The 12,700-square-foot Center, which opened in August, boasts a 163-seat auditorium, 10 faculty and staff offices, two classrooms, and two conference rooms. This month the Center will host a national conference featuring speaker Judge Randall R. Rader, chief justice of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
We have not had a national conference here in six years. Those days are over, says Broderick, explaining the school already has plans to host more national conferences next year, and is in discussions about an international conference underwritten by alumni. State-of-the-art technology, such as high definition videoconferencing, makes these conferences possible. We can hold conferences that can be beamed around the globe. We didn't have that capacity before, says Broderick.
The intellectual property program has long been on the national, and even international, map. Just this year, U.S. News & World Report ranked UNH School of Law fourth nationally for intellectual property, behind only University of California-Berkeley, Stanford University and George Washington University-and ahead of such luminaries as Harvard Law. While Harvard Law may be better known outside of legal circles in the U.S., the UNH School of Law has developed a prestigious reputation internationally. As former trustee Young-Wook Ha told Broderick, In South Korea, you are Harvard Law School. The Franklin Pierce Center for Intellectual Property will help the School of Law expand its reach into the global marketplace.
Broderick wants to put the School of Law on the map in NH, too. We've always been important overseas. I want to increase our impact at home, Broderick says. I want [the school] to be as well known in Nashua as we are in Beijing.
As such, the UNH School of Law is reaching out to the business community more and exploring the possibility of developing executive education courses for certificate and degree programs. Broderick says he hopes to hold workshops for NH business executives about legal issues relevant to their work.
While the Franklin Pierce Center for Intellectual Property is a jewel in the UNH School of Law's crown, only about a third of students attend the school for that program. That's why Broderick says the school must continue to deliver a quality education to the other two-thirds of its students, and remain committed to educating all students to be client ready.
The recent appointment of Mary Wong as director of the Franklin Pierce Center for International Law allows Broderick to focus on that bigger picture, he says, even as the intellectual property program evolves.
That includes guiding the affiliation with UNH, which could culminate in a full merger. Now the Law School is financially independent of UNH and receives no taxpayer funding. The affiliation does add a law school to UNH's educational offerings and allows the law school to provide interdisciplinary education opportunities. It offers a dual law and business degree, and plans to announce a dual master's degree in law and social work later this year. The latter focuses on what Broderick sees as the School of Law's other strengths: social justice and public service.
Another feather in the law school's cap is Broderick himself. He succeeds Dean Emeritus John D. Hutson, who successfully led the law school for 11 years before retiring in January. Having served as chief justice on the NH Supreme Court for six years and associate justice for nine years, Broderick is more than your typical public servant. While on the NH Supreme Court, he spearheaded reforms to make the justice system more accessible for NH's citizens, regardless of income. Broderick is enthusiastic about his new endeavor. I'm intent upon improving the product we provide, making the education more interdisciplinary and instructing people for the jobs that not only exist, but are likely to exist, he says.
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