Krantz to Leave as Dean of USD Law School

Sheldon Krantz, who led the University of San Diego’s law school to newfound recognition in six years as dean, announced plans this week to resign the post.

Krantz, 49, will go on sabbatical at the end of the current academic year and formally leave USD at the end of the 1988-89 term.

“You reach a point in a particular career where you feel it’s necessary to take the next step in your life, and that’s just the point I’ve reached,” Krantz said Friday. “When I became dean in 1981, I don’t think I ever anticipated doing it for this long.”

Recruitment by law firms at the 23-year-old law school has quadrupled during Krantz’s tenure, according to university statistics, and both applications and class size have grown as well.

“USD is accepting more qualified students and turning out better lawyers,” said Craig Higgs, a San Diego attorney who serves on the law school’s board of visitors. “One of the measures of that is that major law firms from throughout the country are hiring USD graduates, when that was not the case not too many years ago.”

Krantz, formerly a law professor at Boston University, has heavily engaged the law school in community affairs. Through the San Diego Law Center, which he helped establish in 1981, volunteer lawyer and arbitration programs were developed and spun off as independent entities. With his wife, attorney Carol Hallstrom, he developed a group of neighborhood mediation centers and formed the San Diego Immigration Law Coalition to coordinate the provision of legal aid to aliens seeking legalization under the federal amnesty program.

Krantz, a national leader in corrections issues, also guided the formation of a blue-ribbon commission that recommended the scuttling of San Diego County’s beleaguered criminal defense system for indigents and its replacement with a quasi-public defender office.

“I believe the law school has lost an incredible talent, and one that has been unselfish in his community involvement,” said M. James Lorenz, the former U.S. attorney who was chairman of the blue-ribbon commission. “He has been a very strong moving force that has increased the reputation--not only locally, but nationally--of that school.”

Krantz said he took pride in his role in revising the law school’s curriculum to increase its emphasis on clinical skills and legal ethics, reflecting the evolving nature of legal practice. Such concerns will be his focus as he works to complete a book, ambitiously titled, “The Future of the Legal Profession.”

Krantz said he was undecided what he would do after finishing the book. University officials, meanwhile, have not yet announced plans for seeking his replacement.

“We feel a real loss that Sheldon has decided to step down,” USD President Author Hughes said in a written statement.