Former Law Dean Ponoroff To Be Honored With Portrait

A portrait honoring Lawrence Ponoroff, the 21st Dean of Tulane Law School who guided it through the challenging days following Hurricane Katrina, will be unveiled Thursday.

 The unveiling will take place at 4:30 p.m. at the law school’s Wendall H. Gauthier Appellate Moot Court Room, 110, in John Giffen Weinmann Hall, 6329 Freret St., and will include a short program of remarks by Dean David Meyer; Gary Roberts, who served as Vice Dean with Dean Ponoroff and is now President of Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois; and Robert C. Hinckley (L ’76), chair of the Tulane Law Dean’s Advisory Board.

A reception will follow in the Marian Mayer Berkett Multipurpose Room.  The event is open to the public.

The portrait, commissioned from New York-based, award-winning portrait artist Joseph Q. Daily, continues a long tradition of honoring former law school leaders on canvases that are hung throughout the building.Ponoroff, who currently serves as Dean and Professor of Law at Michigan State University College of Law, left a legacy at Tulane over his eight-year tenure from 2001-2009 when he served as Dean and held the Mitchell Franklin Professorship. Under his leadership, the law school increased the selectivity of its admissions and annual fund contributions to the school doubled. During this period, the law school started its Domestic Violence Clinic, providing legal services to victims of intimate violence, sexual assault, and stalking in Orleans and Jefferson parishes. Ponoroff successfully created two endowed chairs at the law school and revitalized the Dean’s Advisory Board to help guide the school during the most challenging times following Katrina. At the request of then-University President Scott Cowen, Ponoroff took on university-wide responsibilities, along with those at the law school, as Tulane launched its post-hurricane recovery efforts.“Larry Ponoroff shepherded Tulane Law School through a period of intense crisis with calm, determination, and vision,” said Dean David Meyer.  “We owe much of the law school’s great strength and success today to his extraordinary leadership.”Ponoroff left Tulane in 2009 to become Dean of the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, where he also served as the Samuel M. Fegtly Chair in Commercial Law. Before becoming an academic, Ponoroff was a partner with the Denver-based law firm of Holme Roberts & Owen (now Bryan Cave HRO) specializing in corporate and commercial litigation.Ponoroff is the author or co-author of more than two dozen law review articles and essays, as well as seven books, in the areas of business and consumer bankruptcy, contracts, and commercial law. From 1992 through 1994, he served as the Reporter to the Long-Range Planning Subcommittee of the Committee on the Administration of the Bankruptcy System of the Judicial Conference of the United States. He was Vice Dean of Tulane Law School from 1998-2001. A graduate of Stanford Law School, Professor Ponoroff has previously taught as a visitor at the University of Michigan Law School, Wayne State University Law School, and as a member of the faculty at the University of Toledo College of Law, where for two years he also served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. He has received outstanding teaching awards from three different law schools.Ponoroff is also the recipient of the 2015 Editor’s Prize from the American Bankruptcy Law Journal for the best article in the previous year’s volume.  He is a member of the American Law Institute and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.