Reno Targeted for Law School Expansion

In Business Las Vegas, December 22nd, 2006

UNLV’s Boyd School of Law is looking to expand its reach in Nevada with a proposal that would create a satellite campus in Reno.

The proposal, which needs to be approved by the university system regents and the Legislature, would make it possible for students from Northern Nevada to get at least some of their classes completed on the UNR campus. The satellite campus would cost $6.6 million to $6.8 million up front and an estimated $3.3 million each year to operate. It would likely have a full-time faculty of five instructors as well as support staff, and would to serve 15 to 30 students. Some of the money would go toward scholarships for satellite campus students.

“We’re trying to be more involved in that part of the state because we’d like to be a statewide law school,” Boyd Dean Richard Morgan said. “We’re already doing some things in Reno and would like to do more.”

The law school at this point is only able to provide limited offerings in Reno, such as summer classes at the Judicial College, a few classes at UNR and an externship program.

Boyd has always intended to expand into Northern Nevada but Morgan said those long-term plans were put on the fast track this year after Chancellor Jim Rogers asked him to think more broadly of what he would like to do in Reno if the school had access to all the funds it would need.

“It’s part of an exchange between the universities,” Morgan said. “UNLV would like to see more involvement on their campus from the medical school (based in Reno) andin exchange we could become more involved,as a law school, there.”

Most of the program’s costs would be related to personnel. The proposal calls for the addition of two faculty members to the UNLV campus and for a faculty exchange program between the campuses, with teachers working for a semester or two in either Reno or Las Vegas and then returning to their home campus. Morgan said he anticipates it would take about a year to get all of the approvals in place, if the Regents green light the project. The school would have to get approval from the American Bar Association first and then hire faculty and line up leases.

“This gives us an opportunity to link up more tightly with UNR,” Morgan said. “We’re hoping to have faculty available to teach undergraduates there, on a limited basis.

Maybe for the honors school.”

Morgan feels having a law school in Northern Nevada would be helpful to more than the students who live there. The introduction of full-time law students and faculty to the campus would allow the law school to expand the legal services it offers to the community.

“One of the major benefits of the law school in a general sense is community service,” he said. “We’re supported by the state and the Legislature not just because we train lawyers, but because we provide a lot of community service through clinics and legal services to the community and legal services to the government, the Legislature and the attorney general and so on. If this is approved, we would have more students in the north providing these services.”

The proposal for the satellite campus was developed by a faculty task force and approved by the entire faculty at a meeting about two months ago. But it has a long way to go before the proposal can become reality. It still has to be approved by the Regents and Legislature before it becomes official. And Morgan is not holding his breath. He said getting that amount of funding could be a long-shot.

“It remains to be seen whether it will be approved because it is an extraordinary request,” he said.

One problem is the lack of funding, overall, for higher education. The law school does not want to be in a position where the Regents or the Legislature funds the satellite campus at the expense of other University programs. Morgan said that would be counter to the best interests of the schools and the community.

“We are not trying to hone in on University programs or university priorities,” he said. “It’s something we were invited to do and we thought it was a good idea, but we don’t want this to displace other university projects or prioritization. If the pot is big enough to share, we’d love to do this.