Sep. 13, 2012
Frank H. Wu
See more on Frank H. WuUC Hastings College of the Law San Francisco Specialty: legal education
In the 2009 movie "Star Trek," Star Fleet Academy cadet James T. Kirk manages to succeed against an unwinnable test by reprogramming the computer to change the rules. Wu compares what he is doing at Hastings to what Kirk did against the Kobayashi Maru.
He's "rebooting" California's first law school, he said, because it had been operating with "a mind-set of legal education that doesn't work anymore."
Most impressively, he moved to slash the school's enrollment by 20 percent - at a time when many other law schools are trying keep enrollment up. Last year, 419 students began at Hastings; this year, the entering class is just 318 strong.
By fall 2014, when the cut is fully implemented, Hastings will bring in $9 million less in tuition per year.
He made the change because the collapsed economy of the past few years demonstrated there are too many lawyers chasing too few jobs.
"This is the right thing to do, not only for our students but also for society." Wu said in unveiling Hastings' new strategic plan in August 2011. "We should accept only the number of students that could have reasonable expectations about employment."
Although three other schools had announced enrollment cuts, Hastings was the first Top 50 school to do so.
"We are on the cusp of a sea change," Wu said. "My view is there is a profound restructuring of the entire legal marketplace coming."
That was not the only change he put in place. As laid out in the school's strategic plan and elsewhere, the college laid off, retired or reduced the hours of 27 of its 200 staff members, yet also hired new faculty.
Wu expanded the fundraising alumni office from one person to 13, which he hopes will offset lost tuition revenue.
Like many law schools, Hastings boosted its clinical, transactional, international and dispute-resolution offerings. It upgraded its technology by hiring a chief information officer and readying a cellphone-friendly website.
And the school will offer online courses to students in its just-launched Masters of Studies in Law program focused on health policy. The one-year program is the first offered by Hastings in conjunction with the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. The idea is not to turn doctors and nurses into lawyers but to give them enough legal knowledge to be good hospital administrators and the like.
"This is revolutionary," Wu said.
- DON J. DEBENEDICTIS
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