The University of Nevada, Las Vegas has hired the dean of the Arizona State University College of Law as the founding dean of UNLV's William S. Boyd School of Law, President Carol C. Harter announced Monday (July 7).
Richard J. Morgan, who has served as dean and professor at ASU's law college since 1990 and held the same positions at the University of Wyoming College of Law from 1987 to 1989, will assume his duties at UNLV on Sept. 1.
"We are delighted that Dean Morgan will be joining UNLV as the founding dean of our William S. Boyd School of Law," Harter said. "His experience as a practicing attorney and a law school educator and administrator will be extremely valuable as we begin the exciting process of developing UNLV's law school."
Under Morgan's leadership, the university will prepare its law program to accept its first class in fall 1998. The university plans to obtain American Bar Association accreditation for the law school at the earliest possible date, in time to allow the first class to sit for the Nevada Bar exam.
"I'm tremendously excited by the opportunity to help found a law school at a well established and well respected university such as the University of Nevada, Las Vegas," Morgan said. "This is an opportunity to help the university to serve the needs of the state and of the Las Vegas community. I hope that this law school will be a source of strength and pride for the university and for the communities that it serves."
Plans call for the program initially to occupy the existing Paradise Elementary School building on Tropicana Avenue near the university until UNLV's new campus library is completed in 2000. The law school will then move into the existing campus library building, which will have been remodeled for the purpose.
Both the law school and the new library building were funded by the 1997 Nevada Legislature.
"I am very much looking forward to working with Richard Morgan as we build Nevada's first public law school," said Provost Douglas Ferraro.
Morgan, who served as associate professor of law at ASU from 1980 to 1983 and as associate dean and professor from 1983 to 1987, practiced law in California from 1971 to 1980. He received his law degree from the UCLA School of Law in 1971.
Morgan has been active in both the American Bar Association and the Association of American Law Schools, as well as other professional and law education organizations. He is currently a member of the ABA's committee on admissions to the bar. As a member of the ABA's committee on law libraries, he is serving this summer as a faculty member at the ABA's orientation program for new law deans. He is now in his second term as chair of the AALS's committee on academic freedom and tenure.
