Joy Juedes
Professor Nancy Schultz was the architect of Chapman University’s law school competitions program and a first-rate legal scholar.
However, “Nancy was always Nancy — to students, to faculty and friends,” Fowler School of Law Dean Paul Paton said at her memorial at the law school in January.
Schultz, the Kennedy Professor of Dispute Resolution, passed away Dec. 15. She was in the process of passing the competition torch to Professor John Bishop (JD ’11), who still remembered her notes to him when he was a student.
“Every trophy in this room represents a memory for Nancy,” he told the crowd at the memorial. “It represents a memory of you. She never took any success and made it her own. She made everything in this school about you.”
Paton recalled Schultz’s stuffed animal collection, which she kept in her office and used as teaching tools.
“She wanted people to feel comfortable and welcomed when they came into her office,” he said.
Schultz was “synonymous with student advocacy at the Fowler School of Law. She will be remembered as a tireless advocate for the thousands of students she taught and coached during her 27 years at the Fowler School of Law,” the law school’s tribute to her said.
After earning her JD from the University of Pennsylvania, Schultz practiced with two of the largest law firms in Philadelphia. She taught legal writing at Villanova University Law School and was director of legal research and writing at George Washington University Law School.
After coming to Chapman in 1996, she created the competitions program and oversaw each competition team — trial and appellate advocacy, arbitration, pretrial advocacy, mediation, negotiations and client counseling.
“To this day, Kennedy Hall is overflowing with trophies won by Fowler School of Law students and teams, including seven individual and team awards that Nancy collected from the fall of 2023 competitions alone,” according to the law school’s tribute.
After Chapman’s three-student team won gold at the International Ad Hoc Mediation Competition in the United Arab Emirates near the end of the fall 2023 semester, Schultz wrote what would be her last email to faculty.
“[Our students] represented us with grace, enthusiasm, civility, and professionalism,” she wrote. “It is hard to imagine a better performance, not only in terms of talent and skill, but also in terms of just being good human beings. I can hardly remember when a team was so universally liked and respected, by judges, competitors, and organizers.”
Schultz served in leadership roles for the International Client Counseling Competition Committee, the International Law School Mediation Tournament and the International Negotiation Competition Committee. She traveled around the country and the world for competitions and made friends in several countries. The competition named an award for her that will be given to a student who demonstrates the best client counseling skills.
Schultz wrote, presented and taught about legal research and writing, legal education, negotiations and client counseling.
“Nancy, especially for a law professor, was a person of extraordinary modesty,” Professor Lawrence Rosenthal said at her memorial. “She would brag until the cows came home about her students, never about herself. Never once in the 19 years that I was her colleague did I hear her brag about herself. But her legal scholarship was extraordinary.”
Schultz is survived by her daughter Lindsay, her son Kyle and her siblings Lisa, Cindy and Carl.
