Madam, Esq.

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By Jennifer Allen

Dean Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker moves to the picture windows in the conference room of her office at the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law, opens the blinds and with a sweeping wave of her hand takes in the wide view of the school’s grassy Quad studded with pine trees and surrounded by low brick buildings. She radiates pride. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she asks.
    Founded in 1924, Pacific McGeorge is the largest law school campus in California. It encompasses 11 acres, and even though it sits in central Sacramento’s busy Oak Park neighborhood, it is a quiet, calm and peaceful place.
    Parker has been dean of the school for five years this April. She often feels like the “mayor of a tiny city,” she says, pointing out that the school is populated by 40 faculty members and 11,000 students, plus alumni and its own food service, security force and housing stock.
    She and husband Bob Parker, along with a remarkable black standard poodle named Chips and a large Maine coon cat named Kitty-Bearie, live on campus. They all share a small but tidy pale green bungalow with white trim and a wreath on the door, just across the street from the Quad, Student Center and the 36-unit Blackacre student apartments. Nancy Whalen, director of the campus housing office, notes that in the 19 years she’s been working for McGeorge, Parker is the first dean to actually live on campus and that some thought her “a little crazy” for doing so.
    Parker explains that while some might fear having no privacy by living and working in the same place, the proximity was important, allowing her to be accessible to the students and faculty. She didn’t even mention the 100-yard commute.

Spook Law
    Parker’s 35-year legal experience includes stints as general counsel for the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and the 26-campus University of Wisconsin system, as well as a practicing civil-rights litigator in the South during the 1960s. She also has expertise in international relations, public policy and trade, technology development and transfer and commerce.
    How did she end up as dean at Pacific McGeorge? She explains that she had been in intelligence-related service for almost 12 years, an “unusually long time,” and was looking for a quiet interlude in which to take her leave. When John Deutch became CIA director in 1995 and dismissed all 13 top CIA officials, she took the opportunity to depart “without regret.”
    She went into private practice but was looking for a position in higher education, convinced there was “a large gap between academia and national security” she hoped to address. That desire, however, was balanced by concerns that her background in intelligence might be off-putting to academia and the knowledge that her abilities and temperament were better suited to administration. In 1999, the University of Wisconsin system offered her the position of general counsel. It seemed to be a good fit, and she accepted.

California Pleading
    McGeorge first started calling her about the dean position in early 2001, but she had no interest in making a move. Over time, however, her impressions became more favorable. Eventually, she and Bob decided that, although they didn’t especially want to move to California, “McGeorge was a very special school and one that was a better fit than any other,” she was likely to find. “Ironically,” she says, “once we decided to accept the offer from McGeorge, Bob decided he loved California, and I felt just as positive about Sacramento.”
    Isn’t being dean at McGeorge a little mundane after all that experience, even if the school is ranked by US News and World Report as one of the top 100 law schools in the United States? “No,” says Parker, noting that this is a far-lower pressure position and is actually “the best fit ever” for her. She says she is “the luckiest dean in the nation.”

Future Briefs
    What’s ahead in the next five years? “I want to continue building on our strengths” Parker says. “Make the community understand what a remarkable resource they have here.” She pauses momentarily and says she’d also like to see the advocacy center “grow to all continents — perhaps Africa next.” Where in Africa? She mentions Ghana, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Uganda, as well as Ethiopia, a country she says she “personally fell in love with.”
    “There’s no more exciting career and no more exciting time to think about law,” she says. “It opens so many doors and is the bedrock of society. It’s vital to our society, and that is not recognized enough. We’ve lost touch with how important it is to us.” To see just how valuable it is, she says, “Go visit (a society) where there is no law.”
    Is that anything similar to counsel she gave her daughter when her daughter announced she wanted to be a lawyer? Parker laughs out loud. “Oh, no. No. I never gave her any advice. I bit my tongue for 30 years!” 

---

Proud Parker

Nearing the five-year mark, what is Dean Parker most proud of? She takes a moment to assess, first citing the school’s “incredible faculty” before proceeding to list several programs, including:

The Center for Legal Advocacy and Dispute Resolution. Founded in 1973, the center is a recognized leader in providing trial skills and negotiation training; it is ranked among the top in the nation by US News and World Report. The center has also helped train attorneys in other countries, including Chile, and through a newly signed partnership with USAID, the American University’s Washington School of Law and two Chinese law schools, it will soon start helping China rebuild its legal system.

The Center for Global Business and Development. This Center studies issues raised by the global economy, including legal responses to terrorism and the legal infrastructure of reconstruction and development. It includes a course Parker created, National Security Law and Policy, and also sponsors programs abroad to study comparative law in Salzburg, Austria; St. Petersburg, Russia; and Suzhou, China.

The Journal of National Security Law and Policy. Parker says this “politically ecumenical” publication, created in 2004 to address questions of war and terrorism, international relations, democracy and civil liberties, is “a proven forum for conversation between practitioners and scholars.”

The Education Pipeline initiative. This program aims to increase college-going opportunities among racially and socioeconomically diverse students by operating law-themed charter schools run in partnership by public schools and higher education institutions. The program began in 2002, when Pacific McGeorge partnered with the ST. HOPE organization to help save Sacramento High from closure. Since then, driven by Parker, it is being implemented in K-12 schools across the nation.

The Off-Campus Clinical Program. Run by her husband, Bob, a retired corporate lawyer, the program has “doubled participation” under her husband’s aegis, Parker says, and is now “one of the stronger externship programs in the country.”

 

Read the rest of Prosper's special education package, including:

Transform Yourself, Dr. New School, MPAs and MPPAs Going Public, Working-Class Heroine, MBA Programs Dare to Improve

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