Some leaders hope for new law school at IU Northwest

Since the Valparaiso Law School closed five years ago, northwestern Indiana has felt the pinch of a growing lawyer shortage more severely.

That’s why state Rep. Earl Harris Jr., D-East Chicago, would like for lawmakers to explore establishing a new law school in his corner of the state, possibly at Indiana University Northwest in Gary.

“The reality is, we need lawyers in our system, and it’s not just in terms of being in court,” Harris said. “There are agencies, businesses, nonprofits, individuals as a whole, that need lawyers just to help out with and take care of legal issues.”

Harris’ idea hasn’t gained any traction at the Indiana General Assembly this year. A bill he sponsored to create a study commission on the issue died after it was assigned to the House Rules and Legislative Procedure Committee, a frequent burial ground for legislative proposals.

Committee chair Rep. Ben Smaltz, R-Auburn, did not respond to The Indiana Lawyer’s requests for comment on why the bill didn’t receive a hearing. But some in the legal community speculated it was due to the potential cost of a new law school at a time when the state is dealing with growing Medicaid costs.

No one has yet put a price tag on a potential new law school, but lawyers in the region said the cost still doesn’t diminish the need for new lawyers in an area that is struggling to find them.

For that reason, Harris said he will continue to pursue the idea.

“Not everything we file every year is going to be a priority or get a lot of attention. So I understand that process,” Harris said. “I understand the reality of the long game. … It’s a long-term thing for me to continue to move down this process.”

Valparaiso’s impact

Law firms and county prosecutors in northwest Indiana leaned heavily on the Valparaiso Law School for interns and new hires.

Nearly half of the school’s graduates stayed in Indiana and were an easier lure than Notre Dame Law School students, who are just an hour away in South Bend but tend to heavily gravitate to job opportunities out of state.

Indiana State Bar Association President Michael Jasaitis earned his J.D. from Valparaiso Law School in 2000.

“I can speak on behalf of many of my colleagues in Lake and Porter counties in that there is difficulty in getting those law clerks, finding those young lawyers to come into the Northwest,” said Jasaitis, a partner at law firm Austgen Kuiper Kasaitis P.C. in Crown Point.

He said the idea of studying the possibility of a new law school in the region is a sound one.

Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter said hiring law students also has been a struggle for him.

He said that when the Valpo law school was operating the prosecutor’s office would hire about 10 law clerks but now it struggles to recruit just one. Students attending law school at IU McKinney in Indianapolis or IU Maurer in Bloomington often aren’t interested in moving north, he said.

“The clerking of law students is the ability to get them, train them, and get them to like and enjoy the work that we do,” Carter said. “And if we hire 10 law clerks, you might get eight of them to be full-time lawyers once they pass the bar, and you can’t replace that leadership. Can’t replace that type of recruitment or that type of training to get them ready for the practice of law.”

Carter said he has been advocating for a new law school in northwest Indiana since Valparaiso Law School closed. He said IU Northwest would be a good location because it is already a jewel for Lake County.

“I think we are deserving of it, and it’d be a good thing for the entire state of Indiana, not just northwest Indiana,” Carter said.

The challenges

The Indiana University president’s office in Bloomington did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Th IU Northwest chancellor’s office in Gary declined to comment.

But even if they were on board with Harris’ idea, they likely would have to struggle with the same things that led the Valparaiso Law School to close: dwindling enrollment and its associated financial challenges.

Valparaiso Law School’s enrollment numbers steadily declined from 2011 to 2018, according to ABA Standard 509 reports filed by the school. In 2011, the school had 541 full-time students. By 2018 — the last year 509 data is available for the school — that number was 103.

Indiana Court of Appeals Judge Nancy Vaidik, co-chair of a commission assigned to address Indiana’s lawyer shortage, said establishing a new law school was something the commission initially talked about last year. But the panel found it to be too complex to pursue in the short term and decided to focus their attention on quicker solutions.

“We thought it’s too much of an ask for the legislature this time around because it would be a big price tag,” Vaidik said.

But she said that the facility cost would just be the “tip of the iceberg.” She said a new law school would need to comply with American Bar Association accreditation and that would involve the hiring of tenured faculty, which could become costly.

But Vaidik still sees it as a missing ingredient.

“We need a law school, no doubt about it, in the north,” she said.•