Dean Search

LMU offers rigorous undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs and by intention and philosophy, the university invites ambitious individuals diverse in talents, interests, and cultural backgrounds to enrich its educational community and advance its threefold mission:

• The encouragement of learning
• The education of the whole person
• The service of faith and the promotion of justice

The university takes its fundamental inspiration from the combined heritage of the Society of Jesus, The Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, a composite religious heritage that distinguishes LMU among Catholic universities. Informed by Roman Catholicism’s robust social teaching and commitment to justice, LMU enrolls, employs, and celebrates the contributions of persons of all faiths to its distinctive mission. Please visit Mission and Ministry to view the full mission statement and our complement of faith-based programs.

“Creating the World We Want to Live In” is LMU’s strategic plan for the 2021-26 period. This plan articulates a strategic vision for LMU’s future: “In fulfillment of its mission, LMU will form a new generation of ethical leaders able to identify, analyze, and respond to the most challenging problems facing our rapidly changing global society.” Three strategic commitments are integral to the successful achievement of that vision: anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion; innovation and adaptability; and extending LMU’s reach. The strategic planning process provided the impetus and direction for LMU’s $750 million campaign, which will enter into its public phase in the fall of 2025.

LMU is governed by its Board of Trustees and led by President Timothy Law Snyder, Ph.D., and the President’s Cabinet, composed of executive university leaders responsible for managing and overseeing the institution. The academic deans lead the university’s seven colleges and schools, and the university’s outstanding library resources are overseen in close collaboration by the dean of the William H. Hannon Library and the Director of the William M. Rains Library.

President Timothy Law Snyder, Ph.D.

Timothy Law Snyder is the 16th president of Loyola Marymount University. He is a distinguished educator, mathematician, and academic leader, serving Jesuit institutions for more than 30 years.

Prior to LMU, President Snyder served as vice president for academic affairs at Loyola University Maryland from 2007-14. He was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Fairfield University from 2001-07, and dean of science at Georgetown University from 1995-99. President Snyder has devoted his career to the Jesuit and Marymount tradition of encouraging learning, educating whole persons, and furthering the service of faith and the promotion of justice.

Under President Snyder's bold leadership, LMU seeks to create the world we want to live in through inclusivity, creativity, and by extending its global reach with impact. Guided by the university’s mission, President Snyder inspires the community to pursue new heights of excellence, as evidenced by record-setting enrollments; exceeding fundraising goals; its reclassification as a Carnegie R2 doctoral university with high research activity; LMU leading the way as a top five Jesuit University and a top five National University in Southern California; LMU being awarded a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious academic honor society; expanding the university’s leadership in diversity, equity, and inclusion, and anti-racism programs; and key infrastructure additions.

He earned his M.A. and his Ph.D. in applied and computational mathematics from Princeton University. He also graduated with an M.S. in mathematics, a B.A. in psychology, and a B.S. in mathematics from the University of Toledo. 

Executive Vice President and Provost Thomas Poon, Ph.D.

Thomas Poon, Ph.D., became executive vice president and provost on June 1, 2017. He leads the university’s Academic Affairs, Enrollment Management, and Student Affairs divisions, including overseeing the university’s educational, scholarly, and creative activities, student and professional development, registrar, and admissions areas. He is also a tenured professor of chemistry. Poon reports to the president.

Poon has collaborated with various campus leaders to realize institutional success and new initiatives at the university. In 2018, LMU opened its Playa Vista Campus, a stunning 50,000 square foot facility in the heart of Silicon Beach, L.A.'s technology hub and home to over 500 companies and start-ups. That same year, LMU celebrated its excellence in the liberal arts and sciences with the installation of a new chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Poon oversaw the long overdue recognition of the university as a leading research institution through its transformation from masters serving to R2 institution by the Center for Postsecondary Research through its Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. This also led to a reclassification of LMU from regional to national university status by U.S. News & World Report.

Poon earned his Ph.D. in chemistry at UCLA and his Bachelor of Science degree at Fairfield University, a Jesuit institution. 

LMU offers more than 150 degrees, certificates, and credentials to prepare outstanding individuals for lives of meaning, purpose, and professional success. The institution’s academic breadth and depth comes from pre-eminent faculty, who have built LMU’s reputation as one of the nation’s top universities.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

LMU is a leader in addressing, fostering, and advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) both on our campuses and with our community partners. Unique in higher education, LMU’s Anti-Racism Project invites and challenges members of the LMU community to engage in a collective commitment to anti-racism at multiple levels (e.g., institution-wide, unit-level, and individual). One of the first universities in the nation to establish an African American Studies department in 1968, LMU is in the process of incorporating DEI university-wide in its promotion and tenure standards across all three areas of scholarship, teaching, and service.

Colleges and Schools 

LMU’s seven colleges and schools boast best-in-the nation programs in the liberal arts, science and engineering, social sciences, film and television, law, business, education, and more.

• LMU Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts
• LMU College of Business Administration
• LMU College of Communication and Fine Arts
• LMU Frank R. Seaver College of Science and Engineering
• LMU Loyola Law School
• LMU School of Education
• LMU School of Film and Television

The diversity of the Los Angeles area has always been one of its greatest strengths. Los Angeles has the largest Latino population of any major American city, and LMU is an emerging Hispanic Serving Institution, having recently been awarded the prestigious Hispanic Scholarship Fund Education Partner of the Year. It is also home to more people of Korean heritage than any other city outside of the Korean Peninsula and is home to more people of Filipino heritage than any city outside of Manila. More than half of the population in the K-12 school system is composed of ethnically diverse students. As America’s most populated county, L.A. County is also the third-most racially diverse county in the United States. LMU students and faculty take all that Los Angeles has to offer and use it as a background for understanding the complexity of cultures, industries, images, and opportunities that Southern California embraces.

As part of Loyola Marymount University’s 2021-2026 Strategic Plan, LLS’s priority goals supporting LMU’s spotlight initiatives include:

• LLS will seek progress toward becoming an authentically anti-racist law school, reflecting its professional duty to advance justice in any and all legal areas of practice, as well as its commitment to dismantle institutionalized racism and other forms of structural subordination within the law school and the broader community.
  
  
• LLS will adapt its curricular and co-curricular programming to provide innovative, competitive, mission-resonant education that responds to societal needs, new market climates, and innovations in law and technology.
  
  
• Recognizing that legal services are a necessary but not sufficient support for individuals whose lives have been impacted by multiple forms of subordination (the types of clients served by LLS faculty and students), LLS will adapt the curricula to establish an integrative and interdisciplinary approach to enhance students’ ability to provide holistic and effective legal and policy advocacy.
  
  
• LLS will adapt its clinical curricular offerings to be responsive to evolving community needs and gaps in the legal marketplace, and to expand opportunities for student-centered experiential learning fostering personalized connections between students and the faculty and staff who support them.
  
  
• LLS will expand access to a J.D. education, especially among “post-traditional learners” who cannot commit to a full-time J.D. course schedule, and who (for work, family, or other reasons) cannot feasibly commute to and from our downtown Los Angeles campus multiple nights each week.

LLS offers the following degree programs: Juris Doctor (in a full-time day program and a part-time program), Masters of Law (in a general LL.M. and a Tax LL.M.), Masters of Science in Legal Studies (M.L.S.), and Doctor of Juridical Science. LLS’s part-time J.D. program, established more than a century ago, has consistently been ranked No. 1 on the west coast; the Tax LL.M. is also available in an online format, ranked No. 3 in the nation in 2021. LLS also offers two joint degree programs: a J.D./M.B.A., and a J.D./Tax LL.M. With nationally and internationally renowned faculty providing instruction, LLS allows students to concentrate their studies in fields like Civil Litigation and Advocacy, Corporate Law, Criminal Justice, Cybersecurity and Data Privacy (the first program of its kind on the west coast), Entertainment & Media Law, Entrepreneurship, Immigrant Advocacy, Intellectual Property Law, International & Comparative Law, Public Interest Law, and Tax Law. 

With a long-standing tradition of preparing lawyers adept in analytical and professional skills and ready to practice from the day they graduate, LLS’s academic programs are student-focused and comprehensive. Students gain hands-on real-world experience in clinics, practica, simulation courses, field placements, advocacy teams, and other experiential learning opportunities both on campus and in the community. These opportunities include participation in LLS’s top-ranked moot court and trial advocacy programs, a transactional lawyering institute with a first-in-the-country curriculum, and a nationally recognized program in legal writing and lawyering skills.

LMU Loyola Law School was the first ABA-approved school in California with a pro bono graduation requirement, and today, its unparalleled commitment to social justice is reflected in the variety and richness of its 20+ live-client legal clinics, whose students dedicate more than 60,000 hours per year to serving clients. Known collectively as the Loyola Social Justice Law Clinic (LSJLC), the clinics share a 23,000-square-foot facility that simulates the experience of a law practice with several specialties, thereby giving students practical experience working in an interdisciplinary law-firm setting. From fact investigation, research and brief writing to trial and appellate court arguments, mediation, administrative agency advocacy, community education, and policy coalitions, students find wide-ranging opportunities to learn practical skills in the LSJLC, while expanding access to justice. A sampling of the clinics in the LSJLC includes the Loyola Project for the Innocent, the Loyola Immigrant Justice Clinic, the Juvenile Justice Clinic and Juvenile Innocence and Fair Sentencing Clinic, the Youth Justice Education Clinic, the Loyola Genocide Justice Clinic, the mediation and conciliation clinics of our Center for Conflict Resolution, the Consumer Bankruptcy Clinic and Shriver Landlord Tenant Clinic, the Ninth Circuit Appellate Clinic, and several different Tax Clinics. 

Centers are an integral part of LLS’s academic offerings, fostering the Law School’s mission of educating the whole lawyer, and providing a range of perspectives on myriad topics to help students and faculty share their ideas. With a focus on both scholarship and deep policy engagement in key subject areas, the wide array of centers include the Center for Juvenile Law & Policy; LLS Anti-Racism Center; Center for the Study of Law & Genocide; Civil Justice Program; Coelho Center for Disability Law, Policy, and Innovation; International Human Rights Center; and Loyola Public Interest Institute.

Loyola Law School’s professors graduated from leading law schools such as Stanford, UCLA, Berkeley, Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, Michigan, Virginia, Penn, and NYU, and former faculty have recently gone on to teach full-time at Harvard, Yale, Penn, UCLA, UC Irvine, and other notable institutions. One third of the faculty has advanced degrees in addition to a J.D., and 27 faculty members have held federal clerkships (21 as clerks on the federal appellate courts).

The faculty includes authors of leading casebooks, treatises, and other scholarly volumes; peer-reviewed articles; legal blogs; and works with top placements, including, in the last two years, books and chapters with Oxford, Stanford, Northwestern, Cornell, and the University of California presses, and articles at the flagship law reviews at Yale, NYU, Penn, UC Berkeley, Duke, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Minnesota, Iowa, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Illinois, Arizona, and Washington University. The LLS faculty also includes a powerhouse cohort of junior research faculty members, who are exploring AI and algorithmic justice, developing a new model of work law (in work selected for the Harvard/Stanford/Yale junior faculty forum), publishing groundbreaking research on the school-to-prison pipeline with Stanford University Press, unpacking the role of patent law in innovation, and securing prestigious grants to further interdisciplinary research aimed at criminal justice reform.

Giving further life to the school’s mission, LLS faculty are also deeply involved in public service. Faculty have advised presidents, cabinet officials, governors, mayors, and legislators and administrative bodies at every level of government, have been appointed to federal, state, and local office, and have negotiated both legislation and international treaties; faculty have led, regularly collaborate with, and occasionally represent prominent nonprofit organizations, and lend their expertise on pressing issues before legislatures, courts, and arbitral panels.

With more than 1,000 students and a first-year class of approximately 300 students, LLS is a multidimensional community—a thriving mix of backgrounds, interests, cultures, and points of view, named in 2023 as one of the most diverse schools in America by preLaw Magazine. Our students come to us from more than 100 undergraduate institutions and hail from almost every state and internationally.

Entering J.D. classes regularly include students with government, nonprofit, and corporate experience, Emmy winners and veterans, teachers, coaches, scientists, musicians, journalists, and entrepreneurs; our other graduate programs include experienced lawyers, law graduates, and professionals from dozens of countries. Students are well supported by Academic Success and Bar Programs, Campus Ministry, and a Career Development Office, and in support of our mission to broaden access to legal education, we offer additional programming for our robust cohort of first-generation students and their families.

LLS students are engaged in a broad array of campus activities and organizations, including the three student-edited law reviews: Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review, and Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review.

More than 19,000 alumni are active in law practice, business, and public service, including more than 200 alumni serving on the bench and more than 800 alumni serving as law firm partners. Alumni have served as leaders of state, national, and international bar associations, and as local, state, and national elected and appointed public officials.  And Loyola graduates stay engaged with the school: in addition to supporting students in launching their careers, hundreds of alumni give their time and energy as mentors, including in specific programs for first-year students, student fellows, student organizations, and award-winning student competition teams.  

Loyola Law School's Board of Directors serves as an advisory board charged with the responsibility to provide counsel to the dean, senior administration, and others designated by the dean. The Board of Directors is composed of alumni of LLS who are actively engaged in a wide range of legal professions as well as corporations and industries.

Loyola Law School has a long-standing commitment to training attorneys who use their legal education to help others. LLS was the first ABA-accredited school in California to institute a pro bono service requirement and students routinely exceed the 40 required hours of pro bono service, donating more than 60,000 hours of pro bono service annually. LLS’s Public Interest department connects students with pro bono opportunities and advises students and alumni pursuing public interest careers, including support for post-graduate fellowships. In the past two years, LLS students were awarded fellowships from Skadden, Equal Justice Works, and Justice Catalyst. LLS also funds several post-graduate public interest fellowships of its own, in addition to supporting summer public interest grants.

LLS offers a Public Interest Law concentration with a dedicated adviser and a wealth of experiential opportunities, including the Social Justice Law Clinic. LLS students recently founded the new Loyola Interdisciplinary Journal of Public Interest Law to better highlight stories of underrepresented communities relevant to public interest advocacy and education.

In 1964, Loyola Law School moved to its present location in the Pico-Union district, occupying the building that now houses the William M. Rains Library. Expansion of the Law School facilities began in 1980 when Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry was commissioned to design the campus. The Gehry-designed campus has been the subject of both local and international architectural acclaim, and Gehry's campus designs have won the profession's highest recognition for design excellence.

Composed of a series of contemporary buildings clustered around a central plaza, the campus is at once intimate and open. The classrooms, offices, study, and social spaces provide LLS students with an attractive and inviting environment for the study of law and for social and intellectual exchange.

The campus is located in downtown Los Angeles, the center of legal activity and commerce in Southern California. This proximity to the downtown area is extremely advantageous for LLS students because of the convenient access to federal and state courts and to the central offices of many major law firms.