GW Law Strategic Plan
GW Law Strategic Plan: 2022-2025
A Global Law School Equipping Students to Address the Pressing Challenges of Our Time with Leading and Diverse Faculty, Staff, and Extraordinary Alumni in the Nation’s Capital
Strategic Plan 2022-2025
A PDF of our full strategic plan can be viewed below.
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"On April 15, 2022, the GW Law faculty overwhelmingly approved a five-year plan to define our law school's vision to chart a path for the future. Over 150 members of the community participated in shaping this plan. The result is an exciting and comprehensive strategic plan that will inspire our students, guide our investments, and allow the process to move forward confidently to impact the law school and the world. I hope you will find this summary of our strategic and implementation plan will inspire you to join us, as the GW Law community works to impact the law and the world for good."
Dayna Bowen Matthew
Dean and Harold H. Greene Professor of Law
Our Mission
A global law school that exists to impact the law through our diverse faculty and staff, preeminent alumni, and engaged students.
Our Vision
The George Washington University Law School is a global law school that exists to make an impact on the law through the leadership of our diverse faculty and staff, the extraordinary influence of our extensive alumni network, and our location in the heart of downtown Washington, DC. We strive to embrace our national and international student body within an inclusive community that supports their professional development and their journey into careers of meaning and influence. Our students emerge from a DC-infused education that is guided by an engaged faculty, where renowned scholarship and classroom teaching are intertwined with outstanding experiential opportunities to prepare students to shape solutions to the pressing challenges of our times. Read our 4-page overview of the GW Law Strategic Plan and strategic implementation process.
Founded to Shape Solutions for the Pressing Challenges of Our Time
In 1865, as our transformed nation sought reunification, the George Washington University Law School was founded in Washington, DC. Then as now, we are committed to training leaders to bring nations and corporations together to bridge divides and to bring divergent viewpoints together to shape solutions to the pressing challenges of our times.
Nearly 160 years later, GW Law continues to prepare our students for excellence amid complex times. Our issues today are not only domestic but global. Our graduates emerge with both a global legal perspective and the knowledge and practical skills to take on wide-ranging challenges.
Our history as Washington, DC’s oldest law school is rich but we are not content to rest on our laurels.
Our goals continue to evolve as the need for leaders equipped through outstanding legal scholarship and rigorous experiential opportunities, with an ethos of civil servanthood to democracy, IS greater today than ever before.
GW Law is uniquely positioned to offer a “DC-infused education” to leaders who will help forge solutions to the pressing challenges of our times.
Toward that end, we have consulted and collaborated with the key constituents of our community about how GW Law can best prepare students who will shape the world for decades to come.
Our faculty, students, staff, and alumni collaborated to draft this strategic plan to guide us to invest, impact, and inspire with confidence as we
move forward into the future. We have identified six strategic initiatives that will strengthen our ability to educate dynamic, successful, and satisfied professionals who can meet the challenges of our times. Each initiative is accompanied by quantifiable metrics that we will use to measure our progress each year. By focusing on these initiatives and building on the strength of our location in Washington, DC, our network of distinguished faculty and alumni, and our pool of talented students, GW Law will be even better positioned to propel our graduates and our community forward.
GW Law remains at the center of the most dynamic city for law and policy in the United States, but we are hardly static. As the times change, we rise to meet them.
Strategic Initiatives
The GW Law Community identified six strategic foci that were further developed through a series of design sessions, working groups, and conversations with the Planning Committee and key stakeholders.
GW Law Strategic Plan Road Map
These goals were communicated by Dean Matthew and provided direction for the project.
- Strategic Plan Committee
- Michael Abramowicz, Sr. Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
- Charlie Berardesco, Advisory Board Member, JD ‘83
- Karen Brown, Theodore Rinehart Professor of Business Law
- Matthew Dillard, Director of Admissions
- Miriam Galston, Associate Professor of Law
- Laurie Kohn, Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs; Director of the Family Justice Litigation Clinic
- Jordan Michel, 2022 President, Student Bar Association
- Richard Pierce, Lyle T. Alverson Professor of Law
- Stephen Saltzburg, Professor of Law; Co-director of the Litigation and Dispute Resolution Program (Chair of the Committee)
- Kate Weisburd, Associate Professor of Law
Organizational Structure for Implementation
To ensure continued accountability and project governance, GW Law will need to establish a structure for implementation with clear reporting lines and responsibilities. The diagram below shares a proposed structure in alignment with the strategic plan. Each strategic focus area will have a key point of contact who will be responsible for ensuring the strategic priorities are being implemented through the established action items.
Click graphic to enlarge
Contact Us
For all Strategic Plan inquiries, please email our Strategic Plan Project Manager, Alesha Garvin.