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• Author: Lansing, Ronald B.
• Position: Bill Williamson, Northwestern School of Law, Lewis & Clark College

BILL WILLIAMSON: THE HALCYON

BY RONALD B. LANSING(*)

Thirty-six years ago, Northwestern College of Law was a downtown Portland, unaccredited, evening law school taught by practicing attorneys and judges. It had been in operation for a half century; and prior to that, it was the University of Oregon Law School. Then in the early 1960s, the Supreme Court of Oregon urged the school to become accredited. To do that, a law school had to become part of a recognized liberal arts college, had to hire a full-time dean and full-time faculty, open a day division for students, erect law school buildings, ensure a strong financial foundation, and rig a few other seaworthy conditions imposed by the two accrediting institutions: the American Bar Association and the American Association of Law Schools.

To that end, in 1965, the downtown law school merged with Lewis and Clark College in its academe atop a hill overlooking the Willamette River. Next, George Neff Stevens, former dean of the University of Washington Law School, was hired as the dean. Stevens then amassed a full-time faculty of four (Jack Cairns, Paul Gerhardt, Ross Runkel, and this author) and a staff (Registrar Dorothy Cornelius, Librarian Virginia Hughes, and Secretary Doris McCroskey). Together with College President John Howard, that crew set sail toward accreditation and a distant national prominence. It was no easy embarkation. Like learning to swim, it began with getting wet, a dog paddle, a lot of water through the nose.

Beginning problems included internal dissension and external dissatisfaction.

Many on the college campus wondered at the wisdom of taking on board an endeavor that was sapping finances from other needs. On the other hand, accreditors did not see enough exertion toward needs. Torn between an effort that was labeled either too much or too little, there arose a rift that climaxed in the 1969 departure of Dean Stevens. That was soon followed by some of the full-time faculty going off to other law schools and by others making ready to return to the practice of law. A new dean, Hal Wren of Boston College, was hired, but he had to delay taking the helm until the end of the academic year. And so, in the summer of 1969, there was a period in which this author was the only academic survivor with plans to stay on deck of a floundering ship. It was, to be sure, an eddy in the flow of this school's long and otherwise steady drift.

Then, into that stillness, there blew a vigorous...