Hot on the trail of the Dean’s Scholars Initiative
Fordham Law School is in the middle of a campaign, but not the presidential kind. The School has been raising money for the Dean’s Scholars Initiative since 2014, and it is making great progress in its goal to increase scholarship offerings and remain competitive with its peers.
Over 3,000 donors have contributed over $12 million to the fundraising campaign, but these impressive figures don’t compose a full narrative.
Here are some alumni and friends who do tell the story.
Giving Back What Was Withheld
As a first-generation undergrad at a prominent state school, Sandra L. Gonzalez ’96 found herself short $800 for tuition one semester.
She explained her situation to the financial aid office several times, even shedding a few tears. In the end, however, the college dropped her classes, and the dean’s list student had to put off graduation for a year. Only later did Gonzalez learn that the school had scholarship money for minority students like herself all along. “Now when the school calls asking for donations, I tell the poor soul on the other end to take my name off the calling list,” she says.
Gonzalez has no such reservations about giving to Fordham Law, a school she says helped her every step of the way, financially and otherwise. Along with a package of loans, grants, and scholarships, the School gave her a community of lifelong friends and an abiding love of the law.
“My professors motivated me to want to be the best student and the best lawyer I could be,” she says. She also credits the School’s reputation for springboarding a career that has led to her role as senior counsel at Goya Foods.
Gonzalez has happily given Fordham what she could for several years running, but this year marked the first time she’s pledged a set amount: $5,000 over five years to the Dean’s Scholars Initiative. She sees that amount as a minimum, as she’s confident that she can give more and says, “If Sandra’s doing better, then Fordham’s going to do better as well.”
The gift isn’t just gratitude, she says, but assurance that future students won’t have to repeat the setback she faced. “I wouldn’t want any student to miss a semester because they were a couple dollars short.”
Rules Meant to Be Broken
The first argument George Olsen ’85 won on his way to becoming a lawyer was the one he used to talk his way into Fordham Law. Applying to the School at age 35 (“It was one of those ‘now or never’ things,” he recalls), Olsen learned that his undergraduate grades from nearly 20 years before were a deal breaker. “I played football,” he says of those days. “It wasn’t like I was trying to get a 3.5 GPA.”
Olsen wrote a letter to the head of admissions, William J. Moore, explaining how he’d gone on to distinguish himself as an infantry platoon and company commander in Vietnam, earn a master’s degree in urban studies, and make his mark in the field of urban development. The case he presented won over Moore, who agreed to let him into the evening program to start. Olsen earned entry to the day program a year later, relying on an interest-free loan from the Law School to finish his degree.
“Fordham bent their rules a little for me,” says Olsen, who’s brought his career in real estate law to bear as co-founder and managing principal of the New York City Regional Center, which finances job-creating development projects. “Not only did the School give me a shot, but it lent me money to do it.”
Now Olsen wants to give a shot to future students, with $150,000 that he has given toward an endowed scholarship. He’s specifically earmarked the gift toward increasing the socioeconomic and racial diversity of the student body. “Some of these students may be the first in their families to go to college, like me,” he says. “Let’s see if we can get more of them in here.”
Loosening Up about the Law
Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy ’58 of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York taught Blakely Stinebaugh ’91 an invaluable lesson when she clerked for him the summer after her first year at Fordham Law: “He taught me to relax about the law,” she says.
That was the advice she needed to hear after an intense four years as an undergrad at Harvard, whose law school she found too theoretical. “I really wanted to know the law and pass the bar,” she says. “Fordham was the place to do that, and it made learning the law comfortable.”
Comfortable, but no less challenging. Still finding her way after her first year, Stinebaugh didn’t even think she deserved the clerkship when Fordham helped arrange it for her. But she found Duffy to be a supportive mentor, always asking her opinion on cases and explaining his rulings. She says Duffy and her Fordham professors inspired her to push herself and try areas of the law she’d never considered.
“I didn’t think I was good at international law, but I got on the Fordham International Law Journal because of the confidence my professors and Judge Duffy gave me,” she says. In a similar vein, an Accounting for Lawyers course she wouldn’t have otherwise tried went so well for her that she pursued a career in corporate law.
Stinebaugh says the example of fellow students and their diverse backgrounds encouraged her as well. “Some were parents with full-time jobs,” she says. “They had so much on the side that I had nothing to complain about.” Her admiration for this varied community inspired her gift of $20,000 to Fordham’s immediate impact scholarship fund.
“Fordham’s good at figuring out who needs this money most to help them graduate, hopefully without too much debt.”
Going Farther without the Ride
As a cum laude graduate of New York University with paralegal experience under his belt, Mauricio España ’03 had little trouble snagging enough scholarships and grants to attend other law schools for free. But those law schools weren’t Fordham, where he’d set his sights. For him, taking on student loan debt beat a full ride any day if it meant attending a place that “opens doors.”
“It was clear to me that if I wanted to practice law in New York, I had to go to Fordham,” he says.
The decision paid off. As a partner at New York’s Dechert LLP, España gets to focus on his passion for complex commercial litigation and white-collar and securities litigation. Taking to heart Fordham’s mission of service to others, he also makes time for pro bono work and keeps active in LatinoJustice PRLDEF and the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest’s Pro Bono Advisory Council.
España has shown his gratitude to Fordham by giving his time to the School’s Minority Mentorship Program and his money to its fundraising campaigns. With a recent contribution, he earmarked half to the Urban Law Center, which has pursued the kind of minority-focused efforts he can get behind. He gave the other half to the Law Annual Fund, which goes toward various areas of the School on an as-needed basis. España says he has learned to trust how Fordham handles such money ever since the School’s Financial Aid Office navigated him through the student loan process.
“Whether it’s hiring professors or fixing buildings or funding scholarships to bring in the right students, I know Fordham will spend the money to create a better school.”
The Same Team
Soon after his first year at Fordham Law, Eric Grossman ’93 sat down with Brad Butwin ’85 for an on-campus interview for a summer position with Butwin’s firm at the time, Davis Polk & Wardwell. They wound up spending much of their allotted 40 minutes talking about the Mets. Butwin had found more than just a stellar new intern and eventual partner for the firm; he’d found a lifelong friend. “I saw this bright, charismatic, high-integrity student whom I just trusted immediately,” recalls Butwin. “He was already a tremendous example of what the School produces. We had a bond from that time on.”
Grossman remembers the meeting the same way. “I liked how he was a regular guy like me,” he says. “Ever since that interview it’s been a mutual appreciation and love affair.”
Twenty years in, Butwin and Grossman haven’t just worked together and socialized together; they’ve given together as well. As Butwin has risen to chair of O’Melveny & Myers LLP and Grossman has become chief legal officer at Morgan Stanley, they have both made regular gifts to Fordham, culminating in separate endowed scholarships that they established a few months apart from each other. Along the way they’ve given the School their time as well, in efforts such as Fordham Law’s Financial Aid Committee (Butwin chairs the Dean’s Scholars Initiative). They’ve also partnered at other charitable organizations: Grossman co-chaired the Anti-Defamation League’s Human Relations Award Luncheon that honored Butwin, while Butwin regularly co-chairs a gala to benefit Advocates for Children of New York, where Grossman is president of the board of directors.
Butwin says giving is even more infectious when you do it alongside a friend, especially when that friend shares a connection in Fordham. “We came out of that same great learning environment Fordham cultivates, where everyone’s on the same team.”
Rising to the Challenge
Why would three attorneys who don’t do the same type of law or even work in the same office team up to fund a scholarship together? Because they all went to Fordham Law.
When Dean Matthew Diller announced the Firm Challenge to encourage office-wide fundraising for his Dean’s Scholars Initiative, Dechert LLP lawyers Cathy Botticelli ’88; Doug Getter ’84, and Gary Mennitt ’90 rose to the task. Getter heads up Dechert’s London corporate team and the firm’s U.S. practice in Europe; Botticelli is a securities litigator in the Washington, D.C., office; and Mennitt co-chairs the complex commercial litigation group from New York. While they have little everyday contact and didn’t even attend law school at quite the same time, their feelings for Fordham are mutual. Their collective affection for their alma mater compelled them to jointly pledge more than $100,000 over five years to create the Dechert Fordham Law Alumni Endowed Scholarship. “We all have great memories of our time at Fordham Law and felt that this was a good opportunity to do something meaningful,” says Botticelli.
The trio shares the same philosophy of scholarships: By aiding the student, you aid the whole school. “Providing talented students with scholarships helps Fordham move to even the next level,” says Getter.
All three have given to Fordham in the past, but this gift is their most significant. Mennitt says that without the inspiration to band together and share the load, they may not have given so much. “This is an important initiative for a great program that really inspires alumni to help where we can,” he says.
Even before the trio created a scholarship in the firm’s name, Dechert already had a special relationship with Fordham—it employs more than 20 Fordham Law graduates. “Many of our most talented and successful young lawyers are Fordham graduates,” says Botticelli, a member of the firm’s executive committee and also deputy chair for talent. “That relationship will only keep getting stronger.”
