Emory Law's Top Five - An Overview at the Start of 2025
Emory Law has established new priorities focused on the theme “True North” - the law school’s direction in our drive toward: our mission. That mission, as we have said consistently, is to educate and train principled, sophisticated legal professionals, people who can flourish in the practice of law and who can lead their legal and broader communities anywhere.
1) Student Flourishing
We are proud of our students and are committed to “student flourishing.” What does that mean? The goal is to unleash student potential and provide access to the education, skills (including soft skills), mentoring, networking, and experience to allow students to enter the profession with confidence and to thrive. The faculty has adopted an integrated plan of related initiatives, parts of which have been implemented. We are taking steps to:
- Raise our bar exam passage and job placement rates to exceptional levels
- Cultivate a professional student culture by emphasizing professional expectations while providing the skills training to support those expectations
- Coordinate mentorship opportunities for students - a pipeline of support
- Increase outreach to undergraduate institutions and candidates, particularly at HBCUs and Emory College
- Build on our strong legal writing program to expand writing opportunities for upper-level students
- Integrate all student-facing departments at a new level to provide an unparalleled, seamless program of professional development
2) Academic Eminence
We are proud of our faculty and its teaching, scholarship, and service. Metrics reflect the reality that Emory Law is a Feast of Words Celebration; at a university event recognizing all books written by the faculty of Emory University in 2024, the School of Law produced nearly 10 percent of those works—prodigious for our size. We are building a collaborative team in various ways, including:
- Expanding fora for sharing a wide range of scholarly projects
- Engaging our students, new technologies, and new fora to increase our scholarly productivity and impact
- Increasing recognition internally and externally for faculty accomplishments
- Increasing faculty membership in prestigious organizations (e.g., ALI)
- Studying strategic opportunities in AI/Legal Tech (and next year in Health Law)
- Hiring two senior lateral tenure-track colleagues this year
3) Centers, Clinics, and Programs
Emory Law is home to remarkable clinics, centers, and programs. They help make our students practice-ready and bolster academic eminence. Moreover, they reflect the institution’s sense of commitment to service of clients and communities. This year, we will:
- Bring consistency to our use of the terms clinic, center, and program
- Consider new ideas that serve our core mission and align with fiscal accountability
- Launch the William and Jane Carney Center for Business and Transactional Law (ribbon cutting and inaugural lecture is April 3), which will provide support for scholarship and teaching and further leverage our presence in a world business hub
4) Fiscal Accountability
We must end deficit spending and pursue a sound business plan. We will do so as a team, bringing to bear:
- The financial package to which the Provost and Dean Freer agreed, which includes debt forgiveness and university subvention, but which is tied to the law school’s satisfying metrics in support of our core mission
- Budgetary savings, consistent with our mission
- Expanded revenue-generating initiatives, including graduate programs
- Continued philanthropic investment, which has been so remarkable, and which builds confidence in our ongoing journey toward True North
5) Organizational Culture
We are proud of our staff - their dedication and critical support of our mission. Emory Law is a wonderful place to work, to grow, to excel - to invest a career. To that end, we will strive to build on Team Emory Law, including:
- Fostering an environment and organizational culture in which staff members flourish
- Improving organizational systems and structures to support our mission, staff, faculty, and students