Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago announced today that it has received a $100 million donation from alumnus J.B. Pritzker and his wife, M.K. Pritzker.
As a result, the 156-year-old school will be named the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.
The university says the Pritzkers’ donation is the largest single gift ever to any law school.
Official say the donation will enable students of all socio-economic backgrounds to attend the law school and will help support the school’s strategy of developing highly marketable lawyers with entrepreneurial and multidisciplinary skills. It also will support social justice centers at the law school, such as the Center on Wrongful Convictions, the Children and Family Justice Center, the Center on International Human Rights, and the Environmental Law Center.
“Our increasingly complex and dynamic world demands lawyers who are trained to tackle difficult legal and policy problems and to work imaginatively at the interface of law, business and technology,” says Law School Dean Daniel B. Rodriguez. “This extraordinary gift will help provide the financial foundation for this law school to produce a new breed of highly skilled, adaptive lawyers--creative, constructive problem-solvers armed with multidisciplinary skills and resolutely committed to social justice and the rule of law.”
The Pritzkers are longtime Northwestern supporters. The university says they have made gifts to Northwestern for 16 consecutive years. J.B. Pritzker’s father, Donald Pritzker, was co-founder and the chief executive of the Hyatt Hotels Corporation.
