Planning and Trust and Probate Law in the western United States.

GGU Law is one of four schools withinGolden Gate University. Ourthree business schools –the Ageno School of Business,the Bruce F. Braden School of Taxation, and the School of Accounting – have an enrollment of approximately 3,100 students, offering 14 graduate degrees and two undergraduate degrees. GGU’s commitment to provideworking adults with educational resources has driven innovation inpedagogy, practices, and student services. In 2016, Golden Gate University was recognized as the top college for adult learners in the nation by Washington Monthly in its annual College Guide and Rankings.

A VIBRANT SAN FRANCISCO NEIGHBORHOOD

While satellite campuses in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Silicon Valley offer business, accounting, and tax classes, and a broad curriculum of eLearning programs is available online, GGU’sprimary campus, and the home of GGU Law School, is asix-story complex at 536 Mission Street in the center of San Francisco’s dynamic South of Market (SOMA) neighborhood. One block to the north, the 61-story Salesforce Tower, one of several gleaming towers that are reshaping the San Francisco skyline, will soon be topped out as the tallest skyscraper in the west. Today, SOMA is the center of a new gold rush that is attracting intellectual and financial capital from throughout the world. Surrounded by thecafes and cultural amenities that have long defined San Francisco, GGU Law School is walking distance to the courts, law firms, government agencies and nationally recognized nonprofits that offer rich experiences and employment opportunities for our students.

DEDICATED FACULTY AND INNOVATIVE PROGRAMS

A primary opportunity for our new Dean will be to translate the advantages of GGU’s strategic location – an incubator for innovation in law, business, and technology – into new approaches and programs that capitalize on the strengths and vitalities of the GGU Law faculty.

GGU Law has a faculty committed to preparing students to be critical thinkers, problem solvers, and leaders – lawyers whoseethical grounding and flexibility can respond to changing legal landscapes.While core, required courses and Bar subject courses are taught primarily by full-time faculty, outstanding adjunct professors enrich elective courses with their experiences and with cutting-edge information about their areas of practice. Currently, GGU Law has 31full-time faculty, 17 with tenure, and draws from an imposing roster of adjuncts. Together, they teach and counsel GGU students in both full-time day and part-time evening programs.

Recently, National Jurist ranked GGU as having the best practical skills training among Northern California law schools. Notable features of this practical training include:

• An Honors Lawyering Program (HLP) that attracts top students who alternate coursework with full-time apprenticeships in law firms and agencies throughout the Bay Area and around the world. This integration of theory, skills, and values learned in the classroom with intensive, ongoing work in the legal community is often a powerful career launch pad.

• The Pro Bono Tax Clinic provides students with the opportunity to assist low-income individuals in tax disputes before the California Board of Equalization ("BOE"). Under the direct supervision of a BOE attorney, students draft procedural letters, legal memoranda, and briefs and at times have the opportunity to argue the client's case at a BOE hearing.

• Since 1993, the Women’s Employment Rights Clinic (WERC) has served as legal counsel to the California Domestic Workers Coalition, supporting their efforts to extend basic wage and hour protections to domestic workers.GGU faculty and students, working through WERC, provided technical and legal support to the Coalition to extend overtime rights to many domestic workers for the first time in 2013 and again in 2016 when a second bill in the State Legislature made overtime rights a permanent reality.

• GGU Law's Veterans Legal Advocacy Center seeks to open the legal profession to more of our distinguished veterans and to partner with outside agencies to offer programs that serve our students and support the growing legal needs of the broader veterans’ community.

• In its third decade of service, the Environmental Law and Justice Clinic has focused particular attention on clean drinking water for low-income communities, air pollution reduction, and civil rights to ensure that protected groups are fairly treated. One of the key victories the clinic recently achieved was a landmark civil rights settlement improving government oversight over hazardous waste facilities. The settlement was an outgrowth of the clinic’s work to protect Latino communities living near Kettleman Hills, the largest hazardous waste dump in the western United States. The settlement obligates California agencies to issue civil rights and public participation policies geared at equitable language access and to adopt criteria for hazardous waste permit issuance.

• The Litigation Center provides students with a clear path to acquiring the skills necessary for successful legal careers. Our students are immersed in an innovative and integrated curriculum, compete in regional and national competitions, enjoy access to world-class litigators, and develop into effective and persuasive advocates.

• The tax program is consistently recognized as among the top graduate programs nationally for training in taxation, estate planning and elder care. TaxTalent (a national survey of hiring professionals) recognized GGU Law for having The Best Tax LLM in California. The program’s faculty – whichincludes tax practitioners from well-respected law firms, counsel from the IRS, and judges from the US Tax Court and the Alameda Superior Court – reflects the pragmatic, practice-ready approach that defines a GGU education.

• GGU’s robust IP Law Center brings together students, faculty, lawyers, judges, and IP law scholars to explore developments in the fast-changing world of IP law and policy. Led by faculty with extensive IP law experience, the program is assisted and supported by a distinguished advisory board of prominent attorneys from Bay Area law firms, in-house counsels, federal judges, and lawyers at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. With its proximity to Silicon Valley and close ties to California’s entertainment centers, GGU School of Law offers excellent opportunities for intellectual property research and training.

The GGU Law faculty is committed to practical legal training, social justice, and the professional success of our students. Drawing upon the many resources of the University and their strong networks of professional relationships within the legal, governmental, and business communities in the Bay Area, GGU Law faculty provide students with the scholarship and practical experiences to succeed in the legal profession.

GGU LAW STUDENTS: A DIVERSE, COMMITTED COMMUNITY

Legal education at GGU Law is greatly enriched by the diverse backgrounds and experiences brought to the program by our students. In 2015, The National Jurist gave GGU Law an “A” for Student Body Diversity and US News & World Report ranked GGU Law eighth in the nation for diversity. In addition to our students being older than traditional law students (average age is 28), minorities make up 52% of our enrollment and women account for 58%. Many of our students are the first in their families to attend college or law school.

In 2016, after several years of declining enrollments similar to the trends seen throughout the national legal education market, the fall entering class of GGU grew by 26.5% over 2015 and also showed an improvement in their academic profile. Currently there are 355 students enrolled in the J.D. program and 116 in the Graduate Law Division.

GGU Law students are engaged in contemporary legal issues. They sustain a range of student organizations including the American Constitutional Society, Black Law Students Association, Asian Pacific Law Student Association, Veteran Law Student Association, and Queer Law. They publish two law journals, the Environmental Law Journal and GGU Law Review. The Law Review is the only law review that dedicates an annual issue to the decisions of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Law students are also active in two meetings – the Fulbright Symposium and our Intellectual Property Conference – both hosted annually for many years by GGU. More recently, student participation has been central to the success of a newly established conference dealing with issues confronted by military veterans and service members.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE GGU LAW DEAN

Reporting directly to the University President, the Law School Dean is the chief executive and academic officer of the School of Law. Working closely with faculty and the staff, s/he will plan and implement strategies that advance the mission of the law school and provide positive direction to all aspects of the Law School’s administrative and academic operations. The Dean should have the experience and skill to:

Develop and drive a community of scholars, practitioners, and students whose discussions broaden our understanding of justice, enrich the pedagogy of academic specialties, promote our teaching mission,advance research and scholarship, and shape new ideas into practical applications.

Lead and guide long-range and strategic planning that identifies and strengthens the distinct qualities within GGU that differentiate the school’sposition in the legal education marketplace and that attract and retain a strong, diversecommunity of students and faculty.

Advance academic standards and learning outcomes for student success and encourage the use of assessment tools for continuous improvement of student learning, professional development, and performance objectives including first-time and eventual bar passage and employment after graduation.

Manage multi-year budgets that achieveaccountability and financial stability.

Work with the University President and the Senior Leadership Team to create multi-disciplinary solutions for the broader University community.

Engage and build relationships with an expandingphilanthropic community — including alumni, law firms, friends, foundations, corporations, and government institutions — and solicit their support for the students and programs of GGU Law School.

Serve as principal liaison between the University and the Law School’s accrediting body, the American Bar Association, assuring continued compliance with the American Bar Association accreditation standards and Association of American Law Schools’ membership requirements.

QUALIFICATIONS AND QUALITIES

A Juris Doctorate from an ABA-accredited institution whose scholarly work merits appointment as a full professor of law with tenure.

A seasoned manager, capable of directing and supporting staff, while maintaining the bandwidth to strengthen bonds with students, faculty, alumni, and the legal, civic, and business communities of San Francisco.

Intellectual curiosity and demonstrated commitment to scholarship that can inspire the academic community.

Collegial habits that can enhance GGU’s Senior Leadership Team and encourage the integration of intellectual resources among the four schools of the University.

Entrepreneurial aptitude that can mold GGU resources into a center for 21stcentury legal training and practice.

Maturity to bring humor and clear thinking to the ambiguities and unanticipated jolts of contemporary academic administration.

PROCEDURE FOR CANDIDACY

To apply, candidates must submit a cover letter describing how their background, interests, and qualifications meet or exceed the position’s requirements; a curriculum vita; and a list of five or more professional references with contact information (including e-mail address). All application materials, which will be kept strictly confidential, should be submitted electronically (Adobe PDF or MS Word format). Review of applications will begin in the spring with strongest consideration given to those received by March 24, 2017. The Law School Dean Search Committee strongly encourages nominations and applications from candidates with diverse backgrounds. Golden Gate University is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

To apply for this position, please visit

Direct inquiries and nominations to:

Professor Michele Neitz, Law Dean Search Committee Chair

Golden Gate University, 536 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94105

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