Ronald Weich: ‘Deaning is My Thing’

To hear Ron Weich tell it, he was the least likely person in his law school class to ever become a law school dean.   

“I wanted to do, and not teach,” Weich says in an interview last spring, shortly before wrapping up his 12-year tenure as dean of UBalt Law and assuming the deanship of Seton Hall Law School in Newark, N.J.

However, after decades of doing, in government and private practice, “it turned out that deaning is my thing,” Weich says. “This is my jam.”

The path to UBalt Law 

Weich took a roundabout course to the corner office on the seventh floor of the John and Frances Angelos Law Center. 

After graduating from Yale Law School in 1983, he worked for four years as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan, earning the sobriquet “Dis Con Ron” for his tendency to allow sympathetic defendants to plead guilty to disorderly conduct.  

Moving on to Washington, D.C., Weich served for two years as special counsel to the U.S. Sentencing Commission before going to work for Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), ultimately serving as his chief counsel on the Judiciary Committee from 1995 to 1997.

A seven-year stint as a partner at Zuckerman Spaeder ended when Weich returned to government in 2005, as senior and then chief counsel to Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). In 2009, Weich was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, a position he held until 2012, when he left government for UBalt Law. 

Raising the profile 

Weich’s connections in government and the law helped raise the profile of the law school, says Vicki Schultz, J.D. ’89, former associate dean at UBalt Law and currently executive director of Maryland Legal Aid.

“He saw the law school as a place that should be vibrant, dynamic, and deeply engaged in the issues of our time, and he sought to make it a place that was open and welcoming to those who were interested in discussing and tackling those issues,” Schultz says, citing the range of guests Weich invited to speak at UBalt Law over the years, including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan,  former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, then-U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), among others. 

Schultz said the willingness of top government leaders to come to Baltimore reflected Weich’s skill and genuine interest in creating relationships. 

“There’s a deep affection that people who work with Ron have, which of course is unusual,” Schultz says. “Ron was able to work with all kinds of people, and they maintain a deep sense of respect for him, so when he made a call to ask someone to speak at our law school, they were very willing to come.” 

In 2015, when Baltimore exploded after Freddie Gray’s death from injuries sustained in police custody, UBalt Law became a locus of activity, with attorneys from the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice meeting in the moot courtroom with community members as part of an investigation into Baltimore’s police department.  

Venable Professor of Law Michele Gilman cites Weich’s commitment to the law school’s clinical program, which during his tenure rose to No. 5 in the nation in U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings – and which expanded with the addition of several new clinics, including The Bob Parsons Veterans Advocacy Clinic, the Criminal Defense and Advocacy Clinic, and the Legal Data and Design Clinic. 

“All the deans before were supportive of clinics, but I think Ron helped us move to another level, as shown by our increasing rankings,” says Gilman, who has been at UBalt Law since 1998.   

Weich’s support for fresh initiatives was particularly notable, Gilman adds. 

“Whether you were faculty or student and you were proposing a new program or a new idea or a new event, Ron said yes,” she says. “(He’d say) ‘Great, tell me about it, what do you need, how can we make it happen?’ That recognizing and rewarding initiative — I think it was really healthy and good for the law school.” 

Weich’s warm and welcoming style was appreciated by many. “He has a great sense of humor. He’s hilarious,” says alumna Julianne Tarver, J.D. ’15. “He has this great balance in his personality and in his life, to be able to be very strong as well as very humble and down to earth.” 

“One thing that made it great to work for him is that, on matters large and small, his fundamental decency shows,” says Dean Joseph Curtis Professor of Law José Anderson. The longtime faculty member also hailed Weich’s commitment to securing state judicial clerkships for UBalt Law students, even with a soft legal employment market early in his tenure. 

“That he was able to sustain one of the great hallmarks of our success as a law school, that’s really a major accomplishment,” Anderson says. 

UBalt Law ranks highly among law schools nationwide for the number of graduates who secure state judicial clerkships, with nearly 27 percent of the Class of 2023 securing the coveted positions in state courts. 

‘Put your money where your mouth is’ 

Larry Greenberg, J.D. ’94, chair of the Dean’s Development Circle, remembers meeting Weich years ago at an alumni event.  

“The conversation was along the lines of, ‘Why don’t you hire interns from (UBalt Law)?’” says Greenberg, whose firm, Greenberg Law Offices, was then getting its interns from the University of Maryland’s law school because, as he put it, he didn’t think UBalt Law students were good enough. 

“I remember Ron said something along the lines of, ‘Put your money where your mouth is: Why don’t you teach?’ And I said, ‘I’m not a teacher and I’m so busy,’” Greenberg recalls. 

But resistance was futile. Greenberg just finished his ninth year as an adjunct professor at UBalt Law — and he’s hired several UBalt Law students as interns and associates. 

Weich says the law school has come a long way in 12 years, thanks to his UBalt Law team. 

“This place was teetering, the budget was unsteady and the relationship with the university was fraught,” he says of his early years in the role. “Enrollment was down, and over the years we’ve righted the ship in each of those areas. I think we’ve gotten the law school to a stable place, and I’m looking forward to watching the next dean take it to the next level.”