UF Law School Names Building for Ex-ABA President Zack After $800K Gift
The University of Florida’s Levin College of Law will name a hall after immediate-past ABA President Stephen N. Zack, a law school alumnus.
The dedication ceremony is today, report the Miami Herald and a press release. Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and former Florida Gov. Bob Graham will also be present for the dedication.
The school is dedicating one of its five buildings to Zack after an $800,000 gift from the Miami lawyer and his firm, Boies, Schiller & Flexner, the Miami Herald says. The money will be used to establish an endowment to promote diversity and enhance academic programs at the law school, the Herald says. Florida’s Major Gifts Trust Fund will provide a 70 percent match, bringing the total to $1.3 million.
The endowment will also be used to enhance academic programs that advance student knowledge of legal ethics and professionalism, according to an ABA press release. “I owe so much to the University of Florida Levin College of Law for my professional life that I have always wanted to do something to express my gratitude which would also promote diversity,” Zack says in the release.
Zack, who fled Cuba at the age of 14 with other family members, was named the Hispanic National Bar Association’s lawyer of the year in 2010. As one of his ABA presidential initiatives, he founded the ABA Commission on Hispanic Legal Rights and Responsibilities. He was the ABA’s first Hispanic president.
Zack told the Miami Herald he didn’t place restrictions on how the law dean can use the money to promote diversity. “It can go to providing additional teaching, it can go to having more Hispanic professors,” he said. “He can do it whichever way he thinks is best to increase diversity.”
Updated at noon to include information from an ABA press release.
