Why A New Building?

The original law school building housed 39 faculty; today, our faculty numbers 45 but must grow to 50 to fulfill our goals. In addition, we employ five or more senior lecturers who teach full–time, as well as 8–10 clinicians. Much of our research and teaching takes place within our 20 centers, each of which needs meeting rooms and office space for its directors and fellows; it is this group of senior academic program, public service, and clinic staff that represents our primary area of growth.

In addition to the original building's physical space constraints is the matter of the current culture of Stanford Law School. It is simply impossible to house our full faculty and the clinics in the current academic building, and it would be very detrimental to split them up; the experiences of other law schools bear this out. Additionally, the current building is poorly suited for the kind of interactive, dynamic law program we seek to develop. The faculty is isolated from each other and from students. There is no place for faculty and students to meet and interact casually, and the result is a building that often feels "dead."