Last December, William Neukom — a 1967 graduate of the Stanford Law School — made a $20 million donation to the Law School to be used for the construction of a new academic building. Law School Dean Larry Kramer said that the building will be constructed as soon as possible and hopefully completed by 2010.

The planning process is only just beginning; the Law School must obtain approval from the Board of Trustees, leaving the site, architect and design uncertain. The building will house faculty offices, meeting rooms and open common areas with the goal of easing and increasing interaction between faculty and students.

Kramer discussed the influence architecture has on communication within a community and the importance of openness within the new building.

“Architecture speaks and [the architecture of the current building] doesn’t,” Kramer said. “I think we have a really interactive community to which our current architecture is an obstacle.”

He cited problems such as faculty offices being on one side of long halls on the second and third floors, closest to the exit.

“If a student comes to visit a faculty member and they’re not there, there’s no place to go but back where you came from,” he said. “There are very few areas in the law school for students and faculty to just sit and talk to each other.”

The new building will be designed not only to foster interaction among the members of the law community but also to encourage interdisciplinary work with the rest of the University. Outside of the physical realm of buildings, the Law School is also working toward interdisciplinary coordination with the University by gradually transitioning from the semester system to the quarter system.

According to second-year law student and Graduate Student Council Co-Chair Jenny Allen, “One of the visionary directions Stanford University is currently pursuing is the development of interdisciplinary study. An additional Law School building dedicated to academic spaces and collaboration between the Law School and the University will be incredibly useful to faculty and students.”

Kramer also mentioned interdisciplinary work and talked about “making the Law School into a place where law students get exposed to all of the things outside of the narrow confine of law that are going to be part of their professional lives but the rest of the University, which deals with lawyers in various ways, also gets that exposure.”

Features of the new building will likely include offices on both sides of the hallways, with open areas in between for people to naturally run into each other, attractive waiting places, accessible rooms for small meetings, increased openness between floors an abundance of natural light.

The Munger Residences, which will house 600 graduate students from various disciplines, including law, is currently being built near the Law School and will impact the timing of the construction of the new law building.

Kramer said that construction is an inconvenience for nearby residents, thus they will need to discuss whether it will be more disruptive to the community to build the law building concurrently with Munger, or whether the two should be built sequentially.

Neukom’s donation comes at an opportune time. Already short on space, the Law School also has plans to expand programming, especially clinics and research. Kramer said he hopes Neukom will remain involved in the building process.

“He’s got a lot of experience and good taste and good ideas so I hope he’s involved,” Kramer said. “The idea is to create more space and make it a kind of space that’s inviting to the kind of conversation we think should be going on here.”