University of Virginia Library

Law School Must Develop
'Interaction', Says Dean

By Chuck Woody
Cavalier Daily Staff Writer

Monrad G. Paulsen is a big man
with a ruddy complexion and blond
hair. He has been the dean of the
law school for three months and
has some solid ideas about where
the school is going.

Pacing his office, he explained
that changes in the law school have
to be a result of interaction among
the dean's office, the students and
the faculty. "We have a course on
law and poverty this year to look at
the various areas of law regarding
the poor," he said describing
curriculum changes. "We have also
engaged someone to improve our
relations with legal aid."

Mr. Paulsen is the first dean of
the law school not to have studied
at the University. He was visiting
American professor at the Institute
for Advanced Legal Studies at the
University of London in 1966 while
on leave as a professor of law at

Columbia.

"The differences are small
between Virginia and Columbia,"
he said. "There are more
social-activists in the student body
at Columbia than here. This is good
or bad, depending on what they do.
Certainly it is healthy to have an
interest in the society you live in."
He said the classroom discussion
proved Virginia students to be
equal if not superior to the students
at Columbia.

"More and more excellent
students are going to law school,"
he said. "Students want to
participate in society. We live in a
day with interest in political
activity. A lawyer's career enables
someone to have an economic base
as well as be in politics. A graduate
of law school has a great many
choices about what to do -
government, business, teaching,
community work - there are many
doors to knock on and to be
opened through law."

Mr. Paulsen said he was against
any joint program for fourth-year
men in the undergraduate College
to take courses in the law school.
"Generally the whole profession is
moving to require a bachelor's
degree for admission. Relatively
few schools have a program where
undergraduates can take classes in
the law school, although some
schools have a six-year program,"
he said. "We would end up with a
special program for Virginia
students only. The American Bar
Association is pressing hard to
require degrees before admission to
law school," he added.

Mr. Paulsen thought there
should be close co-operation
between the law school and the
departments of the University, "but
I am not persuaded that the way to
do this is by having fourth-year
men come in as first-year law
students."

The draft is creating some
problems with the school, he
commented. "We lost 20 per cent
of last year's second-year class to
the draft," Mr. Paulsen said. "But
not all the students were drafted.
Many of them took commissions or
took steps themselves to meet their
military commitments."

The dean is against granting
draft deferments to law students
similar to deferments for students
other professional schools like
medicine and dentistry.

"It would be extraordinary to
make a case for law students to be
exempt from the draft. Hundreds
of young men would be choosing
law just to stay out of the draft,"
he explained. "An exemption
would be intolerable."