As the new dean of the College of Montana’s Alexander Blewett III Faculty of Legislation, Elaine Gagliardi hopes to construct upon her alma mater’s sturdy method by focusing on tradition and improved interaction.
Immediately after the law school’s 1st look for for a dean unsuccessful previous spring, Gagliardi resolved to apply for the posture with the encouragement of her colleagues, pupils and alumni.
“It was heartwarming to have people that I have admired pretty substantially aid me in what I was accomplishing as interim dean,” Gagliardi reported. “I’m a graduate of this faculty. I’ve loved this school. I’ve supplied a great deal of my daily life to this faculty and it is extremely vital to me.”
Born and raised in Missoula, Gagliardi attained a bachelor’s degree in economics from Yale in 1982, returned to Montana to get her legislation degree from UM in 1985 and afterwards been given a specialized regulation diploma in taxation from New York College.
Learners with the UM Woodsman’s Team use a crosscut observed to cut as a result of a log during the Boondocker’s Working day occasion on campus, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2023.

She also served two judicial clerkships and labored as an attorney at corporations in Washington and Connecticut prior to returning to Missoula, the place she worked for George Law Offices with her uncle Alex George, who influenced her to become a attorney.
Considering that stepping into the role as interim dean of the regulation faculty past summer, Gagliardi has by now worked to re-interact students with traditions that went into hibernation during the COVID pandemic.
“I realized we had amazing learners,” Gagliardi stated. “Coming again from COVID, what I realized when I commenced viewing with college students at the commencing of the year is that we genuinely necessary to construct our neighborhood, return to our traditions.”
In these conversations, she discovered that some law pupils did not know who Bertha was. Bertha, the beloved mounted moose of the W.A. Franke Higher education of Forestry and Conservation, has been kidnapped by law university students for just about a century. As retribution, forestry students fill the foyer of the legislation college with trees.
“They experienced not heard about Bertha and this is like a 100-calendar year custom at our law school,” Gagliardi explained. “So we visited about that and they went and stole Bertha and the foresters came and it appeared like a forest in listed here.”
Though students had been returning to campus soon after COVID shutdowns, the law school noticed a shake-up in management. Previous dean Paul Kirgis resigned from his place in Oct 2021 right after pupils from the method claimed he and associate dean Sally Weaver discouraged them from reporting allegations of sexual harassment and assault to the university’s Place of work of Equivalent Possibility and Title IX.
As interim dean, Gagliardi prioritized having listening classes with learners, college and alumni. 1 of the most important takeaways from those people periods was that communication at the legislation university essential to strengthen.
“I hope they know that when I listen to fears from them that I choose them to coronary heart,” Gagliardi explained.
In an energy to establish transparency and connections with students, Gagliardi hosts “lunch with the dean” on a monthly basis, in which pupils can directly ask her thoughts. On top of that, faculty and team at the regulation school have all undergone in-person Title IX instruction and initial-year law learners have participated in similar instruction given that she’s been interim dean.
“I’ve attempted to make this very clear, commencing with our intro programming,” Gagliardi explained. “And I have absent to learners directly to go to them, that we will report on their behalf as we’re required by regulation if there is an problem that needs to be documented to Title IX.”
Regardless of the tumultuous earlier decades, the legislation school rose in countrywide rankings in 2022, up 31 places from the past 12 months. Also, the law college is frequently regarded as one of the “best price regulation schools” in the place and is nationally rated for clerkship placement.
Last tumble, the law faculty welcomed its most diverse course in heritage with the range of minority college students at Montana’s only law college growing from 11% to 20% in three years.
“I feel creating a strong neighborhood and working as a workforce is exceptionally important,” Gagliardi explained. “A leader can’t transfer an business forward except if we all see a eyesight and that vision cannot be just mine. It requires to commence with the vision we’ve experienced for all the decades that I have been linked with the college, which is to coach legal professionals to be in a position to fix the concerns of the people today of Montana and the area.”
Skylar Rispens is an instruction reporter for the Missoulian.
