Law Students Get Proof That All Of NY Justice Has A Price

Hofstra Renames Law School for Contributor of $20 Million
The New York Law Journal by Andrew Keshner  -  September 14, 2011

Hofstra University School of Law will be renamed in honor of a graduate who has agreed to donate $20 million to the Long Island school, the school announced yesterday.  It will become the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University in recognition of a wealthy retired pharmaceutical executive who enrolled in the school at age 50 and was the valedictorian in the class of 1981, receiving awards for both constitutional law and evidence.  The donation will approximately double the law school's endowment to about $40 million, according to Dean Nora V. Demleitner.  She said interest from the gift will be used to help with student loans and enhance offerings like student fellowships, research and travel.  In deciding how to best use the funds from the interest, Ms. Demleitner said she was "mindful" to address important issues facing law students—finding good professional positions after graduation and attempting to control debt loads.  Calling it "a wonderful opportunity for the law school," which has about 1,000 students, Ms. Demleitner said the donation "allows us to build on the future and round out the year."  More than half of the gift has been received in the past month, with the remainder coming in the next 15 months, she said.  The school said that for 30 years Mr. Deane, now in his mid-80s, has been an adviser and benefactor of the university and its law school. He served on the university's board of trustees from 1982 to 2007 and was the board's chair from 1989 to 1991. In 2008, he was named chair emeritus.  His latest contribution will be dedicated to enhancing the academic quality of the law school. Previously, he had endowed a distinguished professorship in constitutional law and a scholarship with his wife, Barbara. The law school's library is already named for Mr. Deane and his wife.  Mr. Deane passed the bar in 1982. Though he did not practice after graduation, he thinks his legal education "really served him well," Ms. Demleitner said.  Mr. Deane is "exceptionally fond of the law school," she said, adding that a condition of the donation was that it exclusively benefit the law school.  Ms. Demleitner said she and Hofstra University President Stuart Rabinowitz, who was once the law school's dean, decided to rename the school in light of the donation.  Ms. Demleitner said Mr. Deane's contributions to the law school were in the "millions," with this gift being his single largest donation.  A spokeswoman for the law school declined to comment on which side approached the other about a donation, but said the gift was "a continuation" of Mr. Deane's longtime support for the school.  Alexandria Sawyer, president of the law school's student bar association and a third-year student, said news of the donation created "a lot of talk and a lot of excitement" among the students yesterday. "The students recognize how important and influential this will be to our school immediately," she said, noting how the donation would be used, in part, for scholarships. "This is someone as students we look up to as a role model and an inspiration," she said of Mr. Deane.  Mr. Deane helped build Endo Pharmaceuticals into one of the largest privately run pharmaceutical companies in the nation. The company was sold in 1970 to E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. Mr. Deane served as its president until his retirement eight years later.  Mr. Deane did not make himself available for interviews yesterday.  Andrew Keshner can be contacted at akeshner@alm.com.