Donald Polden on Legal Education, Lawyer Leadership and Choosing a Law School

^{Last Updated: September 2026}

Donald J. Polden's career in legal education has included leadership, teaching, scholarship, and a sustained interest in how law schools prepare students for the responsibilities of legal practice. During his tenure as dean of Santa Clara University School of Law, Polden spoke with Top Law Schools about the qualities that strengthen a law school, the importance of faculty-student relationships, professional ethics, public service, law school affordability, career planning, and what prospective students should consider when deciding where to earn a J.D.

Although this interview was originally conducted during Polden's tenure as dean, many of the underlying questions remain important for today's applicants. Students still need to evaluate cost, location, institutional culture, academic opportunities, career goals, and the type of educational environment in which they are most likely to succeed.

Prospective applicants researching the institution can also review the Santa Clara Law School profile for additional background.

Editor's Note: This interview originated during Donald Polden's tenure as Dean of Santa Clara University School of Law. References to particular programs, facilities, faculty members, statistics, or institutional initiatives reflect the period in which the original interview was conducted and should be understood as historical context.

Donald Polden's Approach to Law School Leadership

Top Law Schools: What priorities are most important when leading and strengthening a law school?

Donald Polden: Effective law school leadership begins with understanding the institution's existing strengths and determining where those strengths can be developed further. One of my principal priorities was strengthening the commitment of faculty members to teaching, mentoring, and communicating with students.

A law school is more than a collection of classrooms and courses. Students benefit enormously when they can interact meaningfully with professors and when faculty members regard mentorship as an important part of legal education. Maintaining open communication between students, faculty, and administrators helps create a stronger academic community.

Another important responsibility is ensuring that the physical and institutional resources of a law school support its academic mission. Schools need facilities, programs, faculty, and financial resources that allow them to educate students effectively over the long term.

Curricular strength is equally important. At Santa Clara, particular areas of emphasis included technology and intellectual property law, international law, and public interest law. Developing meaningful areas of academic strength can give students access to professors, courses, clinics, and professional communities connected to their interests.

The goal, however, should not simply be improving a school's position in rankings. Academic development should ultimately improve the educational opportunities available to students and help the institution attract excellent teachers, scholars, and students.

Why Faculty-Student Relationships Matter

Top Law Schools: You have emphasized communication with students throughout your work in legal education. Why is that relationship important?

Donald Polden: Law students are thoughtful participants in their education. They care not only about their classes but also about the direction and success of their law school.

Administrators therefore need effective ways to communicate with students and, just as importantly, listen to them. Students often have useful observations about academic programs, campus culture, career preparation, and the overall law school experience.

An open-door culture can make a significant difference. Students should feel that faculty members and administrators are accessible and genuinely interested in their academic and professional development.

The same principle applies inside the classroom. Professors who know their students and take an interest in their progress can help create a stronger learning environment. Mentoring can also help students understand how their academic interests may connect with future legal careers.

Applicants evaluating schools should therefore look beyond rankings and statistics and investigate how faculty members interact with students. Speaking with current students can reveal far more about this aspect of a school than promotional materials alone.

Ethics and Professional Responsibility in Legal Education

Top Law Schools: How does Santa Clara University's Jesuit tradition influence its approach to legal education?

Donald Polden: One of the important characteristics of the Jesuit educational tradition is its emphasis on education combined with questions of ethics, values, and professional responsibility.

Lawyers regularly encounter situations in which technical knowledge alone is insufficient. They may be required to make difficult decisions involving clients, organizations, colleagues, and the public. Legal education should therefore do more than teach students how to analyze statutes and cases. It should also encourage students to think carefully about the responsibilities that accompany becoming a lawyer.

Professional ethics should not be viewed as a subject that matters only in a professional-responsibility course. Questions about judgment, integrity, and responsibility arise throughout legal practice.

For Santa Clara, that philosophy was also reflected in its commitment to public service and community legal work. The broader idea was that lawyers possess skills that can be used not only to advance clients' interests but also to contribute to their communities.

Public Service and the Role of a Law School

Top Law Schools: Why should public service remain part of legal education?

Donald Polden: Law schools have an opportunity to expose students to the many ways legal skills can serve individuals and communities.

Clinical programs, pro bono work, nonprofit organizations, public agencies, and community legal centers can help students see the practical impact of the law. These experiences may also help students understand areas of practice that they might not encounter through traditional classroom courses.

Students interested in this path should explore public interest law careers and the different routes available to attorneys who want to serve communities and nonprofit organizations.

Public-interest experience can provide students with practical skills while giving them direct exposure to clients and legal problems. Even students who ultimately enter private practice can benefit from understanding the broader role lawyers play in society.

What Creates a Strong Law School Community?

Top Law Schools: What characteristics contribute to a positive law school experience?

Donald Polden: Academic quality is obviously important, but students also spend several intense years inside a law school community. The character of that community matters.

Applicants should pay attention to how students interact with one another, whether professors are accessible, what kinds of student organizations are active, and whether the institution provides academic and professional support.

A collaborative environment can improve the educational experience considerably. Students may learn from one another, exchange ideas, develop friendships, and build professional relationships that continue after graduation.

A school's atmosphere can be difficult to understand from statistics alone. That is one reason prospective students should visit campuses when possible, attend classes, speak with current students, and observe how the school operates.

Full-Time and Part-Time Legal Education

Top Law Schools: What can part-time students contribute to a law school community?

Donald Polden: Part-time programs can bring students with substantial professional and life experience into the classroom. Working professionals may approach legal questions differently because they have already encountered organizational, technical, or business issues in their careers.

This can be especially valuable in fields that combine law with another discipline. Individuals with backgrounds in engineering, software, science, or technology, for example, may become interested in patent, copyright, licensing, privacy, or other technology-related legal work.

Students considering those careers may find it useful to research intellectual property law and the different specialties that exist within IP practice.

Full-time students can also benefit from taking classes alongside classmates who have already spent years in the workforce. A diverse classroom containing students with different educational and professional backgrounds can enrich discussions for everyone.

What Should Students Consider When Choosing a Law School?

Top Law Schools: What are the most important factors applicants should examine after receiving their law school acceptances?

Donald Polden: Students should resist the temptation to make their decision based on a single factor. Choosing a law school requires evaluating several considerations together.

Among the most important are:

Cost and affordability
Geographic location
Institutional culture
Academic opportunities
Career objectives
Areas of curricular strength

Each factor may carry a different amount of weight depending on the student.

Consider the Cost of Law School

The cost of legal education should be taken seriously.

Prospective students need to evaluate tuition, scholarships, living expenses, borrowing, and their likely financial obligations after graduation. Debt can affect professional choices for years, so students should understand what they are committing to before enrolling.

Applicants should consider more than the published tuition figure. Their analysis may include scholarships, grants, savings, the cost of living in the school's location, opportunities to work during school when appropriate, loan terms, and realistic career outcomes.

Students researching financing can review the Top Law Schools Guide to Law School Loans as a starting point, while confirming current loan rules, interest rates, and repayment programs through official sources.

The fundamental principle remains important: the decision to attend law school is both an educational decision and a significant financial decision.

Think Carefully About Location

Location should also be part of the decision.

Law school frequently helps students build professional networks in the surrounding region. Internships, clinics, alumni relationships, faculty contacts, interviews, and other professional opportunities can connect students with the local legal community.

A student who already knows where he or she hopes to practice should investigate how strongly each school is connected to that market.

This does not mean a graduate must remain in the state or city where the law school is located. Lawyers relocate all the time. However, students should recognize that geography can influence networking and early-career opportunities.

For Santa Clara, its location in Silicon Valley has historically been particularly relevant to students interested in technology-related industries and intellectual property law.

Examine the School's Culture

Every law school develops a particular culture.

Some institutions offer highly personal environments with significant interaction among faculty members and students. Others may be larger or more independent. Neither model is necessarily right for everyone.

Applicants should ask themselves:

Do students appear collaborative or intensely competitive?
How accessible are professors?
What academic support is available?
Are there active student organizations?
How does the career services office work with students?
Do current students appear satisfied with their experience?
Does the environment suit the applicant's personality and learning style?

These questions can help applicants move beyond reputation and determine whether they can imagine themselves succeeding at the school.

Students comparing offers can also explore the Top Law Schools Choosing a Law School forum, where applicants and students discuss tuition, scholarships, location, employment, and competing admission offers.

Look at Curriculum and Practice Areas

Some applicants enter law school with a strong idea of what they want to practice. Others have no idea—and that is perfectly normal.

Students who already have a specific professional interest should investigate whether a school provides substantial opportunities in that area.

A prospective patent lawyer with an engineering or science background, for example, may care about intellectual property courses, technology-law faculty, clinics, research centers, and relationships with employers in innovation-driven industries. Those considering this path may also find LawCrossing's discussion of career opportunities for intellectual property attorneys useful when evaluating how legal education connects with practice.

Students interested in public service should examine clinics, externships, pro bono opportunities, fellowships, and relationships with government agencies and nonprofit organizations.

Applicants who are undecided should make sure the school offers a sufficiently broad curriculum to allow them to explore different areas before committing to a specialty.

Rankings Should Be One Part of the Decision

Top Law Schools: How much weight should applicants place on rankings?

Donald Polden: Rankings can provide information, but they should not substitute for individual research.

Every student has different priorities. A ranking cannot tell an applicant whether he or she will enjoy living in a particular city, whether the school offers the desired specialty, whether the financial commitment makes sense, or whether the institution's culture is a good fit.

Prospective students should gather information from multiple sources and develop their own decision-making framework.

Cost, career objectives, geography, curriculum, personal preferences, and professional opportunities all deserve consideration.

A school that makes sense for one student may be a poor choice for another student with different goals.

How College Students Can Prepare for Law School

Top Law Schools: What should college students and prospective applicants do before beginning law school?

Donald Polden: Researching law schools carefully is one of the most useful things prospective students can do.

Websites, reports, and statistics provide valuable information, but students should go further whenever possible. Visit the schools you are seriously considering. Meet admissions professionals. Attend a class. Speak with students. Ask questions about academic life, career services, faculty accessibility, and the overall student experience.

A campus visit can reveal differences among institutions that are difficult to see on paper.

Applicants should also think seriously about why they want to attend law school and what they hope to accomplish with a legal education.

That thoughtfulness can strengthen the application process as well. For applicants preparing their materials, the Top Law Schools guide to writing a law school personal statement explains how applicants can present their experiences, motivations, achievements, and goals effectively.

The objective should not be simply to gain admission somewhere. It should be to identify schools where the applicant can develop academically, professionally, and personally.

Choosing a Law School Requires Individual Judgment

Perhaps the most durable lesson from Donald Polden's observations is that choosing a law school is an individual decision involving much more than prestige.

Applicants should compare the total cost of attendance, scholarship packages, location, professional networks, academic programs, faculty, student culture, practice-area opportunities, and their own career goals.

They should also distinguish between what sounds impressive and what will actually help them succeed.

For one applicant, a specialized intellectual property program near a major technology market may be a decisive advantage. Another may prioritize public-interest opportunities. Someone else may need a part-time program that allows continued employment. Another student may decide that minimizing debt outweighs differences in perceived prestige.

The strongest decision is therefore an informed one—based on careful research and a realistic understanding of the student's own priorities.

Final Advice for Prospective Law Students

Top Law Schools: What final advice would you give prospective law students?

Donald Polden: Learn as much as possible about the schools you are considering before making your decision.

There are many strong law schools, but each has its own faculty, student body, programs, environment, and institutional personality. Applicants should not assume that schools that appear similar on paper will provide identical experiences.

Visit when possible. Talk with students. Research programs. Examine the financial commitment. Consider the location and the opportunities associated with it.

Most importantly, think about what you want from your legal education and what kind of environment will help you develop into the lawyer you hope to become.