Page 5 - Briefcase Volume 36 Number 2

DEAN’S MESSAGE

There are many bright spots at the University of Houston Law Center highlighted
in this summer edition of Briefcase magazine — successful and supportive alumni;
outstanding faculty, past and present; award-winning programs and wide-ranging
community outreach. But none is brighter than the progress being made toward the
realization of a long-overdue Law Center building. With the support of the university
administration and financial backing of alumni and friends of the school, we are
more than half-way towards our goal of raising $10 million in seed money to show
legislators in January 2019 that we are serious about building a world-class facility for
the Law Center — and that the time is now.
We envision the new Law Center as an innovative, cross-disciplinary hub for
academic excellence, legal scholarship and community engagement. The cover story
will bring you up to date on plans for a five-story, state-of-the-art building to be
constructed beginning in 2021 just south of the current facility. It will include a “wish
list” of features compiled by focus groups of faculty, students, staff and alumni. Plans
call for an outdoor plaza and impressive entrance, a lobby with an information desk,
more areas for study and collaborating, flexible classrooms designed for greater
student-faculty interaction, space adaptable for use as a courtroom, and a high-tech
library on the top two floors with natural light and a downtown skyline view. After
studying and working in the time-worn, bunker-like existing facility — 54 percent of
which is underground and parts of which are prone to storm water intrusion — the
new facility will seem like a dream come true. I need your help getting us over the
finish line. Please consider making a donation to the cause.
Please take the time to sit back and read about what’s happening at your alma mater
and in the lives of former classmates, professors and colleagues. Let me know what you
think about where we are, and where we should be going. And, above all, get involved
as together we take the Law Center to a higher level in the future.

Sincerely,

Leonard M. Baynes
Dean and Professor of Law

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