Law School Building

Stanford Law School has never had a law school building. At various times in its seventy-five years of operation, the School has occupied and outgrown quarters on the Inner Quad, in the engineering building, in Encina Hall, and even in the Chapel. Since 1949 the School has occupied its current quarters.

In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that there is no feasible alternative to constructing a new Law School building. The present law library has already run out of shelf and stack space for its growing collection of law books. There is not enough chair space in the present library facility to seat the law students who need to work there. Law faculty office space is exhausted. The work of the student-run educational programs is hampered by lack of operating space. The School’s clerical and administrative services are doubled up in basement space. The School’s presently acute space problems will soon become unmanageable.

In 1964, the University’s Board of Trustees called for an overall Law School educational and physical plan. A year of work by the law faculty produced a detailed Law School program projecting a law student body of 500 and a law faculty of 35. Over the next two years, the faculty’s program was translated into a building design through the joint work of an experienced law faculty committee, a cooperating law student committee, the University’s Planning Office, an alumni committee drawn from the Law School’s Board of Visitors, a committee of alumni members of the federal and state judiciary, a consultative group of law deans, the Building and Grounds Committee of the Board of Trustees, and the San Francisco office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, architects. The state and schematic drawings were approved by the University Trustees in 1967. If the necessary financing can be found, construction will begin in late 1969, with completion planned for 1971.

The present Law School facility will be turned over to the School of Humanities and Sciences to meet a portion of its severe needs for space.

The new Law School building is not a single structure, but four separate buildings linked together into a working whole. Each of the four parts-library/office building, classroom building, connecting gallery and auditorium-is designed to perform a distinct educational function. The four architectural elements are then tied together to provide a smooth and natural traffic flow and a physical environment conducive to the variety of work that characterizes a modern law school. Though architecturally innovative, the building’s design fits harmoniously into the architectural environment of the Stanford campus.

The building project will cost approximately $9,000,000, of which the University presently has about $2,000,000 from the PACE effort. An additional, as yet uncertain, amount may come from the federal government under the Higher Education Facilities Act.