Quinnipiac School of Law Building Opens

CENTERBROOK, Conn. -- Quinnipiac University celebrated the opening this month of its new state-of-the-art School of Law Center on its North Haven Campus. Dean Jennifer Gerarda Brown thanked University leadership as well as representatives from Centerbrook Architects and Planners and FIP Construction for their vision and hard work.

Centerbrook Partner Jefferson B. Riley, FAIA, and Principal Jon Lavy, AIA, led the team that designed the 154,749-square-foot, three-floor facility. Associate Brian Adams, AIA, was the Project Manager and Senior Architect Kenneth Cleveland was the Job Captain. The building includes: 13 classrooms, including seminar-style classrooms and a high-tech collaborative classroom with full digital multimedia capabilities; a 180-seat two-tiered courtroom complete with Judge's Chambers and Jury Deliberation Room, a legal clinic space featuring 40 student work stations, two dedicated classrooms, and two mediation rooms to accommodate QU Law's extensive clinic programs, a Law Library set in a two-story library atrium, and a Moot Court and Mock Trial Room.

The guest speaker at the opening ceremonies was the Hon. Guido Calabresi, who is a senior judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Sterling Professor Emeritus and former dean of the Yale Law School. He spoke not only about the law, but also about the law school building where students would learn and discuss it:

“This is magnificent … The architect has succeeded here and that is very difficult because you can provide the specifications and say that everything has to be there: the students and the faculty are all there, and the classes are there, and the clinical program is there, the library there … You can say all that, but in the end making it is like making a great music hall: the acoustics are either there or they are not. When the band starts to play you can tell. And you can tell in this building, immediately, that it works … and that is an achievement for which your architect should really, really be praised.”

The School of Law had previously been located on Quinnipiac’s Mount Carmel Campus in a building also designed by Centerbrook. Its move to the North Haven brings it together with the school’s other graduate programs on a common campus: the Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine and graduate programs in social work as well as in the Schools of Health Sciences, Nursing, and Education. Riley has led the Centerbrook design teams for all of the projects on the North Haven Campus as well as those on Quinnipiac’s two other campuses in Hamden since 1978.

Quinnipiac President John L. Lahey said the new School of Law Center marks the completion of the final major construction project on the North Haven campus, where the University has spent $200 million over the last five years.