Dear Alumni and Friends:
As we wrap up the fall semester and make plans for the winter break, there’s an unmistakable sense of optimism in the air. Perhaps it’s the collective feeling of relief that we’ve finally turned the corner on the pandemic. This was our first semester with no COVID-related masking or testing requirements, after all. But I’ve also noticed something else: a newfound energy and excitement among alumni, faculty, students, and staff for where we are currently as an institution and where we are headed.
By any number of measures, Cornell Law School is doing exceptionally well and poised for even greater achievements. This is reflected in admissions, with the Class of 2025 surpassing last year’s incoming class to become the highest credentialed matriculating class in the school’s history. It also shows in job placement, where we continue to outpace our peers by sending a higher percentage of our 2021 graduates to large law firms than any other school. It’s apparent in our public interest program, where we’ve increased spending on Public Interest Fellowships to its highest level ever. It’s evident among our superb faculty, who hold advanced degrees in over a dozen different disciplines and who continue to develop entirely new approaches to legal scholarship. And it shows in our experiential education program, which continues to expand and gain notice on the national stage.
Against this backdrop of good news, we stand at a critical juncture. In order to accomplish our shared vision of providing the finest legal education available anywhere, the Law School will need to build upon and expand all of these recent successes.
Against this backdrop of good news, we stand at a critical juncture. In order to accomplish our shared vision of providing the finest legal education available anywhere, the Law School will need to build upon and expand all of these recent successes. The cover story of this issue highlights the exciting launch of our capital campaign—To Do the Greatest Good—and describes how it will allow us to keep moving forward as we shape our plans for the next decade and beyond.
We’ve set an ambitious goal for this capital campaign, but it’s a target that is both crucial for our growth and one that is completely attainable if we come together to make it happen. Among our top priorities for the campaign are building the scholarship endowment and nurturing a world-class faculty. Increasing our financial aid spending is essential for competing with other top schools for the best students and, even more important, for ensuring that we can make a Cornell Law education available to anyone who’s been accepted. Equally important is recruiting and retaining a world-class faculty. With over one-third of our faculty expected to retire in the next five years, we are going to need the resources to attract the next generation of legal scholars. And when it comes to retaining faculty, we need to expand the number of endowed chairs we offer, an area in which we lag behind our peers.
The to do the greatest good campaign is a natural fit for the Law School. As I explain in the cover story, we’ve been committed to doing the greatest good from our founding and I’m not just referring to our longstanding commitment to public service. To me, no matter where or how you are practicing law, you are still contributing to the greatest good by upholding the rule of law and the role of our legal system in society.
As you continue reading the other feature articles in this issue, you’ll notice that this sense of doing the greatest good resonates throughout so much of what we do as a community. For example, the second feature highlights our growing pool of alumni who are high-level judges: three recently confirmed at the federal level and one appointed to the Supreme Court of Japan. These recent additions bring the total number of alumni who are Article III active or senior federal judges to fourteen. It’s a point of pride to see our alumni attain these powerful and influential federal judgeships. Their commitment to public service is an inspiration to us all. Notably, in recent years roughly the same number of Cornell Law alumni were confirmed under Republican and Democratic administrations.
Our third feature article provides a compelling example of the transformative power of our legal clinics and how they contribute to the greatest good. The article recounts how our first-of-its-kind 1L Immigration Law and Advocacy Clinic secured a victory in a seemingly futile asylum case and in the process transformed the lives of the client and students involved.
Taken together, the articles in this issue paint a clear picture of where we stand right now and how we plan to do the greatest good as we move forward. With your support, this campaign can help move Cornell Law to the next level in its status among top law schools.
Respectfully,
Jens David Ohlin
Allan R. Tessler Dean and Professor of Law
law.dean@cornell.edu
