September 2005 - #1. WOODBURY COLLEGE AT 30: LARRY MANDELL'S DREAM.

Vermont Bar Journal

2005.

September 2005 - #1.

WOODBURY COLLEGE AT 30: LARRY MANDELL'S DREAM

The Vermont Bar Journal #162, Summer, 2005, Volume 31, No. 2

WOODBURY COLLEGE AT 30: LARRY MANDELL'S DREAM

by Paul S. Gillies, Esq.

Larry Mandell did not find the practice of law very satisfying. After graduating from Boston College in 1974, he tried it for a year, working through his clerkship in a small firm in Northfield, Vermont, and then opening his own office. It was too lonely and too cerebral. "I'm more interested in relationships," he said in a recent interview.

One of his clients asked him to form a non-profit corporation called "Woodbury Associates." The corporation would be dedicated to training adults in early childhood education. Larry saw an opportunity and took it. He joined Robert Brower in the venture, and expanded the training to include courses in law. He closed his law office and the two of them went looking for space to rent and start-up funds. This was the spring of 1975.

In March they met Dan Holland, the director of Vermont's job training office, who helped them obtain $125,000 for their effort, as long as they started classes immediately. They rented a building at Vermont College, and classes began in May.

They had seventeen students the first year. This year there are about 150 students enrolled in Woodbury College. The college has just announced plans to offer a master's degree in mediation, adding to its existing bachelor's and associate's degrees, and certificates, in paralegal studies, prevention, and community development. Just thirty years later, Larry Mandell's dream has come true - more than he ever expected.

Finding His Place

His father was a baker, his mother a homemaker. They had three sons. The eldest became a lawyer, the youngest son a rabbi, and then there was the middle, Larry, who had no idea what to do when he graduated from college. He joined an advertising firm, but after two years found that uninspiring. He took a year abroad, and traveling around this country. Then, like his oldest brother, he went to law school. He chose Boston College.

The Waltham legal clinic triggered the first passion he felt for the law. There he found real people who needed help, for whom the law was a foreign country.

There he learned about how a little understanding of the system could make a real difference...