In recent, and very exciting news for Northwestern University School of Law, alumnus J.B. Pritzker and his wife, M.K. Pritzker, have made a $100 million gift to the 156 year old school. The law school will change its name to the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, as this is the single largest gift ever made to any law school.
Certainly, this will have an impact on everyone at for Northwestern University School of Law, from the students to the adjunct professors like Geoff Richards and the senior lecturers like Herbert N. Beller.
The announcement about the gift was made at the Law School on October 22, 2015 by Northwestern President Morton Schapiro and Law School Dean Daniel B. Rodriguez. The gift will support several social justice centers at the Law School including the Center on Wrongful Convictions, the Children and Family Justice Center, the Center on International Human Rights and the Environmental Law Center. The gift will also permanently endow and rename the Law School’s Entrepreneurship Law Center as the Donald Pritzker Entrepreneurial Law Center.
As Dean Rodriguez said, “Our increasingly complex and dynamic world demands lawyers who are trained to tackle difficult legal and policy problems and to work imaginatively at the interface of law, business and technology. This extraordinary gift will help provide the financial foundation for this law school to produce a new breed of highly skilled, adaptive lawyers—creative, constructive problem-solvers armed with multidisciplinary skills and resolutely committed to social justice and the rule of law.”
The Pritzker gift will have a long-standing impact on everyone at Northwestern, including faculty and adjunct faculty, from Ronald J. Allen and Karen Alter to Geoff Richards and Robert P. Burns. As President Schapiro said, “J.B. and M.K. are such good friends of the University, and their extraordinary commitment will allow a bold future for an already great law school.”