After four years as dean of Willamette University’s College of Law, Brian Gallini is leaving for a job as the law school dean at Quinnipiac University, a private university in Hamden, Connecticut.
He will start in his new role on July 1.
Willamette plans to appoint a temporary successor and has not begun searching for a new dean of the law school, according to university spokeswoman Lauren Mulligan.
The law school was founded in 1883 and has about 330 students.
While serving as dean, Gallini successfully pushed for a new way for prospective attorneys to get licensed through work experience instead of the bar exam.
He said he will most fondly remember “the people” of Willamette.
“A lot of places might talk it. We walk it. I love our students, I love our staff, I love our faculty. It’s not cliche, it’s not rhetoric, it’s true,” he said. “This is just a really special place because of the people.”
Gallini graduated from College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and earned his law degree at the University of Michigan.
He served as a judicial law clerk for a justice in the state Supreme Court of Maine before practicing white collar criminal defense for a large law firm in Washington, D.C. He then returned to Michigan to clerk for a judge in the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Gallini taught law at Temple University in Philadelphia while coaching hockey at the University of Pennsylvania. He went on to work various leadership jobs over 12 years at the University of Arkansas, including as an associate dean, while coaching hockey much of that time, according to Willamette University’s website.
After moving to Salem with his wife and two sons at the peak of the pandemic, Gallini and his family were stuck in the house for the first 18 months. That made it hard to get to know the area and the people he was leading.
Still, Gallini knew how to run a law school. “To make the move in this deeply uncertain time, I found that stabilizing, and it helped me at least get my feet under me,” he said.
Willamette’s law school has a faculty of around 30 people. 10 of whom have been hired under Gallini’s tenure.
“We’ve had really wonderful faculty regrowth,” he said. “Not to say we didn’t have a strong group to begin with, but the hires we brought in are just phenomenal.”
Gallini also said only 38% of students at the law school are from Oregon. The incoming class in fall 2020 was 50% from in-state.
“The idea that we’re increasingly a national law school, and we see that in our student numbers, is something that I’m proud of,” he said.
He said he is also proud that Willamette has been at the forefront of conversations about reforming how attorneys can get licensed.
Gallini served on a state bar task force which developed two proposed alternatives for licensure without taking the bar exam.
He told Salem Reporter in 2022 that law schools have previously been incentivized to teach students how to pass the bar exam, with less of a focus on practical skills attorneys use in their day-to-day work. He said the committee that recommended the alternative path have never opposed the bar exam, in part because the new pathway will only allow licensure in Oregon.
Now, prospective lawyers no longer need to pass the bar exam to become licensed in Oregon. The state Supreme Court in November unanimously approved an alternative pathway where law school graduates to submit a portfolio of their work practicing law for an independent evaluation.
Gallini pushed for that change for years.
“That reform conversation is a wave that still has not crested. We’ve got our neighbors to the north in Washington, to the south in California, all exploring their own pathways to differential licensure,” he said. “We’ve got states on the East Coast and the Midwest. This is a lively conversation.”
Gallini said that Quinnipiac, like Willamette, has leaned into learning through experience.
“That’s right down the bullseye of what energizes me as a leader and is in line with my philosophy on legal education,” he said.
He said he took the new position in part to move closer to family on the East Coast.
Gallini said he was thrilled when he got the job. Within moments, though, he said he felt conflicted emotions.
“I do have a lot of love for this institution, and so it’s an interesting thing to reflect on,” he said. “I feel grateful at the end of the day to both have a deep affection for my current institution and to also have the privilege of looking forward to leading a place that I’m excited about.”
Contact reporter Ardeshir Tabrizian: [email protected] or 503-929-3053.
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Ardeshir Tabrizian has covered criminal justice and housing for Salem Reporter since September 2021. As an Oregon native, his award-winning watchdog journalism has traversed the state. He has done reporting for The Oregonian, Eugene Weekly and Malheur Enterprise.
