Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Without Comment - Chapman gets $55M donation, renames school

11 comments:

  1. This is an example of someone who used their law degree in a very productive way. It happens. I know other real estate developers who never went to college. Maybe in his case, his legal career took him to real estate development somehow and he has reason to be grateful.

    I do know that in the early 1960s California was relatively cheap - even LA. It came into its own in a big way after that, so there was lots of money to be made in California real estate if one started in the early 1960s.

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    1. Fowler did not go to the law school. Neither he nor his wife are lawyers.

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    2. As I read the article this guy got an undergraduate degree at Chapman. The "law school" was founded in 1996.

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    3. Chapman is a decent and popular undergraduate school.

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  2. I wonder if a law school would ever consider a naming arrangement involving a commercial sponsor, like they do with arenas and stadiums. If the money was right, I'm sure they would.

    LexisNexis School of Law at Thomas Jefferson.

    Westlaw Legal Research Centre at Cooley Law.

    And so on.

    I wonder how the negotiations went. I bet there was a lot of unseemly arm-twisting on the school's part as they tried to get this phenomenally fortunate right-place at the right-time real estate magnate to fork over a couple extra mil for full school naming rights, as opposed to just the library or something.

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  3. Law schools can be very greedy when it comes to naming rights. I recall back in 1998, Rutgers Law School had an alum who was willing to donate $4M to name a building after him. He wanted to give the $4M as an annuity (this maximizes the tax shelter the donor wanted). The greedy administrators at Rutgers tried to strong arm the donor into forking over the cash in one lump settlement and the donor wound up giving $2.75M to his undergrad alma mater, Cornell, instead:

    http://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/13/nyregion/rutgers-dean-is-dismissed-as-4-million-gift-is-lost.html

    These law school deans and university presidents are disconnected from reality. In what world does the beggar dictate the terms of a gift?

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    1. "In what world does the beggar dictate the terms of a gift?"

      When the beggar is really a business selling a commodity sponging off the public dole it is a beggar in name only. These "beggars" can strong arm because they are not begging, they are only pretending to do so.

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    2. I looked at the link about the greedy Rutgers administration...and there was a huge banner ad for Cooley on the left side. How appropriate.

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  4. I would have more respect for this bozo if he literally set 55 million on fire.

    Or bought guns for kids in Africa.

    Or spent it all on cocaine and dressed up little gerbils to go skiing on the mountain.

    You get the idea.

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  5. Good for them, I guess. That will keep them from going out of business in the next 5-10 years. Most of the money will go to stipends to buy better students, which will in turn pay law profs for doing virtually nothing and churning out more useless law review articles.
    Chapman is still a toilet, above Cal Western, Thomas Jefferson, Whittier and Southwestern in Southern California, but below Irvine, UCLA, USC, UC Davis, Hastings and even Pepperdine, Loyola Marymount, and USD. It takes a lot to remove the grubby stains from a commode.
    Some day in the future the money will run out, and glugg glugg glugg Chapman Law will get flushed, including the shiny plaque with the name of the donor.
    It doesn't surprise me that a real estate developer did this. Some of those guys are sitting on big - nominal - fortunes as they approach their deathbed, look at 35% estate taxes (possibly going back up to 45%) and contemplate their "legacy" -- and potential taxes in capital gains on their fully appreciated buildings. Plus, there's no better time than now to sell/bequeath, because the market will only be going down from here.

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  6. How about we rename Cooley to the Beavis and Butthead School of Law?

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