Dedicated staff and students help newly accredited Drexel University College of Law move forward with their innovative law school approach   

By Michelle Weyenberg

In fall 2006, Jerome Aquino and other first year students roamed the halls of Drexel University’s first law school with uncertainty and excitement pumping through their veins.

“I think the first day, we all just looked at each other,” said Aquino, now a 2L. “Which really is consistent with anyone attending their first year of law school.”

But these particular first-year students were considered risk takers, being the inaugural class of Drexel University College of Law. The task of carving out what the law school would eventually become loomed over the heads of the students and staff.

“We started at Drexel with a lot of uncertainty,” Aquino said. “Interaction with professors and looking at each other and saying we are going to sink and swim together — it really bonded us together.”

Today, staff and students are patting themselves on the back. Their hard work has paid off.

This past February Drexel received provisional accreditation from the American Bar Association at the earliest point allowed under the ABA’s accreditation guidelines.

“To reach this milestone less than 18 months after welcoming our first law students to Drexel is remarkable and a testament to the vision and commitment of our Board of Trustees and the hard work and passion of the faculty and staff of the College of Law and its founding dean, Roger Dennis,” said Drexel President Constantine Papadakis. “Drexel Law has gathered some of the most talented, innovative law faculty, practicing professionals and students anywhere, and it shows in every initiative.”

Tobey Oxholm, executive vice president of Drexel University, said the vision for the law school came out of the university — a bottom up and top down process.

“[Papadakis] said we would have a law school in 18 months,” he said. “Everyone didn’t think it would happen.”

Oxholm, who’s been at the forefront of the planning stages for the law school, said it’s all proof that when there is an idea that makes sense, Drexel University is really ready to put its mind, talents and energy into it.

An innovative approach

Drexel University had just acquired a medical school in 2002, when administrators saw that the only missing piece was a law school.

“We were looking at how medicine and engineering go together, and then how are they protected,” Oxholm said. “All that stuff had to do with law.”

University administrators soon formed a committee, meeting for three months to debate, argue and project what the new law school would envision. Basing their curricula off of the famed MacCrate Report, administrators wanted to build a bridge between the practice and the academy. The report, published in 1992 by the ABA Task Force on Law Schools and the Profession, focused on the preparation of law students for the practice of law.

Soon enough, the law school attracted 1,700 student applicants and more than 600 applications for teaching positions.

“When the accreditors came, they found a law school that was staffed with faculty that was excited about the mission,” Oxholm said.

Dean Roger Dennis can’t imagine any law school getting better support.

“We just really had what we needed to do to build a law school,” he said. “We’ve been able to hire excellent people and were very mindful of our obligations to our students from day one.”

Susan Brooks, professor and associate dean of experimental learning, said the school’s co-op approach makes students, on some level, better lawyers.

“I think that legal clinics and clinical programs in law school have been for a long time a place in which there has been an appreciation of how one can teach a new practice,” she said.

Through cooperative education, students supplement classroom study with professional experience. Approximately 100 employers have joined Drexel Law as co-op partners, including law firms, the courts, government and public-interest agencies.

“For me it was a very unique and appealing opportunity to come in on the ground floor of a new law school,” Brooks said. “The challenge and opportunity of coming in and being able to be in this creative process is to be able to shape these programs and do so in an environment where there is a shared vision of having a goal of creating a law school. In a very real and genuine way that brings together theory and practice.”

Risk takers

Michelle Payne, a 2L, said she never really thought it was a risk to attend Drexel. 

“I did my research beforehand and knew about the president’s reputation and was very confident that there wasn’t going to be an accreditation problem,” she said. “To be a member of an inaugurating class is exciting, cool and fun. There are opportunities for us to shape the way the school is going to be.”

Payne said she was first interested in attending Northeastern, but when she heard that Drexel was doing a co-op approach, there was no question that she was going to stay in her home state and attend Drexel.

“I’m starting to find through this experience, it’s more about what I’m going to be able to do that’s in cohort with my own mission statement,” Payne said.

Brooks said there is a certain amount of energy that goes into preparing for the accrediting bodies. Now that the law school has crossed that threshold, they can refine and develop the upper level curriculum.

“We can now take experimental learning to the next level and build a very strong core into the curriculum,” Brooks said.

Dean Dennis said the law school is still building the linkages between the medical and engineering school. They’ve also hired four new staff members to begin teaching in the fall.

“We’re working on stuff that all other law schools are working on now that accreditation has been granted,” Dennis said. “Every month now we’re feeling more established than new.”

Many political figures in the Philly area have had much to say about Drexel’s recent accreditation, but no one is more proud than the law school’s staff and students.

“No matter what you read about Drexel and the law school right now, it’s never going to show you how good it actually is,” Payne said. “It’s just great, and I couldn’t imagine having a law school experience anywhere else.”