Lee Fisher is dean and Joseph C. Hostetler-Baker Hostetler chair in law at Cleveland State University College of Law. He is the former Ohio attorney general, lieutenant governor, director of the Ohio Department of Development, chair of the Ohio Third Frontier Commission, chair of the Ohio Organized Crime Commission, president/CEO of the Center for Families and Children, president/CEO of CEOs for Cities, state representative, state senator and chair of the Cuyahoga County state legislative delegation. In 2022, he was inducted in the Cleveland Magazine Business Hall of Fame for his decades of public and nonprofit sector leadership on local, regional and state economic growth and development.
This a bittersweet moment for me because this is my last column as Dean of Cleveland State University College of Law. I will be stepping down on June 30 to become the 10th president of Baldwin Wallace University. While I’m very excited about this rare opportunity to lead such an iconic university, I will always cherish my nine years serving CSU Law, an equally iconic law school.
Our students have been my North Star. There is nothing more meaningful to me than to have been part of their journey. It has been a privilege to watch our students learn and grow, reflect and debate, and to witness them becoming lawyer-leaders.
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We are a law school on the rise. We recently enrolled the largest first-year class in 15 years, a 96% increase in enrollment since 2016. We broke new ground by being one of the first law schools in the nation to launch a part-time online Juris Doctor program, providing access to a legal education and new careers for many throughout the country who never before thought it would be possible because of family and work commitments. We’ve strategically expanded our curriculum, programs, and centers of excellence to meet the fast-changing needs of the legal market. We have recognized the extraordinary success of hundreds of our distinguished graduates by the establishment of our annual Hall of Fame Celebration.
Most fundamentally, we have been guided by our mission: Learn Law. Live Justice. What does that mean? To me, it means that law is the means; justice is the end. I’ll remain committed to our law school’s mission and success for the rest of my life.
In an ironic twist of history, CSU Law was founded in 1897 as Baldwin University Law School. In 1899, the law school merged with Cleveland Law School and was incorporated under the name of the Cleveland Law School of Baldwin University (Baldwin-Wallace College after 1913), an association that lasted through 1926.
I guess you could say I’m going back to our roots.
