The Board of Trustees approved preliminary plans to give the School of Law another major facelift at its meeting last weekend.
Administrators are currently making progress in the design phase of the project, which will include renovations to the library and the addition of an atrium and event space.
Thomas Metzloff, head of the Building Committee and professor of law, said the project will cost "upwards of $20 million." He said officials hope to break ground after graduation in May 2007.
"This will be a real jewel for both the University and the law school," Metzloff said. "I think the University understood that if we wanted to be a top-10 law school, we needed to have a top-10 facility."
The addition, which was conceived in the school's master plan in 2000, comes after last year's completion of a $21-million renovation that added a 40,000-sq. ft. wing to the School of Law.
Metzloff said he is particularly excited about the new 4,200-sq. ft. atrium, which will share both the look and architect of the University's von der Heyden Pavilion and host major speakers and alumni events.
"Its main use will be day-to-day for our large community to have a pleasant place to study, relax and get together," Metzloff said.
Officials said they hope the law school's renovated reading room will become the center of activity in the library, where students and faculty will be able to check out books and ask research questions.
"The way people use libraries is changing, and law libraries need to be able to keep up with the way that law students, law faculty and others do research with their materials," Provost Peter Lange said.
The School of Law has raised more than $17 million so far for the project, said Sarah West, associate dean for alumni and development at the law school.
West added that the law school had the best fundraising year in its history in 2005, with an alumni-giving participation rate of about 30 percent.
"When there is a special project, you see an upturn in your giving," she said. "[Alumni] will make a second gift in many cases."
To fundraise specifically for this phase of renovations, the school organized a brick campaign, selling more than 700 bricks to alumni at $2,500 each. The bricks, engraved with the name of the donor, will appear in and around the new atrium, West said.
Unlike public schools, which receive money from the state for construction and other expenses, private universities must rely primarily on their endowments for funding.
Although the School of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has a $33-million endowment, officials are now planning at $65-million expansion with possible funding from the North Carolina General Assembly.
Duke Law's endowment of more than $128 million has increased 108 percent since 1999, when Katharine Bartlett became dean of the law school.
"She is the single greatest reason that the law school's trajectory is moving forward so strongly," West said.
"She has been quite eloquent in making a very solid case to our stakeholders about the role of private support in moving our school forward," she added.
Metzloff said students, alumni and officials within the University have been supportive of the law school's plans for physical improvement.
Nicole Guerrero, a second-year law student, said the construction of the new atrium is an example of how law school administrators are working hard to enhance every aspect of student life, including comfort.
"There is not enough common space for students to sit together and have lunch, to relax in between classes, or have a study group outside of the library," she said. "The atrium is really going to help the overcrowding we get."
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