Daniel B. Rodriguez
Northwestern University School of Law has embarked on a $150 million fundraising campaign, the largest in school history.
Titled “Motion to Lead,” the effort has already raised $67 million during an initial two-year silent phase. It is part of the university’s $3.75 billion “We Will” campaign, announced in March.
“When I got here, I talked to a number of stakeholders within the school, including our alumni constituency group,” Dean Daniel B. Rodriguez said. “It was clear that we were both ready for and needed a substantially new strategic plan, given the dynamic changes in legal education and also in the market.”
Most notable among those changes is the shrinking number of position openings leading to greater student debt. Northwestern’s fundraising plan aims to account for that burden with the intent to allocate $80 million for financial aid.
Plans for the remaining $70 million break down as such:
• Learning infrastructure, $20 million
“The best way to understand ‘learning infrastructure’ is the necessary elements and enhancements to improve student learning,” Rodriguez said.
That means additions and renovations of buildings and additional technology, programs and faculty.
“The phrase is a little opaque, but in some ways purposefully so, because there is a lot to what makes up the structures of student learning,” Rodriguez said. “We need to have the flexibility and do have the flexibility to deploy these new resources to enrich our academic programs.”
• Bluhm Legal Clinic, $15 million
With 18 clinics and more than 750 slots for experiential learning between clinics, externships and simulation-based courses, Northwestern’s legal clinic is the largest in the state. The clinic was renamed for alumnus Neil G. Bluhm in 2000 after his donation of a $7 million clinical endowment.
The $15 million from “Motion to Lead” will, Rodriguez said, “augment the endowment for the clinic to help us sustain it in perpetuity.”
• Public interest initiatives, $10 million
This money, Rodriguez said, will help the school provide additional funding to existing public interest programs, such as providing administrative support for student-funded fellowships and creating a separate career counseling center for students interested in public interest careers.
It will also allow the school to expand its public interest offerings.
• Law-STEM initiatives, $10 million
The addition of its master of science in law graduate program this fall is the latest in Northwestern’s evolving emphasis on the STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
“We are looking to develop a footprint in law-STEM-related initiatives,” Rodriguez said. “We’re making a wager on the future importance of technology and business integrating with law, and vice versa, to make a new breed of lawyer.”
The $10 million will be used to, Rodriguez said, “experiment with curriculum, with degrees, with continuing education — all to really try to develop in our students a special new set of skills.”
• Global initiatives, $10 million
This money will give the school “a financial base to think strategically about some specific international initiatives that will help our students and our graduates,” Rodriguez said.
That means supporting and expanding current faculty work in Ethiopia, the school’s center for international human rights and its public law and international law LL.M. partnership with Tel Aviv University.
• Center for practice engagement and innovation, $5 million
The school will create an endowment to engage the leaders in the legal profession to figure out how best to create more “practice-proficient” students — a term Rodriguez prefers to the widely used “practice-ready.”
End dates have not been set for the campaigns of either the university or the law school. Typical collegiate fundraising campaigns range in duration between four and 10 years; Northwestern’s last law school campaign ran from 1997 to 2003 and raised $78 million.
For comparison, the University of Illinois College of Law conducted a $50 million campaign between 2003 and 2012, raising $50.2 million. In June, DePaul University College of Law completed an eight-year campaign with a $33 million goal. Final totals for that campaign will be released this fall.
Among so-called top 14 schools, of which Northwestern is a member, Harvard Law School’s five-year campaign ending in 2008 is the standard-bearer at $476.5 million.
While Rodriguez said the law school monitors the campaigns of other schools, there is no direct competition based on dollar amounts.
“What we figure out in terms of our campaign goal is not so much a figure that grows out of competition, like keeping up with the Joneses,” he said.
“It’s about two things: What we need to accomplish our principal objectives and what we believe we can raise.”