Dear Friends:

Ted Turner used to brag that he was cable “before cable was cool.” Well, at Penn Law, we were interdisciplinary well before that became fashionable in legal education.

In fact, my annual report on the state of Penn Law this year begins more than 108 years ago—though don’t worry, I’m not going to go year-by-year! In February 1900, dignitaries from the worlds of law and education, including Supreme Court Justice John Harlan, assembled in Philadelphia from around the globe to celebrate the opening of the “Department of Law’s” new building, which we all now know as the historical centerpiece of the modern Penn Law, Silverman Hall. When Provost Charles Harrison commenced the dedication ceremonies, he did not begin by describing the new building’s grandeur, extolling his renowned faculty, or even thanking the donors who made it possible! Instead, he first pointed out the profound significance of moving the Law School, which had previously been located next to Independence Hall, to the University campus. The decision was revolutionary; a school which had previously been “separate and apart from the University” was now poised, the Provost emphasized, to become part of the “daily life of the University.” 

Even Harrison never could have imagined the extraordinary forces he and others were about to unleash—a process that has reached hyper-speed at Penn Law over the past few years. Today, Penn Law stands as the most interdisciplinary law school in the nation, fully engaged with our fellow world-leading professional schools at the University of Pennsylvania. The educational significance of this connection cannot be overstated. Lawyers today must navigate among fields and approaches, not only as they serve their diverse clients, but also as they directly confront our most pressing worldwide challenges—from energy consumption and climate change to bioethics, credit crises and the fragile global markets. A legal education which integrates fields will produce the leaders of today and tomorrow. The success of our approach can be seen in the academic culture we have created—and the exceptional faculty and students we have been able to attract. Let me offer you some of the wonderful details of the past year at your alma mater.

Stellar scholars join our faculty

We begin with the faculty, which is the center and heart of every great academic institution. Since 2000, we have grown the Penn Law faculty by close to 50 percent. No other major law school can match that achievement. The reason for this expansion is not only that we needed to expand a faculty which was far smaller than our peers, but, more importantly, there were so many new areas of legal education, such as intellectual property, health law, and finance, that we were not adequately covering and where we could become world leaders. Our cross-disciplinary focus has become even stronger with this fall’s addition of six exceptional senior and junior scholars in economics, history, psychology and law – all of whom were being recruited by a bevy of top law schools and all of whom illustrate the promise of our interdisciplinary agenda.

Let me begin with our three senior (but still young) laterals: The first, Tom Baker, the nation’s preeminent scholar of insurance law, was previously a chaired professor at the University of Connecticut and Director of its unique Insurance Center. Using the lens of insurance regulation, Tom has done path-breaking work in such diverse fields as health care, corporate law, and torts. Also joining us is Jill Fisch, one of the nation’s preeminent corporate law scholars and a chaired professor at Fordham University and Director of their highly regarded Corporate Law Center. As an outstanding academic entrepreneur who is a leader in integrating corporate law finance theory with practice, Jill will join Professors Ed Rock and Michael Wachter as co-directors of our nationally recognized Institute for Law and Economics. Jonathan Klick, the third tenured scholar joining us, is probably the most prolific young law and economics scholar in the nation. He (and a stellar new junior addition, David Abrams), are at the forefront of a new breed of empirical legal academics using technical econometric skills to illuminate the underlying impact of legal rules. This approach, which is revolutionizing the field, was brought to public visibility through the popular book, Freakonomics, and is central to much of the new thinking about legal policy-making. As with most of our recent additions, all of these current and future stars will be deeply involved in their teaching and scholarship with other departments at the University, including the School of Medicine and the Wharton School.

In addition to these wonderful appointments to the permanent faculty, two recent law alumnae who are completing their doctoral degrees at the University of Pennsylvania have joined the Law School faculty for two-year terms as Sharswood Fellows in Legal History and in Law and Psychology. The Sharswood Fellowship is a new two-year program designed to attract some of the brightest minds into legal teaching. The new Fellows are Karen Tani, L’07, who, having just finished a clerkship with Former Yale Law dean and Second Circuit Judge Guido Calebresi, is pursuing a Ph.D. in American legal history; and Tess Wilkinson-Ryan, L’05, who, after clerking in the Third Circuit, is completing a Ph.D. in psychology in the hot new area of legal decision-making. Both will teach at Penn Law for the next two years while they finish their degrees. They join Nadia N. Sawicki, L’04, who is beginning her second year as a Sharswood Fellow in Law and Bioethics. These Sharswood Fellowships are funded in part by The University of Pennsylvania Law Review so as to ensure that the next generation of top academics come from Penn Law.

Three-year JD/MBA created

Penn Law students today have extensive opportunities to take advantage of our unique interdisciplinary approach: they are taught by a law faculty in which 70 percent hold advanced degrees in fields other than law (50 percent with a Ph.D.) and in which one-half hold appointments in other schools at Penn. We offer more than 30 joint degrees and certificates and more than one-half of our students take at least one class with a faculty member outside the Law School.

But we have not been resting on our laurels. The newest component of our cross-disciplinary leadership is a revolutionary three-year JD/MBA joint degree program, which will be offered by the Law School and the Wharton School beginning in fall 2009. We anticipate enrolling about 20 highly select students per year, who will spend the first year in the Law School and the following summer taking four Law and Wharton courses designed specifically for the three-year JD/MBA. The second and third years will include a combination of Law and Wharton courses, culminating in a capstone course in the third year.

This new program, which will bring to our campus the future leaders of Wall Street and Main Street, helps to solidify our position as the leading cross-disciplinary law school in the country. As the world becomes more complex, leaders must be able to integrate financial, legal, political and cultural issues like never before. These students will be trained like no other group in the country—not only for corporate law and business—but for whatever are the most pressing challenges in the for-profit and nonprofit worlds.

Intense competition to join our collegial environment

Given the growth in our faculty and programs, it is not surprising that the quality of our student body continues to amaze. Since 2000, the competitiveness of our admissions has skyrocketed, with a 75 percent jump in applications, to more than 5,800 for roughly 240 spots. The hard numbers are startling: the median LSAT of incoming students has jumped from roughly the 93rd to the 99th percentile (165 to 170); the median GPA from 3.5 to 3.8. But these numbers do not do justice to the broad accomplishments of these future leaders of the profession. They are drawn from over 35 states, with New York and California the most represented, and over one-third identifying themselves as people of color. Our graduate LLM programs are also attracting the best and brightest from around the globe. Aided by the stunning internationalization of our full-time faculty and staff, as well as a new visiting professors program that brings faculty from across the globe to teach at the school, applications have doubled since 2000. Our incoming LLM class now boasts representatives from some 30 different countries.

The outstanding credentials of our students and enhanced efforts by our Career Planning and Professionalism office have helped greater numbers of Penn Law students and alumni enter the workforce at the very top. In terms of judicial clerkships, since May 2007, an unprecedented 70 Penn Law students or alumni have been appointed to these coveted positions, including two with the United States Supreme Court. We rank in the Top Two in AmLaw’s ranking of law school placements with major law firms. Our Center on Professionalism is also launching a concentrated effort to teach our students how to navigate in their increasingly complicated roles as professionals in the law, business, government, and non-profit world. When I graduated law school, I assumed I would enter and spend most of my career at one organization and in one field. (The fact that I did—at Penn Law—should not fool our students about their probable path!). Today, our graduates are likely to move professionally and geographically on many occasions. A student body that will be the leaders in diverse fields must understand and take control of their career aspirations and goals.

Vigorous and varied lectures and activities

Our academic program is rich not only because of the quality of our faculty, students, staff, and curriculum, but our institutional engagement with the world.

Guest speakers: Over the past few years, the number of student-initiated and school-sponsored events has tripled. Sixty different student groups are actively engaged in learning and service. Guest speakers over the past year included luminaries from every walk of life and political perspective: former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez; Clinton White House Counsel and U.S. Appeals Court Judge Abner Mikva; Independent Counsel Ken Starr; Israeli Supreme Court Chief Justice Aaron Barak; Time Editor-in-Chief Norman Pearlstine L’67; as well as current U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. We even had Bush v. Gore Protagonists Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe and the former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson discuss that case and Supreme Court practice. The list goes on and on.

International opportunities: We now offer opportunities for experiential international learning through six formal study abroad programs, as well as a JD/MA program in conjunction with Wharton’s Lauder Institute. The overseas law schools with whom we have partnerships are Waseda Law School (Tokyo), Bucerius Law School (Hamburg), Tsinghua Law School (Beijing), Tel Aviv Law School (Israel), ESADE Law School (Barcelona), and Paris 1 Law School/Sciences Po (France).

During the past year, Penn Law students were actively involved in peace-promoting efforts in Africa. In a report commissioned by a Ugandan ambassador, one dozen students in a transnational justice seminar with Professor William Burke-White presented to the State Department their recommendations to facilitate peace in that war-torn nation. In a parallel effort, clinical supervisor and lecturer Sarah Paoletti took five students from the Transnational Legal Clinic to Ghana to take statements from Liberian refugees at the Buduburam Refugee Camp for the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission as part of her exploration of asylum law.

Gittis Clinic: Our clinical opportunities continue to expand exponentially. We now have seven separate clinics, many joint with other schools; close to 70 percent of our students participate in at least one clinical opportunity. Practice Professor Douglas Frenkel, who was the impresario of this revolution in legal education at Penn Law for the past 28 years as director of the Gittis Center, decided to step down from the directorship this year, although we are all delighted that he will continue to teach in the clinic. He is succeeded by his longtime friend and colleague Practice Professor Louis Rulli, who is a Lindback Award winner at the University, the highest teaching award at Penn, and a pioneer in developing clinics in legislation and public interest lawyering at the Law School, which he joined, like Doug, after serving as Managing Director of Community Legal Services. The Clinic continues to receive awards and attract recognition for its outstanding work. Earlier this year, the Clinic received a VIP Pro Bono Award in ceremonies held at City Hall in recognition of outstanding legal representation provided to many indigent clients by Penn clinic students.

Our facilities: The quality of our guest lectures and student activities rely heavily on our physical plant, which itself also helps foster a sense of community and collegiality at Penn Law.  As I write, we are completing extensive renovations to the Clinic and other areas of the Silverman Hall ground floor. Since 2000, we have spent close to $20 million on a much-needed overhaul of the entire Law School complex, with the exception of the Sansom Street wing, Pepper Hall. To complete this transformation, we plan to demolish Pepper in two years and replace it with a new, and vitally needed, fourth wing to our courtyard complex.

Bold Ambitions

The late Howard Gittis, C’55, L’58, who passed away this past year, was as devoted to this school as anyone. He once proclaimed that “everything that has been good in my career stems from the Law School.” Let me turn that sentiment on its head: everything that we’ve been able to accomplish at Penn Law over the past few years stems from your commitment and support—the engagement by alumni and friends of the school. That engagement was evident during the past year, as we chartered 10 alumni clubs around the country, held 20 “meet and greets” around the world, welcomed 500 alumni to reunion festivities and provided many new opportunities for our alumni to reconnect with Penn Law.

The preceding pages enumerate just some of the outstanding achievements of your Law School, including the progress we’ve made since the beginning of this decade. None of this success would have been possible without your participation and, frankly, your financial support. In 2000, our endowment was the lowest of all of our peer schools. As a result, our faculty was smaller, and we offered less financial aid, than virtually all of our peers. Since Provost Harrison spoke over 100 years ago, Penn has always had exceptional people, but we have not always had the needed financial capacity to support those people in the way they deserve.

What a difference resources can make! Over the last few years we have begun to meet that challenge—in spades. Thanks to our alumni, since 2000, our endowment has grown faster than that of all of our peers. Overall, we have raised $125 million toward our $175 million goal in the Bold Ambitions campaign. To put this alumni commitment in perspective, our success greatly exceeds (per alumnus) all of the schools at Penn, including that fundraising juggernaut, the Wharton School.

As part of this effort, there have been large contributions and there have been small ones; all have been important. While I could offer countless examples of exceptional personal commitments, allow me to focus on one group which is in perhaps the best position to appreciate the quality of what is going on at the school—the Class of 2008. This year’s graduating class—who have just completed paying hefty tuitions, and many of whom are about to pay back substantial loans—raised over $71,000 as a class gift, by far the largest ever! Their participation rate was also a record—over 64 percent. This labor of institutional love speaks volumes about the significance of what is going on at your alma mater.

The fundamental point should be clear: your commitment to Penn Law, both financial and intellectual, is making a fundamental educational difference. ALL the success that is described in these pages: the ongoing expansion of our outstanding faculty and academic programs, the rapid renewal of our facilities, and the recruitment of an amazingly talented student body—is due to you. People matter, but resources matter in ensuring that we are able to recruit and support those people to do the very best for the community and for society.

Conclusion

Back in February 1900, Provost Harrison did eventually offer his sincere thanks for the “private munificence” that made possible a magnificent on-campus home for the Department of Law. He understood the importance of resources. But as prescient as he was about the importance of a cross-disciplinary legal education, another of his predictions that day completely missed the mark.

“It is a danger,” he said, “to think too much of the present and not enough of the future; but I feel that in this latest work we have emptied our quiver of its arrows.”

Each of you is proof that Penn Law’s quiver will never be empty.

With all best wishes,

Michael A. Fitts