On March 17, Jennifer Reynolds was named the permanent dean of the University of Oregon School of Law after serving as associate dean beginning in 2020 and interim dean in 2024.
Reynolds has been an employee at UO since 2009 when she worked as a professor. Reynolds taught civil procedure, conflicts of law and negotiation at the law school, and is succeeding Marcilynn Burke, who served as dean from 2017 to 2024.
“What happens in a role like mine is they only want to have a permanent (dean) after they’ve done a search, and so we had a national search for my role… I think there were three other people brought in in addition to me,” Reynolds said.
According to Reynolds, there was a lengthy interview process beginning in January and going into February prior to becoming the permanent dean.
“I serve at the pleasure of the president, and I report to the provost. I’ve been doing a lot of these same things in my interim role but now because it’s official, I can engage with faculty and staff in more ways,” Reynolds said.
Reynolds attended the University of Chicago for her undergraduate degree where she majored in English language and literature before attending graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin and eventually graduating from law school at Harvard University.
“When I got there, I thought I was going to really focus on business law. I was very interested, and I still am very interested in business, but I did lots of different things and finally ended up graduating and started working at a firm where I was specializing in First Amendment and then employment law,” Reynolds said.
Reynolds said the position of dean includes multiple roles, including development and fundraising and alumni engagement.
“There’s this sort of external constituents role that includes fundraising and externship generation, and then there is a big internal role when you’re kind of the manager of the entire school,” Reynolds said.
According to Reynolds, her favorite part of her job is the students as well as the variety of her work.
“I have (students) at the center of my thinking all the time, trying to figure out what will make it easier for them to learn, easier for them to get jobs, easier for them to pass the bar (and) easier for them to find their purpose,” Reynolds said. “I really love the variety of the work I get to do. The law school does so many different kinds of things.”
Reynolds said her plans for the law school include raising UO Law School’s bar passage rate and employment rate as well as raising faculty profile.
“We have very well-regarded faculty nationally, and I think we could be even more well-regarded if we just had even more opportunities for them to show their work or share their work; and I’m always looking for chances to do that,” Reynolds said.
Reynolds also plans to expand UO’s legal studies minor program.
“We don’t advertise it; we don’t make a big fuss about it, and it’s one of the biggest minors on campus,” Reynolds said. “I would like us to continue growing the program so that it does lots of different extracurricular things in addition to the academic stuff… this is an area we haven’t traditionally focused on as much, but we want to.”
