Dean Nick Allard Leaves Brooklyn in Best Place Ever

Goodbye, Nick Allard.

After six years serving as president and dean of Brooklyn Law School, Nicholas Allard is set to resign at the end of June, he announced to faculty and staff last week.

Sometimes in legal education, mercenary titans appear, sometimes outsiders, sometimes lifetime academics, only to boisterously make proclamations like a prophet or saint and then to vanish, leaving the life-long lawyers on a slightly better career trajectory by their gentle touch.

Let us remember, for example, Allard's Common Sense-style denouncement of the bar exam.  Or his celebration of the 4 p.m. faculty wine soiree. Or his more recent analysis of the "Trump bump."

Law schools can seize this moment and, like the generation inspired by Woodward and Bernstein to pursue careers in journalism, lead the renaissance in legal education that would revive a profession in need of an injection of youth, idealism, and high-tech savvy.

The good news is that law schools still can-do, even as Allard sails to his next port-of-winning, be that super-cool lobbying contracts or sipping beach bum cocktails in a homemade tiki bar.  As we can see from lawyers like Michael Cohen, the country desperately needs quality attorneys.

Consider, too, how Brooklyn has excelled.  For example, from 2012 to the present, Brooklyn's incoming LSAT scores have dropped 5 points at both the 25% and 75% intervals.  That's diversification, bub.  And only the last few years, tuition had actually decreased. While still over $50,000 a year, it's a fantastic bargain relative to the 2013 price.

So once more we shove a legal academic's career onto the pyre and watch solemnly as it roasts.  Allard has inspired us.  He hasn't been the only one.  There will be others.  But there has been only one Nick Allard.

Scam on and enjoy the ride, no matter how long the greats like Allard are leading the train.