Fershee Has Promising Future at Creighton
The Creighton Law School class of 2022 is up and running and the whole endeavor is being led by a new dean.
Classes for the 1Ls began August 15, but the new dean has been on the job since the first of July. Joshua Fershee is called the school’s 11th, but, if you count the folks who kept the place running on and off for the last several years, Fershee is the 13th person to head the school, which has been operating since 1904.
When a pilot of a jet has a heart attack and the plane starts to veer off course, the person who takes over should be viewed as “captain” and not “acting pilot,” I believe. And so in the last dozen years Creighton was steered properly by a duo of “acting” or “interim” deans, but they got the job done!
By now, Omaha knows about Fershee; he has a rich background – including leading West Virginia through a successful accreditation by the ABA and time in Big Law firms and a stint at midwestern North Dakota Law. He should do great on the Hilltop!
Creighton, like many law schools, has shaved the size of its student population to take into consideration things such as the availability of jobs, salaries and the debt graduates face. Last year, the ABA-required disclosures showed Creighton with 117 1Ls (as compared with UNL’s 137). The graduating class was 90 (UNL 118).
Forty years earlier, in the wild days of law school expansion, Creighton graduated 165!
The faculty is now composed of 29 full-time professors, 11 of whom are women (including Fershee’s extremely competent and experienced wife). This is a far cry from when I joined the faculty in 1971 along with Pat Green and Irv Fasan: there was no female faculty member and very few female students.
Dean Fershee is an innovator. He has led new concentrations at his past schools and been rewarded with student acclaim for outstanding teaching. He will find it a major task to get the central administration of Creighton to loosen up with cash. His background in public relations should enable him to fashion a message which will fall on responsive ears and help Creighton Law achieve great things!
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