Students who have taken a class in Kresge Auditorium should prepare to say goodbye to the building. In the next three or four years, the auditorium will be torn down as part of the Law School’s plan to build a second law building in its place.

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Mae Ryan

The Law School has grown so rapidly in recent years that space constraints necessitate the demolition of Kresge Auditorium in favor of a second law building.

Since its inception, the Stanford Law School has fast outgrown its current quarters. The Board of Trustees recently approved a proposal to erect a second law building to alleviate the space squeeze.

In addition, to make up for Kresge’s demolition, the Law School and the Graduate School of Business (GSB) will collaborate to replace the current approximately 450-seat GSB auditorium with a 600-seat auditorium like Kresge.

“The conversation for constructing this new law building started around 2000,” said Law School Dean Larry Kramer. “By 2004, it was clear that something had to be done.”

The current Law School building, constructed in 1975, was initially home to 143 students, faculty and administrators. This year, that number approached 300. Studies project that the Law School will have more than 300 affiliates in 2010.

“Our space constraints are drastic,” Kramer said. “We’re about 75,000 square feet short. In this position we can’t do a lot of the things that we want to do programmatically.”

One such program that is constrained by space is the law clinic program.

“It is our goal to perhaps make these clinics mandatory in the future,” said Frank Brucato, Senior Associate Dean of Administration and CFO of the Law School. “Our current building is not adequate for collaboration between students and faculty.”

The new building will also house the entire law faculty, some of whom presently do not have offices in the law building and thus work outside the Law School.

“According to our preliminary plans, the first floor of the new building will be devoted to clinics,” Brucato said. “The second and third floors will have faculty offices and a terrace.”

In terms of budget, the new building itself is estimated to cost $45 million. However, taking into consideration “soft costs” such as landscaping, taxes, engineering and furniture, the project total may rise to $75 million.

“The Board of Trustees was careful to consider our plan since they don’t want to waste money,” Brucato added. “But the hardest part about getting approval was getting the General Use Permit. Stanford has to get permission from Santa Clara County for how much space we can use to build on.”

With the site now approved, the Law School’s next step is to present a preliminary building plan to the Board of Trustees in March.

“We’re hoping to have the new building done by fall of 2010,” Kramer said. “Fall 2011 at the latest.”