BY ANDY KANENGISER


Daily Journal


OXFORD - The University of Mississippi is reviving a $50 million campaign to build a new law school on the Oxford campus.


Its success is predicted by provost Carolyn Ellis Staton, a law school professor. "People care a lot about the law school," she said. "We have wonderful law graduates.''


The campaign will be announced this fall, but a fund drive for a new law school has been discussed the past couple of years. The school is running out of space, and plans to modify the existing building are not workable. Ole Miss officials say they've decided to use the current law building for undergraduate classrooms after a new law school opens in summer 2010.


The campaign was delayed by Hurricane Katrina nearly a year ago because Ole Miss leaders felt it wasn't the time to ask for money, said associate dean Ron Rychlak.


The new campaign hopes to tap into about $40 million in private dollars and $10 million in public funds, Rychlak said. Officials won't say how much money has been raised thus far.


The new law school will create more library space and enable the school to meet needs of its growing clinical programs and two national centers, school leaders say.


And it will keep pace with building trends at competing law schools. The University of Memphis, for instance, is expanding its downtown law school, while Mississippi College in downtown Jackson borrowed $6 million to upgrade its classrooms, parking and administrative offices, and to build a student center at the Baptist-affiliated school on Griffith Street.


"It's definitely helped with recruiting," said MC law dean Jim Rosenblatt. The bulk of the construction was completed last August. Work will be done on the library next summer.


With 490 students, MC launched a fund drive in April to pay back the funds.


"A lot of law schools have seen new buildings in recent years," said law professor Karen Green, who has taught for 30 years at Ole Miss. "Every student wants to attend the very best. This will help us recruit students.''


Green said the new law school will be built on a site now occupied by the old Village married-students apartments adjacent to Fraternity Row and near Tad Smith Coliseum.


There's good reason for the current law school to be converted into classrooms for undergraduates.


Ole Miss in Oxford has grown from about 10,000 students to 14,000 over the past decade. "We have run out of classrooms and office space,'' Staton said.


Tim Hall, associate provost and law professor, said the campaign for the new 550-student facility is in its "silent phase" with fund-raising activities ongoing. Typically, campaigns aren't announced until a sizable funding is in hand. Ole Miss officials began discussing the campaign at a Mississippi Bar conference earlier this month.


U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., a 1967 Ole Miss law graduate, is among the supporters of the drive for a new law school. "It's one of the jewels we have," he said.


Lott said the campaign will be successful because Chancellor Robert Khayat has always exceeded his fund-raising goals. While $50 million price tag looks shocking to some, "I'd urge them to look at the track record of Robert Khayat,'' he said.


A former law professor, Khayat led a record-shattering $530 million Campaign for Ole Miss that boosted academic programs and facilities to give the school the momentum to land a Phi Beta Kappa chapter a few years ago.


The current Ole Miss law center opened in 1978 when Parham Williams was dean. But the facility has outlived its usefulness for law students and faculty. It now houses the National Center for Justice and the Rule of Law and the National Center for Remote Sensing and Space Law.


Said Rychlak: "The law school is bursting at the seams.''