In an interview with The National Law Journal last week, the University of Chicago Law School’s newly-established dean, Michael Schill, established bold fundraising ambitions to bring his institution’s endowment in line with peer programs.
“We are way under-endowed compared to our peer schools – Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, NYU,” Schill said. ”The Law School has generated the most important idea to affect law in the past 50 years: law and economics. I want to improve some of the connectivity of faculty and students between the Law School and other departments in social sciences and the business school. It has been reduced in the past ten to 15 years. I also want to identify areas that we’ll grow in faculty – law and economics, international law, constitutional law. I want to find the resources to make it possible.”
Schill indicated that he raised over $70 million in more than five years at the UCLA School of Law. For his new post, at the University of Chicago, his goals are quite larger: $150 to $200 million.
When asked about his strength as a fundraiser, Schill cited his work ethic, ability to listen, and ability to connect “people’s aspirations with the needs of the institution.”
As we recently wrote in this space, Schill completed his move to Chicago just after the new year, and wasted little time in addressing prospective students.
