The George Mason University School of Law is currently the youngest law school in U.S. News & World Report’s top forty law schools, and over the past decade, has been the fastest rising law school in America. This period in the law school’s history has been marked by the following achievements:

• The law school is now ranked 38th out of 177 accredited American law programs according to U.S. News & World Report (April 2004).

• The law school has increased its investment per law student (i.e., direct plus indirect expenditures) by 99.3% from fiscal year 1997-98 to fiscal year 2002-03.

• The law school has reduced the size of first-year sections and has reduced and evened its teaching loads, allowing its professors to devote more time and energy to research.

• The law school has increased its reputation among lawyers and judges, moving from 92nd in the country (April 1998) to 49th in the country (April 2004).

• The law school has strengthened the quality of its full-time students, moving from a median LSAT of 157 and median GPA of 3.13 (fall 1997) to a median LSAT of 163 and a median GPA of 3.62 (fall 2003).

• The law school has become one of the most selective law schools in America; in fall 2003, the law school admitted only 9.2% of the applicants to its full-time class.

• The law school has strengthened its Law & Economics Center by almost tripling its operating budget and course offerings to judges.

• The law school has established the Critical Infrastructure Protection Program, which funds research throughout the university and has brought in more than $22 million in grants and contributions.

• The law school has strengthened both its faculty-edited and student-edited journals and has developed a strategic partnership with The Green Bag journal, which has brought welcome new attention to the law school’s academic program.

In the next six years, the law school’s goal is to be ranked among the top thirty law schools in the nation. In order to accomplish this objective, the law school’s reputation among bench, bar and peer institutions must improve. For that to happen, we must address a number of issues.

1. Faculty

   The law school will promote the scholarship of its faculty, especially its younger faculty, and the unbreakable connection between good scholarship and good teaching. This culture will be supported by

   • Weekly (or more frequent) workshop presentations of papers by members of the faculty or professors from other law schools.;

   • Aggressive summer research support and other funding targeted on encouraging scholarly productivity; and

   • Careful peer reviewing of teaching performance with mentoring as required.

   In order to hold ourselves to the highest possible standards, we will continue to emphasize our accountability to external, disinterested auditors.

   • Citation counts will continue to be used as a rough index of academic influence. In addition, other, more discriminate techniques of measurement will be employed as they become available.

   • External rankings of law school programs, such as those published annually by Texas law professor Brian Leiter and U.S. News & World Report, will continue to be employed along with other tools of external accountability as they become available.

2. Synergies with Broader University Community
   • The law school will increase its efforts to realize gains from trade with other units of the university.

   • The law school will continue to stress interdisciplinary studies. Law and economics will remain a core competency of the faculty, but the school will broaden its posture to include other social and natural sciences as these throw light on the development and functioning of legal doctrines, norms and institutions.

   • The law school will aggressively develop and exploit relationships with the Mercatus Center, the Economics Department, the Krasnow Center, the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution and other programs within the university whose competencies and foci are complementary to the teaching and research missions of the law school.

3. Diversity of Faculty and Student Body

   The law school will increase the diversity of its faculty and student body over the next six years.

   • We have established the post of Minority Recruitment Coordinator to help identify, recruit, retain and mentor minority students.

   • We will utilize substantial number of interview slots at the AALS hiring convention for minority and female appointments candidates.

   • We will monitor the diversity progress of our peer institutions with respect to both faculty and student bodies.

4. Enrollment Growth

   The School of Law will retain its current population of 620 full-time equivalent students, but as the Master of Laws program grows to its planned size, the Juris Doctor program will enroll proportionately fewer students. The quality, diversity and geographic dispersion of these classes will, however, continue to increase.

5. Compensation of Professors

   The law school will increase the compensation and research support of our faculty to be competitive with other law schools of equivalent stature. George Mason law professors are underpaid relative to our peer schools. In order to address this situation we intend to

   • Increase private fundraising to establish new endowed professorships;

   • Norm faculty compensation against the law schools with which we actually compete for students and faculty; and

   • Increase federal grants to the law school to provide funds that can be used to increase law professor research opportunities.

6. Private Fundraising

   The law school’s current endowment is modest in comparison to its peer institutions. Income from endowment is among the most flexible strategic assets of any institution. In order to compete effectively with peer institutions, the law school’s endowment will have to grow significantly. In order to increase our endowment, we will

   • Cultivate relationships with potential friends who may share our interests in law and economics, intellectual property, critical infrastructure protection or other areas of distinction in our program; and

   • Sustain and improve alumni relations and alumni participation in the life of the law school.

7. Bar Exam Performance of Graduates

   Currently the law school’s graduates pass the Virginia bar examination at a rate that is average, or slightly below average, for the law schools in the Commonwealth. We must improve the bar passage rate so that it is at least five percentage points above the Virginia state average. In order to accomplish this objective we will

   • Develop and refine statistical tools for identifying students who are at risk for bar exam failure; and

   • Provide extracurricular academic help to improve these students’ chances of passing the bar exam.

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