BATON ROUGE–A search committee Thursday selected three finalists to become the next chancellor of the Louisiana State University Paul M. Hebert Law Center.
Meeting in Baton Rouge, committee members voted to nominate Eric Chiapinelli, law professor and associate dean for alumni and professional relations at the Seattle University School of Law; Michael Krauss, law professor at the George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Va.; and Jack Weiss, a partner in the New York law firm of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher. The three were the only candidates among six semifinalists to draw votes from committee members.
“All three finalists are quite qualified to be chancellor of the law school and the board is going to have a tough decision to make,” said U.S. District Court Judge Tom Stagg, chairman of the search committee composed of law school faculty and students as well as two federal judges, an associate justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court, and a number of the state’s leading attorneys.
The recommendations will be sent to LSU System President Dr. William L. Jenkins and the LSU Board of Supervisors, which will make the final decision.
“I am very pleased with the quality of the candidate pool,” said Jenkins, who thanked the law school faculty and search committee for their efforts. “I look forward to further interviews with the finalists in the near future.”
Three other semifinalists considered for the post included Michael Malloy, of the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, Calif.; J. Richard Hurt, law professor at Barry University Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law in Orlando, Fla.; and Daniel Morrissey, law professor at Gonzaga University School of Law in Spokane, Wash.
In earlier interviews with the search committee, Chiapinelli said the LSU law school should be at the center of global legal education because of its twin programs in civil and common law. Krauss, who described himself as an “extremely demanding teacher,” said he would work to get LSU into the top tier of U.S. law schools. Weiss, a noted First Amendment authority, pledged to make the “tough decisions” in building the “law faculty of the future” at the state’s flagship law center.
Named in honor of the late Paul M. Hebert, dean of the school for 40 years, the LSU Law Center is Louisiana’s leading law school with 39 fulltime faculty, 578 Juris Doctorate, and 10 students in the school’s Master of Laws program.
For further information on the selection committee, contact Dr. Charles Zewe, LSU System Vice President for Communications and External Affairs, 225-578-3941 (czewe@lsu.edu).
