A recent $1 million gift received by the Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law establishes a new endowed professorship that will help expand the institution’s innovative bar exam preparation program.

Professor Mario Mainero, the executive director of bar preparation and academic achievement at the Fowler School of Law, has been named as the inaugural Gray Family Professor of Law.

“Professor Mainero has built one of the best bar preparation programs in the country,” said Fowler School of Law Dean Matthew Parlow.

That program includes two distinct for-credit courses that students take as part of the JD curriculum and an intensive supplemental program after graduation, during which the participants attend classes, receive individualized feedback on practice essays, and take several mock bar exams.

The new endowment, made by a donor who was moved by a family member’s experience with the school’s bar preparation program, not only recognizes Professor Mainero’s success, but also all of those who teach in the program (including Professor Tom Caso and adjunct professors John Bishop and Kent Sommer), as well as the many Fowler School of Law alumni and friends who grade students’ work in the program—which last year included more than 4,000 practice essays.

Read the full story from Chapman University Fowler School of Law.