FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 4, 2016
BATON ROUGE – LSU has named Thomas C. Galligan Jr., currently the president of Colby-Sawyer College, as the next dean of the LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center, effective July 1.
“We are pleased to bring Thomas Galligan back to LSU as the dean of the LSU Law Center,” LSU President F. King Alexander said. “We are seeing more opportunities for our law students than ever before with collaborations across campus, and we feel Tom is the right leader to continue to grow and further these opportunities.”
LSU initiated the Law Center dean’s search in August and narrowed down the candidate pool to two finalists, who visited campus for interviews and open forums with students, faculty and staff in January. Senior Vice Provost Jane Cassidy chaired the search committee.
“Thomas’s appointment heralds a new era for LSU’s Law Center,” Executive Vice President and Provost Richard Koubek said. “Tom is an accomplished scholar and leader. I am enthusiastic about the upward trajectory of the Law Center under his leadership.”
The Law Center dean provides administrative oversight for all aspects of academic life within the center, including strategic planning, fiscal management, personnel development, academic programs, research enterprises and student enrollment. The dean also has primary responsibilities for external initiatives that include community outreach and development. The dean will report to the executive vice president and provost and serve as the chief academic and administrative officer for the Law Center.
“I could not be more thrilled about becoming the next dean of the LSU Law Center. It’s an exciting opportunity, and I am very much looking forward to working with the extremely talented law school faculty, President Alexander, Provost Koubek and the many other deans, faculty, staff and students on campus,” Galligan said. “I began my teaching career at LSU and this feels like coming home. My family and I can’t wait to get to Baton Rouge.”
Prior to serving as the president of Colby-Sawyer College, Galligan served as dean and the Elvin E. Overton Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee College of Law, where he also taught torts and admiralty. He also taught at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at LSU, where he was named the Dr. Dale E. Bennett Professor of Law and was honored by the students as the Outstanding LSU Professor six times. He has served as a member and chair of the American Bar Association Accreditation Committee and is a frequent continuing legal education speaker on his areas of expertise. He holds an A.B. from Stanford University, a J.D. from the University of Puget Sound (now Seattle University) School of Law and a L.L. M. from the Columbia University Law School.
From its founding in 1906, the LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center has offered its students a legal education recognized for its high standards of academic excellence, an outstanding teaching and research facility, and integrated programs in Louisiana civil law and Anglo-American common law. All LSU Law graduates receive a Juris Doctor, and students may also earn the optional Graduate Diploma in Comparative Law in recognition of extensive, optional coursework in the civil law.
In 2012, the LSU Law Center received formal approval from the Louisiana Board of Regents and the LSU Board of Supervisors to establish an Energy Law Center, the first such center in Louisiana and one of a handful operating in law schools nationwide. The Law Center has 42 full-time faculty members. The Law Center is a successful path to practice with a 2014-15 bar pass rate for first time takers in Louisiana at 81 percent, 114 percent of the state’s bar passage rate; a graduation rate of 89 percent; and 94 percent of graduates from the class of 2014 were employed within 10 months of graduation.
For more information, visit https://law.lsu.edu/.
