Lloyd Garrison, Wisconsin's 37-Year-Old Law School Dean, Looms as Possible Successor to Pound Despite His Youth

Despite his extreme youth and his long absence from Harvard, no man is receiving more serious consideration as the new Dean of the Law School than 37-year-old Lloyd Kirkham Garrison '19, Wisconsin's brilliant legal executive.

While President Conant and the retiring Dean, Roscoe Pound, have not submitted any name to the Corporation, there is a strong feeling that they must find a very unusual man to surpass the assets of Lloyd K. Garrison.

Practical Experience

The Law School is threatened by the rapidly developing school at New Haven. To meet the new demands which this competition inspires, she needs a Dean full of vigor whose liberal ideas are based on practical experience. Such a man, they say, is Mr. Garrison.

He began his unusual career while still in college. At the age of 20, he enlisted in the U. S. Navy and served until after the Armistice, when he returned to receive his A.B. degree.

Upon receiving his LLB in 1923, he entered the New York law firm of Root, Clark, Buckner and Howland, where he was so successful that he soon departed to form his own firm of Parker and Garrison.

New York Bar Services

The New York Bar Association first recognized his ability by appointing him associate counsel for the ambulance chasing investigation in 1926 and the bankruptcy investigation in 1929. His performance in the latter won him an appointment though a Democrat, as assistant to Attorney-General Mitchell in charge of bank-ruptey investigation.

The University of Wisconsin next called him in 1932 to serve as its law dean and as professor of law. He was not permitted to remain at Glenn Frank's University long, for President Roosevelt spotted him for one of the then key-stone posts of the Administration, chairman of the National Labor Relations Board. For four months all the labor troubles in the country passed beneath his eyes, after which he returned to his Wisconsin post.

Universal Respect

So, despite his scant 37 years, Mr. Garrison has won the universal respect of the legal profession and apparently is in no frame of mind to rest on his laurels.

When one looks at Mr. Garrison's chances, they seem good. Mr. Conant has never been deterred by age; Dr. Arlie Vernon Bock, the new Hygiene chief, is in his early forties and Dean Burwell of the Medical School is not much older.

Practical Administrator

He has emphasized the practical administrator as well as scholarship. Mr. Garrison has had adequate training along these lines. This law school was the first to demand six months' apprenticeship in a law office before awarding a degree. It was also the second school west of the Alleghanies to demand two years of previous college education. During his administration, it has continued to emphasize the practical aspects of a Law School.