The dean of New York state’s only public law school isn’t too keen on the idea of launching another SUNY law school at Stony Brook University.
Makau Mutua, interim dean of the SUNY-run University of Buffalo Law School, said the state already has a glut of law schools, according to an Associated Press story.
State lawmakers on April 9 passed a budget that included $50 million to help in the creation of three new law schools — $45 million of that going to Long Island. While some of the money will help set up a school at Binghampton, $2 million of the budgeted funds will go toward a study exploring the creation of a Rochester law school that would be affiliated with St. John Fisher College, a private school.
In fact, the state funding a study for a private school is what set Mutua off.
From the story:
“It’s mind-boggling for the state to contemplate giving money to start up a private law school,” said Mutua, a UB law faculty member for nearly a dozen years before being named interim dean in December.
The state would be better off investing in UB to hire more faculty members and recruit students for its law school, where about 800 students must share a 35-year-old building with undergraduates, Mutua said.
“We need a completely new building,” he said. “We’re squeezed for space.”
Building more law schools isn’t on the state Bar Association’s to-do list. A spokeswoman for the organization said its legal education and admission committee hasn’t been called on to study whether New York needs more law schools.
“I have no idea why the state would consider three more law schools,” said Thomas Guernsey, dean of Albany Law School. “There’s no evidence in the job market that we need more than those 15 schools.”
