ILNews

  • Home

Illinois attorney to lead Indiana Tech law school

Jennifer Nelson
November 23, 2011
Keywords
Indiana Tech School of Law, Law Schools
Back to TopCommentsE-mailPrint

The former dean of Southern Illinois University School of Law has been chosen as dean for Indiana Tech’s new law school, school officials announced Nov. 11.

Peter C. Alexander will officially begin work on Jan. 9. He is currently a professor at the Carbondale, Ill., law school, where he served as dean from 2003 until 2009. Alexander has also worked in private practice in Illinois, was on the faculty of the Dickinson School of Law at Penn State University for 11 years, and served as law clerk to two federal judges in Illinois.

He received his Bachelor of Arts in political science from SIU and his juris doctor from Northeastern University School of Law in Boston in 1983.

“Peter Alexander shares our vision for law school education in the 21st century and has the qualifications and experience to help us achieve our goals,” said Dr. Arthur E. Snyder, Indiana Tech president. “I look forward to working with him as we continue our curriculum development and begin recruiting students for our first class.”

Indiana Tech, a private school based in Fort Wayne with campuses around Indiana and Kentucky, announced in May that its board of trustees approved moving forward with creating a law school in Fort Wayne. The law school hopes to have 100 students in its inaugural class.

This is not the first time Alexander will have worked at a law school in Indiana. He taught bankruptcy and evidence at Notre Dame Law School as a visiting professor in the fall of 2009 and 2010.

Alexander said he is humbled and honored to be chosen as the founding dean of the new law school and is confident that Indiana Tech School of Law will “quickly be regarded as the home of innovation in legal education.”

The school’s president, Arthur E. Snyder, defended the decision to open another law school in Indiana in an editorial this summer in a Fort Wayne newspaper. He cited a 136-page feasibility study which is available on Indiana Tech’s website, that was done by the school. It says hundreds of students leave Indiana to attend law school and very few return to practice here. The study also says that the decrease in interest to go to law school in Indiana may partly be because of a lack of opportunity to attend an Indiana law school.

The law school is working toward obtaining accreditation by the American Bar Association. The approval process can take several years.

A web page dedicated to the law school says it is still determining the specifics of the program, leaving much of it up to the new dean. There is also a possibility that some credits would be offered online. Tuition is projected to be $28,500.•


ADVERTISEMENT

Post a comment to this story

COMMENTS POLICY
We reserve the right to remove any post that we feel is obscene, profane, vulgar, racist, sexually explicit, abusive, or hateful.
 
You are legally responsible for what you post and your anonymity is not guaranteed.
 
Posts that insult, defame, threaten, harass or abuse other readers or people mentioned in Indiana Lawyer editorial content are also subject to removal. Please respect the privacy of individuals and refrain from posting personal information.
 
No solicitations, spamming or advertisements are allowed. Readers may post links to other informational websites that are relevant to the topic at hand, but please do not link to objectionable material.
 
We may remove messages that are unrelated to the topic, encourage illegal activity, use all capital letters or are unreadable.
 

Messages that are flagged by readers as objectionable will be reviewed and may or may not be removed. Please do not flag a post simply because you disagree with it.

ADVANCED SEARCH
Sponsored by

facebook - twitter on Facebook & Twitter

Indiana State Bar Association

Indianapolis Bar Association

Evansville Bar Association

Allen County Bar Association

Indiana Lawyer on Facebook

facebook
ADVERTISEMENT
Subscribe to Indiana Lawyer

  1. G. Michael Witte letter states he's suspended for three years. The case that got him suspended is identical to my estate case, including havin the Late Judge Deiter recuse himself because Newman had a conflict of interest with the judge. His Modus Operandi is nearly identical.

  2. SIGNED BY G. MICHAEL WITTE EXECUTIVE SECRETARY INDIANA SUPREME COURT DISCIPLINARY COMMISSION DATED MAY 17, 2012.

    Your 6th complaint against Lawrence T. Newman filed on 4/12/2012. On 1/31/12, the Indiana Supreme Court entered an order suspending Lawrence T. Newman’s law license for a period of three years. More important, even after three years, Lawrence Todd Newman will not get his license back unless and until he goes through a separate proceeding to prove that he is fit to practice law. This is not an easy process, and the burden is upon Lawrence T. Newman to prove by clear and convincing evidence that he is fit to return to practice.
    Because of the length of Lawrence T. Newman’s license suspension and the fact he may never succeed in getting his law license reinstated, we are not opening an investigation file at this time.
    Should Lawrence T. Newman seek reinstatement in the future, we will open your file and ask Lawrence T. Newman to address your grievance as part of his burden of proving fitness. We have attempted to notify Lawrence T. Newman that this will be required of him.
    It may disappoint you to hear that we will be doing nothing on your grievance at this time. However, the most our office can ever accomplish is to take away a lawyer’s license to practice law. We have already done that, albeit as a result of misconduct in cases other than your own. It makes better sense for our office to focus its limited resources on cases where the lawyers are still actively practicing law.

  3. Is there any justice in the Marion County Superior Court Civil Division? I am the unfortunate victim of a retaliatory lawsuit brought by Lawrence Todd Newman, the attorney from an estate case on which I worked as a unsupervised personal representative in 2006. The contract agreement for that case stated that the estate would be responsible for all attorney fees, but Newman refused to close the nearly insolvent estate when my duties were complete and his fees were paid. Instead, he tried to extort additional attorney fees from me by keeping the case open to address a wrongful death claim, despite the estate’s heir’s lack of interest in pursuing it and an expert doctor’s opinion that it would not be worth doing so. He also knowingly deceived me into believing that a “closing statement” was needed to close the estate, even though this requirement had actually been waived by the estate’s heir. The heir’s attorney filed a motion to have Newman removed from the case. After the court closed the probate case with prejudice (barred from further litigation) Newman illegally re-opened the case in another courtroom.
    As a result of complaints filed against him for these and similar actions, Newman has been suspended from practicing law for 18 months by the Indiana Disciplinary Commission. In retaliation, he has filed suit against me demanding additional attorney fees for the 2006 estate case, despite the fact that I made no agreement stating that I would pay any fees from my own assets on behalf of the estate. This lawsuit violates the rules of ethics, due process of law, and equal protection of law. Newman has been allowed to file ridiculous pleadings at an alarming rate and has been supported by a biased court system. Judge Carroll refuses to recuse himself from the case despite the fact that, by his own admission, he intends to grant Newman sanctions regardless of the evidence. When my former counsel discovered that the previous judge on the case, Judge Sosin, was a long-time close friend of Newman’s family, Judge Carroll commented for the record during a hearing that Judge Sosin in so many words “he finds the door “was weak for recusing himself from the case as a result of this obvious conflict of interest.
    This case is a public policy issue. Statutes put in place to protect unsupervised personal representatives in probate matters are being ignored. This case will affect thousands of individuals involved in probating and the personal representation of estates. Justice cannot possibly be served as long as a biased judge is allowed to defend a “vexatious litigant,” as Newman has been described by Judge Logan in Bradenton, Florida court. If there is any justice in the Marion County Superior Court Civil Division, this case against me will be dismissed with prejudice.

  4. Every affront to decency and every style adopted by criminals is not per se a constituttional violation. Only fools believe or espouse that.

  5. This was an unnecessary change in law, a needless fiddling with a tax that impacted very very few hoosiers, but one that erodes a tax base benefitting very many hoosiers. Just because some people wanted to chalk up a "tax cut" on their legislative brag-list, and didnt give a fig about replacing the revenue any other way. Really stupid. I am a republican my whole life and this just shames me like hell. I have to use a fake name over this because I know my fellow republicans are all brain washed over tax cutting too.

ADVERTISEMENT