UC Irvine Ties Law School Plan to Fund-Raising Push

UC Irvine Chancellor Ralph Cicerone wants a law school at his campus so badly that he is trying to raise the $40 million it would cost in an attempt to persuade University of California officials to approve one.

Cicerone said he hopes that if he can raise close to the amount it will cost to build the school, UC President Richard Atkinson and the Board of Regents will approve the first state law school since UC Davis’ opened in 1965.

Once the school is operating, student fees and private funds will make it self-supporting, Cicerone said.

It’s an unusual strategy for a UC campus to undertake. Major UC projects are funded mainly with state money. A UC campus may also search for private funds; if someone gives enough money, the building or school usually is named after them.

UC law schools have often been established with the aid of large gifts. Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, UC’s first law school, got its impetus in 1878 with a donation of $100,000 in gold coins from Serranus Clinton Hastings, California’s first chief justice.

Sue Johnson, chairwoman of the Board of Regents, said money is the primary consideration in deciding on new schools. “If UCI can raise the money, it might be a favorable aspect,” she said.

But she added that some regents are opposed to training more lawyers and would vote against any law school.

Cicerone said that because of the slowing economy, it is unlikely that the UC president and the regents would OK a law school in the next few years or that the Legislature would fund it. But if their only objections were financial, he said, raising private funds would solve the problem.

“If we got to that point [where the money has been raised], I think it will be a very easy decision because the faculty buy in, there is student demand and community demand is very strong,” Cicerone said. “It will pass like a lightning flash at that point.”

UC Irvine, though, is not alone in its quest for a law school. Just 44 miles away, UC Riverside also is trying to convince UC officials that it should train lawyers. Although UC Irvine and UC Riverside officials insist that they are not in competition, no one expects the regents to approve law schools for both campuses--if they even give the go-ahead for one.

The California Post-Secondary Education Commission said in a recent letter that the University of California can find better ways to spend its money than on a law school. The letter went on to say that it found UC Riverside’s plan “far superior” to UC Irvine’s in terms of its programs and research that build on the campus’ strengths.

“At present, however, even the Riverside proposal does not adequately address our overriding concerns about societal need for additional lawyers and the total costs of establishing a new school,” wrote Warren H. Fox, the commission’s executive director.

The campuses also would have to overcome a Rand Corp. study that UC officials commissioned last year, which concluded that the number of lawyers in the state will keep pace with population growth and might exceed it.

Cicerone contends that the post-secondary commission has little influence. In addition, officials from UC Irvine and UC Riverside point out that both plans have been endorsed by the Academic Council, made up of faculty representatives from each UC campus.

Ralph Gil, executive assistant to UC Riverside’s chancellor, said it was not unusual for the post-secondary commission to comment negatively on a proposal, then reverse itself when the university responds.

UC Riverside is taking the more traditional tack with its law school proposal, which would cost $61.7 million for construction. “We didn’t want to do anything until we had approval for the school,” Gil said.

The campus has received a pledge to its law school of at least $5 million from Henry W. Coll Jr., president of a construction firm.

At UC Irvine, Joan Irvine Smith has renewed her pledge of a $1-million matching grant, a gift she originally offered 10 years ago when a law school was first proposed.

She said former UC President and UC Irvine Chancellor Jack Peltason called her son recently to ask whether the pledge was still good.

Supporters of a UC Irvine law school argue that UCLA is the only public law school south of San Francisco, while two-thirds of the state’s population lives in Southern California.

They also argue that for UC Irvine to be a top-tier university, it needs a law school along with the medical and engineering schools it already has.

The last new school the regents approved was the School of Pharmacy at UC San Diego, set to open next September.

Brad Barber, UC’s assistant vice president for institutional advancement, said it is more difficult to raise money for buildings than for new programs. Many foundations and others that provide grants, he said, prohibit using their money for construction.

Cicerone said that the move to raise money has just begun and that he will announce a public campaign this academic year. He would not say how much has been pledged.

“We’re finding a tremendous amount of enthusiasm,” he said. “That’s why I’m encouraged and determined.”