Media Releases

Boundless vision: building campaign launches the future at a new Faculty of Law

November 29, 2011

TORONTO, ON — More than 200 alum­ni and friends of the Fac­ul­ty of Law gath­ered tonight to cel­e­brate the launch of a $53-mil­lion build­ing cam­paign to posi­tion Canada’s num­ber one law school for a future of bound­less lead­er­ship, poten­tial and vision.

In a packed and ener­gized Flavelle House, the icon­ic her­itage build­ing at the Fac­ul­ty of Law and future anchor to the new build­ing, guests were delight­ed to hear the excit­ing news of the campaign’s suc­cess to date. The project has received incred­i­ble sup­port from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, as well as from Fac­ul­ty of Law alum­ni and friends. More than $37 mil­lion has been raised, which has pro­pelled the Build­ing Cam­paign for­ward to 70 per­cent of the over­all goal.

In par­tic­u­lar, the law firm com­mu­ni­ty has pro­vid­ed unprece­dent­ed sup­port for the Fac­ul­ty of Law build­ing cam­paign.  Osler, Hoskin and Har­court LLP and Torys LLP, with gifts of more than $2 mil­lion each, have set new bench­marks for law-firm giv­ing in Cana­da.  The cam­paign has also received sev­er­al indi­vid­ual alum­ni gifts of $1 mil­lion or more, includ­ing from for­mer U of T Chan­cel­lor Hen­ry N. R. Jack­man, John Schu­mach­er and David Asper.

“Noth­ing is as impor­tant to the future of this incred­i­ble insti­tu­tion as phys­i­cal renew­al,” said Mayo Moran, Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Law.  “We are so grate­ful for the extra­or­di­nary gen­eros­i­ty of the law firms and indi­vid­u­als who have come for­ward so ear­ly in the cam­paign to sup­port our aspi­ra­tions.”

The con­strained phys­i­cal facil­i­ties have been lim­it­ing the Fac­ul­ty of Law’s poten­tial as a research and lead­er­ship cen­tre local­ly, nation­al­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly. Three exter­nal reviews—and crit­i­cal stu­dent feedback—have iden­ti­fied the lim­i­ta­tions as a seri­ous issue.

The new build­ing will increase space by 50 per­cent, to 66,000 square feet, and will have three dis­tinct ele­ments: a mul­ti-storey wing on Queen’s Park Cres­cent; an exten­sive inte­ri­or ren­o­va­tion to the Bora Laskin Law Library; and a light ren­o­va­tion to Flavelle House.

This state-of-the-art build­ing will enable the law school to con­tin­ue to com­pete for top law stu­dents and world-renowned fac­ul­ty. The expand­ed facil­i­ties add much-need­ed con­tem­po­rary teach­ing, learn­ing, research and col­lab­o­ra­tive space not only for JD and grad­u­ate pro­grams, but also for pro­fes­sion­al and con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion cours­es, and ground-break­ing new ini­tia­tives such as the Glob­al Pro­fes­sion­al LLM, and Inter­na­tion­al­ly Trained Lawyers Pro­gram.

Designed by Toron­to firm Hariri Pon­tari­ni, the new struc­ture com­pletes a cul­tur­al and archi­tec­tur­al renais­sance along Philosopher’s Walk and in the Avenue Road and Bloor Street quad­rant, which includes the ROM’s Michael Lee-Chin Crys­tal and the Roy­al Conservatory’s Telus Cen­tre for Per­for­mance and Learn­ing.

The Fac­ul­ty of Law is set to build on its tra­di­tion of edu­cat­ing lead­ers and glob­al cit­i­zens in a tru­ly world-class envi­ron­ment.

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For fur­ther infor­ma­tion on our Law Build­ing Cam­paign, view: http://www.law.utoronto.ca/lawbuildingcampaign