Rutgers' Camden, Newark law schools will have new, merged look in the fall

New Jersey had three law schools last month.

Now it has two.

Rutgers University learned July 31 that the American Bar Association had signed off on merging the university's two law schools, completing a years-long process of creating a unified school. The merger took effect immediately.

Born of the Camden law school formed in 1926 and the Newark law school formed in 1908, Rutgers Law School is now one of the largest in the nation, school officials say, with about 120 faculty members and 1,100 students.

The new entity retains the same faculty, students, alumni, and campuses.

"We are a massive legal institution now. So just in the footprint, the profile that Rutgers Law has now is larger . . . and it should be higher nationally," said John Oberdiek, the Camden-based co-dean of the law school. "And our hope is, with increased recognition of that sort, the reputation will follow, and it will give the law school and its graduates more national reach."

New Jersey's other law school, also in Newark, is part of Seton Hall University, a private Catholic school.

Rutgers has been negotiating the details of the merger since even before it was publicly proposed in 2013. Now that it has final approval, the university will try to shepherd the real world unification of identities, cultures, traditions - a process that will take time.

"The merger is not quite an on/off switch process; there are things that we'll continue to have to do to make the two communities integrated," said Ronald K. Chen, the Newark-based co-dean of the law school.

Rutgers will keep the Camden and Newark campuses at about the same sizes, and students will spend their first year entirely on one campus. Current faculty members will be based out of their existing offices, and new faculty will decide which campus to call home.

Yet being one law school will allow for greater cross-campus collaboration, school officials said.

Last school year, each campus installed an immersive digital classroom, nicknamed the "holodeck," which essentially sets up the rooms as two halves of a whole. One wall is filled with screens, and, thanks to cameras and microphones, professors can address students in what appears to be one large classroom.

Other rooms have more traditional videoconferencing setups, and the co-deans themselves often video chat.

"Technology these days is making the 80 miles between us exceedingly less relevant," Chen said.

Rutgers has combined its admission process; students applying for fall 2016 will apply to the unified school.

Students returning this fall will unlikely feel any difference, the deans said. But they might notice new names - professors and courses they hadn't had access to before.

The "holodeck" is slated to be used for six courses this fall.

Clusters of professors with research specialties and interests can now interact more readily, said Reid Kress Weisbord, law school vice dean and professor in Newark who oversees academics. He noted that hammering out merger details had led to new friendships.

"If you spend weeks talking on the phone on meetings and in our immersive learning facility, you start to get to know your colleagues and to interact with people differently," he said. "Over time, we're going to start to develop a more unified culture."

One example is the new Rutgers Center for Corporate Law and Governance, led by Camden-based professor Arthur Laby and Newark-based professor Douglas Eakeley. It will help students demonstrate a specialization in corporate law. Several conferences are planned this year.

Had the two schools remained separate, Laby said, he and Eakeley might have developed two separate programs, competing to invite the same speakers for similar workshops and conferences.

Laby said he's already heard some interest from other faculty members, with the corporate law center perhaps becoming a test case for future cross-campus programs.

"We just think it didn't make a lot of sense, at least in this modern day and age, to have two law schools under the same university, at times being perceived as competing with each other," Chen said. "It is John Oberdiek's and my mission to make sure this merger occurs in fact, as well as in name.

"I think I see it happening as I speak."