Page 183 - The First Fifty Years
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ENDURINGLY GREAT 177
Stephen Zamora brought together the computer and IP
programs as the Institute for Intellectual Property &
Information Law.128 IPIL’s leaders imagined into reality the
institute’s annual national conference and spring lecture.129
Each of these events, together with the efforts of all the boards
of the period, produced the lecture series and symposium
issues that provided the springboard for the Review’s ascent to
national prominence.
The “Leap” Boards. Few, if any, boards faced greater
challenges, or accomplished more, than those of HLR’s founding
decade. But certainly the “Leap” boards, i.e., those editors who
served during Decade 4 when the Review achieved its great leap
forward, came close. In addition to conceiving and conducting the
first Frankel Lectures,130 the early boards of the decade
engineered broad changes in the journal’s operations and
finances, which endure to the present day. For example, whereas
Cathy Herasimchuk’s Board 20 had come into office with the
publication a year behind schedule (because of the Evidence
Handbook’s first edition),131 the Leap boards put in place rigorous
procedures to monitor and maintain on-time performance by
their successors.132 Likewise, while Nancy Taylor Reed’s Board
14 had scurried to lift page proofs above a rising water line
during one of the new buildings’ early precipitation events,133
nothing in the history of American legal education compares with
the après le deluge pluck and courage of the late Leap boards
which encountered and overcame Tropical Storm Allison’s
soaking fury on June 9, 2001.134
Raymond T. Nimmer. Hired in 1975 during A.A. White’s
second term as dean,135 Raymond T. Nimmer embodied White’s
first-term determination that the College of Law should be a
place dedicated to excellence. Nimmer’s own scholarship,
including his six contributions to HOUS. L. REV., more than
amply fulfilled White’s founding vision. But White’s vision was
Nimmer’s also. Concerned as Associate Dean in 1981 that the
Review’s mission was unsustainable without stable financing, he
mandated that the students somehow conjure up private
financing136 and thus helped push HLR toward long-term
stability in funding. Presented as Acting Dean in 1994 with the
question of whether to green-light the Review’s initiative to
launch a potentially prestigious but dauntingly costly new
lecture series, Nimmer volunteered to go to the Frankel
Foundation and ultimately secured long-term underwriting.137
Again and again, he supported institutional advances, creating