LOS ANGELES – Top U.S. entertainment industry and business lawyer Marty Willhite ’97 and his family have given $3.5 million to LMU Loyola Law School to create the Therese Maynard Chair in Business Law with an eye toward helping traditionally underserved populations. The transformative gift will enable the law school to recruit and retain an outstanding scholar and teacher specializing in transactional business law.
“The lawyers we produce need to be versed in both legal and business concepts, growing their judgment and experience while they are still in law school,” said Dean Michael Waterstone. “This gift to establish the new chair, combined with our existing strengths and location in one of the most diverse and entrepreneurial cities on the planet, will allow us to be both creative and nimble moving forward.”
For Maynard, the chair is an opportunity to further advance the university’s commitment to diverse representation and community service. “The gift will allow us to align transactional learning with the core of the Loyola Law School mission, which is social justice,” she said, noting it is of special significance to her that this the law school’s first chair named in honor of a woman. “I would like to see the position filled by someone who is committed to empowering entrepreneurs from under-resourced groups – providing access to the capital and the tools they need to generate wealth for their communities.”
A perennial favorite among students, Maynard was honored with the 2021 Excellence in Teaching Award by the Student Bar Association, which relies on student input for its selection. She has been making such an impression on her students since she joined the law school faculty in 1983. “I cannot overstate how much Professor Maynard and Loyola Law School mean to me,” said Willhite.
Maynard has long been heralded as an innovator in the field by her peers, colleagues, and students. The holder of the school’s Leonard Cohen Chair for Law and Business, she created the groundbreaking Transactional Lawyering Institute as an avenue to provide students with a way to apply their classroom learning to real-world situations. The institute includes simulation exercises featuring feedback from seasoned attorneys, as well as a range of programming on emerging fields, all within the school’s social-justice mission.
“The essence of a good lawyer is the instinct to solve problems and the desire to help others,” said Maynard. “When I consider what it takes to be a true professional, it’s the continually renewed commitment to go out and make the world a better place.”
Many of the core concepts driving the Transactional Lawyering Institute are drawn from Maynard’s extensive line of scholarship. She is the author of the widely adopted books “Mergers and Acquisitions: Cases, Materials and Problems” and “Business Planning: Financing the Start-Up and Venture Capital Financing.” In keeping with Maynard’s interest in elevating scholarly dialogue, the Willhite family gift includes support for innovative research and teaching initiatives in transactional business law.
