BC Law School to receive record $3.1m donation

Liberty Mutual gift to fund insurance professorship

Liberty Mutual Group is donating $3.1 million to endow a professorship in property and casualty insurance law at Boston College Law School, the largest gift in the law school's 79-year history.

The donation will be paid over four years and used to hire a legal scholar to teach students in the field. It will also establish an annual prize for the best published law review article about property and casualty insurance law, regulation, or governance.

Liberty Mutual's gift comes a month after BC launched a capital campaign, the largest in its history, that seeks to raise $1.5 billion over the next seven years.

"This is a good way to start the campaign," said the dean of the law school, John H. Garvey.

While the law school has taught insurance law since it was founded in 1929 and has trained many lawyers who work for insurance companies, insurance issues and regulation are expected to become even more important in coming years as the Obama administration wrestles with the economic downturn.

"We're seeing a lot of fallout from the financial crisis," said Garvey, who promised to intensify the law school's focus on insurance. "The point of insurance is to moderate against risks like that."

Christopher C. Mansfield, general counsel of Liberty Mutual and a BC Law graduate, said the company hopes its donation will improve understanding among future lawyers of the role played by property and casualty insurance - which covers things like home fires and automobile accidents - in bolstering the middle class.

"If you think about it, insurance is really a middle-class product," Mansfield suggested. "If you're poor, you don't have anything to insure. If you're rich, you don't need insurance."

Mansfield said he hoped that BC's focus on insurance would also help insurers to recruit lawyers. "We'd love to have more bright, ethical, well-trained lawyers going into the insurance industry," he said.

Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com.