Late last week, the University of Illinois Board of Trustees approved a resolution to allow the University of Illinois at Chicago to acquire The John Marshall Law School, creating the UIC John Marshall Law School.

Shortly after the news broke, Dean Vikram Amar spoke with reporters at the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin and the News-Gazette about how the merger would impact the University of Illinois College of Law. 

"UIC in Chicago is a separate university from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. So while I would wish the John Marshall-UIC venture well if it secures all the necessary approvals and makes sense for those two institutions, the new venture will not be affiliated with our University of Illinois College of Law. Each of the 200 or so ABA-approved schools is different — with different faculties that do different things, different kinds of student bodies and alumni bases, different bar pass and placement rates, etc.," Amar said.

"I am extremely pleased with the success and momentum we at the College of Law in Urbana-Champaign have been enjoying in recent years in generating legal insight and training leaders of the profession, and some of that success is attributable to my own law school’s very large and increasing presence in Chicago, including a program where my students can be in residence and take classes there in the third year. Nothing John Marshall and UIC decide to do with the John Marshall School of Law — which has always had a distinctive mission of its own — will affect my own law school’s growing platform in Chicago, just as it would not be my place to tell their university what they should or shouldn’t do."

Chicago Daily Law Bulletin story

News-Gazette story