Chapman Claws Way to Respect

There's an old joke law school deans like to tell: What does it take to create a law school as well-known and respected as Harvard?

Answer: $300 million. And 300 years.

Parham Williams likes to repeat it because, as dean of Chapman University's School of Law, he believes it embraces the ambitious goals he has set for the 7-year-old institution he's nursed back to health from a troubled beginning: Excellence, built brick by brick over the long haul.

"Starting a law school from ground zero is a huge undertaking," said the 71-year-old educator, whose former students include author John Grisham and Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.). "We learned that you have to have a blueprint to build a house, a road map to find out where you are going."

When the former University of Mississippi dean was hired by Chapman in 1997, its law school was struggling two years after it opened.

The campus in Orange had been denied provisional approval by the American Bar Assn., which criticized the level of the school's students, its academic standards and "lax approach" to grading. Applications were in a tailspin. Perhaps most damaging was a lawsuit brought by students who claimed they were misled into thinking ABA approval for Chapman was imminent; the suit eventually led to $1.25 million in tuition refunds.

"There was a lot of naivete about what it meant to have an ABA-accredited operation," said Joanne Telerico, an associate dean who was brought in by Williams shortly after he arrived to improve, among other things, student recruiting and job-placement efforts.

This fall, Chapman received the ABA's seal of approval, capping a turnaround fueled by a $31-million endowment and aggressive national recruiting of top students and faculty.

Chapman's Law School Admission Test (LSAT) scores for 2002 place it in the top third of the nation's 187 accredited law schools, up from the bottom third in 1996. The goal is to reach the top 20% within three years, which would put Chapman's law school in the league with those at American University, Rutgers and Ohio State.

Since Williams came aboard, Chapman's law library has grown by 110,000 volumes. New professors include two who held prestigious posts clerking for U.S. Supreme Court justices. Applications have surged more than fourfold in the last five years, and those for next fall are on track to nearly double. Last summer, 71% of graduates passed the California bar exam on the first try, up from 40% in 1998.