Dean's Welcome

You can best judge the University of Connecticut School of Law by visiting the majestic campus and meeting the talented, dedicated people who work and study here. We are bound together by a love for all that the law has contributed to the progress of civilization and an unshakeable commitment to the possibility that together we can make laws better still.

From your first day on any law school campus, expect to encounter Shakespearean calumny and a litany of lawyer jokes. Yet your chosen profession remains among the highest callings because law remains the tool through which over six billion people seek to pursue justice and live together in peace. As lawyers you will write, interpret, and apply the rules that enable individuals and institutions to work together to produce more goods and services than anyone ever imagined. As we move toward a more integrated global economy, your generation of lawyers will be called upon to build legal structures that can manage daunting environmental challenges, provide health care and life's basic necessities to those who now lack them, and above all to promote freedom and security for diverse peoples in diverse places.

At Connecticut we relish our responsibility to train you for this important mission. We will offer you direct and frequent contact with an accomplished and inspired faculty who will set out for you the basic issues that have confronted lawyers for generations and share with you the latest thinking on how these issues might best be resolved. We will encourage you to put what you learn into practice by enrolling in one of our many clinical programs or by publishing a paper under a professor's close supervision. And we will surround you with outstanding fellow students in an ideal setting where you will learn in attractive, well-equipped classrooms, study in a world class library and enjoy the varied cultural and leisure activities that make Connecticut such a wonderful place to live and work.

You'll often hear me say that the true wonder of the University of Connecticut School of Law is that we demand the absolutely highest standards and that we are nice to each other. Yet when one considers the many advantages of teaching and studying here, it's probably no surprise at all.

Willajeanne F. McLean, Interim Dean

Deans of the Law School