ASU officials presented the latest plans for the university’s new law school building on the Downtown Phoenix campus at several community and city meetings over the past week.
The opening of the new building, called the Arizona Center for Law and Society, is planned for 2016. It will cost an estimated $130 million to build, according to Richard Stanley, university planner and senior vice president for ASU.
Stanley answered questions and presented the current plans at the meetings, the most recent being Monday’s Central City Village Planning Committee meeting.
Community response to the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law’s move has been receptive, but it comes at a time when law graduates are experiencing the lowest employment since 1994, according to the National Association for Law Placement (NALP).
Tim Eigo, Arizona Attorney Magazine editor and Downtown Voices Coalition chair, said he thinks the move is positive for the university.
“I think it’s a good move,” Eigo said. “Having the law school there, close to the courts, close to the law firms, it makes good conceptual sense.”
However, Eigo said he felt that the university could do better with opening the university buildings for public access.
“ASU is a public institution, so ostensibly they’re public buildings,” Eigo said. He acknowledged the public should not be allowed to “wander through schools aimlessly,” but also said ASU buildings have been too exclusive in the past.
“Especially when you look at the amount of public financing that’s gone in to them, I think they could do better and we’ve told them they could do better,” Eigo said. “I think they’ve heard us that it’s a balance that we expect them to strike more on the side of openness than security, but it’s a continuing conversation.”
Deputy City Manager Rick Naimark said at last week’s Evans Churchill Community Association meeting that the building could have a number of community uses.
“There could be training for judicial officials or bar association training,” Naimark said. “That’s sort of the vision behind this. It’s not just about training law students. It’s sort of a training center for the law community as a whole.”
Stanley said that the designs are not complete, but the building plan includes a cafe, auditorium and a law firm that will be staffed by recent graduates. It will be built over a plaza that cuts between its two sections. It will include underground parking while maintaining current street parking.
Eigo said that he thought the plans were becoming more accessible to pedestrians.
“Street-level activation is vital,” Eigo said. “Based on the evolution of their plan, it looks like they understand that and are working hard to make it a real pedestrian-friendly experience.”
The building will only take up 75 percent of the lot. The remaining portion will be held by the city but will be available for development by ASU until 2020. The total size of the building is estimated at 250,000 square feet, which is about the size of the Walter Cronkite School, Stanley said.
According to Naimark, the city of Phoenix will supply up to $12 million toward the project.
ASU’s investment in the law school comes at a time when law graduates face an employment rate of 84.7 percent, the lowest since 1994.
According to the NALP, the employment rate for law school graduates nine months after graduation has declined every year since 2007, when it peaked at 91.9 percent.
Of those graduates who participated, 64.4 percent are employed in a position where bar exam passage is required and 10.7 percent are considered unemployed.
Despite that, ASU’s law school has seen the number of graduates increase between 2010 and 2012. Stanley said previous reports that the university expects a 20-40 percent increase in enrollment are not entirely accurate.
“There was a point in time very early in the planning process when we were thinking about increasing the size of the law class dramatically,” Stanley said. “As we’ve done the planning, it’s become clear that we’re better off keeping a class in the historical ranges the classes have been.”
According to Stanley, the university expects growth mostly in the programs that allow previous graduates the opportunity to gain a specialization in certain areas of law.
According to ASU, the number of Juris Doctorate graduates rose from 164 to 212 from 2010 to 2012. Just under six hundred were enrolled in the J.D. program as of December 2012.
In a press release, Douglas Sylvester, dean of the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, said that part of the rationale for the move Downtown was not only to acquire a more modern space, but also to increase job opportunities for graduates by putting them closer to a legal center.
Being close to a legal center means being close to law firm jobs, which represent about 60 percent of the jobs taken nationally by 2012 law school graduates. However, the number of law firm jobs in Phoenix acquired by 2012 law school graduates was 120, the fifth lowest in the 20 cities examined in the NALP report.
ASU’s College of Law is joining the Phoenix School of Law, a private institution, in downtown Phoenix. Graduates from the two schools will be competing for those jobs while each institution competes for students.
According to a Phoenix School of Law report, the school had 181 J.D. graduates in 2012, of which 78 took jobs in Phoenix. ASU did not specify how many graduates worked in Phoenix but did note that 155 were employed in Arizona.
According to Stanley, recent graduates who staff the new building’s law firm will be considered employed in ASU’s reports. The graduates will be paid but will charge a reduced rate in comparison to other law firms and will focus on public and low-cost cases.
“They’ll be overseen by a managing partner who is a professional lawyer, not another student,” Stanley said. “Those students will be considered to be employed and it will be a competitive process among students to become members of that firm. There will not be an unlimited number of slots available to students.”
Stanley said that he did not know how many positions would be available.
The reaction from ASU’s main competitor for law students in the area was positive.
“Phoenix School of Law has found it very beneficial to be located downtown, in close proximity to courts and law firms,” Shirley Mays, dean of the Phoenix School of Law, said in a written statement. “We’re more accessible to practitioners and judges who visit our school to speak, teach and work with our students.”
Mays mentioned part-time evening classes as something that makes the School of Law unique for prospective students.
“It’s not surprising that ASU recognizes the benefits of locating its law school downtown as well,” Mays said in the statement. “We welcome ASU to the downtown legal community and view it as a positive move for Arizona.”
Ryan Walker, an ASU public service and policy junior who has considered pursuing a law degree, was skeptical about the cost of the project.
“They’re just trying to move locations to expand and attract students.” Walker said. “It’s logical, but they couldn’t do it for any cheaper? That’s going to have to be a pretty high-tech building.”
Walker also said he didn’t see the need for a new building if the previous one remained functional.
“Unless they’re overcrowded in that building in Tempe and they don’t have a sufficient amount of resources to keep it running, then maybe I would say to move it or open up a second branch,” Walker said. “But if there’s nothing broken then what are you fixing?”
The move means leaving behind the current law school facilities, which include Armstrong Hall and the John J. Ross-William C. Blakley Law Library.
The future of the current location of the College of Law is not certain, Sylvester said in a written statement.
“The plans for the current law school and library are not final,” Sylvester said in the statement. “But there will be a plan for them to be occupied by other academic units and library resources.”
Contact the reporter at travis.arbon@asu.edu
