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University Law Dean Mahoney to step down next year, continue professorship, research

President Sullivan creates search committee for new dean

<p>Mahoney will return to teaching contracts, quantitative methods, and law &amp; finance, as well as continue with his scholarship.</p>

Mahoney will return to teaching contracts, quantitative methods, and law & finance, as well as continue with his scholarship.

University Law Dean Paul G. Mahoney announced Monday his plans to step down June 30, 2016. In his eight years as dean, Mahoney added 26 professors to the faculty, launched a curricular program and fundraised successfully.

Under Mahoney’s tenure, the Law School created a number of programs designed to better prepare students to ensure future success. Mahoney played an important role in shaping these curricular innovations.

“During my time as dean, we launched the Program in Law and Public Service, a curricular program designed to help prepare students to practice in public interest organizations or the public sector,” Mahoney said. “We also expanded the John W. Glynn Jr. Law & Business Program, which integrates business and legal analysis to better prepare students to become leading business practitioners.”

In addition to educational needs of students, Mahoney and his administration focused on student financial needs, and the U.S. News & World Report recently recognized the Law School for its administrative efficiency.

“I am proud of the fact that we responded quickly to the great recession by focusing intensely on student needs,” Mahoney said.

As part of the Law School’s response to difficult financial times, Mahoney said he and his colleagues expanded career services available to students by “adding more clinical and externship opportunities, and increasing funding for our public service loan forgiveness program and public service fellowships to help get students on their preferred career paths in a challenging economy.”

Despite the recession, the Law School exceeded its $150 million capital campaign goal in 2012 under Mahoney’s leadership. The contributions of Law School alumni surpassed the goal by $20 million and grew the endowment by 55 percent per student. Valued at $463 million in 2014, the Law School’s endowment is the fifth largest in the United States.

“We continued during the financial and economic downturn to emphasize alumni engagement and participation, which kept our participation rate in annual giving over 50 percent during each year of my deanship,” Mahoney said. “That is a considerably higher rate than at any of our peer law schools.”

One of Mahoney’s strengths as a dean was fundraising, Law Prof. John C. Jeffries, Jr., former dean of the Law School, said. University President Teresa Sullivan announced Jeffries as the chair of the search committee for the next Law School dean.

“Paul Mahoney has been a great leader, both of the Law School as an institution and of the Law School as a community,” Jeffries said. “An indispensable function of a dean in this day and age is to provide resources, and Dean Mahoney has excelled at raising money. He has also excelled in knowing how to spend it. Public service has flourished under his deanship, as has the Law School's commitment to providing better business education for lawyers.”

Mahoney will return to teaching contracts, quantitative methods and law and finance, including securities regulation, derivatives markets and their regulation and corporate finance. He will also continue with his scholarship, which includes the publication of his book, “Wasting a Crisis: Why Securities Regulation Fails,” this spring.

“I taught one course each year during my time as dean and will enjoy returning to a fuller teaching schedule,” Mahoney said. “My research also focuses on law and finance, but I’ve also written on law and economic development and hope to do more work in both areas.”

Sullivan has yet to announce the other members of the search committee who will join Jeffries in searching for a new dean. Jeffries said the committee should reach a decision regarding Mahoney’s successor early next spring.


“I hope my successor is devoted to the special culture of U.Va. Law and to providing the premier student experience in American legal education,” Mahoney said.

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