Leonard P. Strickman (born April 14, 1942) is an American law professor who served as Dean of three law schools, guiding two of them to various stages of ABA accreditation. Most recently, he was the founding Dean of the Florida International University College of Law, which went from establishment to full accreditation during his tenure. Early life, education, and career Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, his father was a chemist who had lacked the means to go to medical school, and hoped to see one of his sons receive a medical degree. Strickman therefore entered college as a pre-med student, but found himself instead drawn to the study of law. Strickman received a B.A. in history from the University of Rochester, with honors, and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1966, where he served as member of the Board of Editors on the Yale Law Journal. His entered his first academic position in 1966 at Boston College Law School, which he left to spend two years as Minority Counsel to the United States Senate Select Committee on Equal Education Opportunity, from 1970 to 1972. He then returned to teaching law at the Boston College Law School for nine years. While teaching there, Strickman correctly predicted that the United States Supreme Court would rule against Richard Nixon on Nixon's efforts to withhold the Nixon White House tapes. In 1974, Strickman filed a friend of the court brief in favor of desegregation busing in Detroit. He continued to advise various committees of the United States Senate and the city of Boston, and was a visiting scholar on the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law in 1979. Deanships In 1981, Strickman was appointed Dean and Professor at the Northern Illinois University College of Law, where he remained for the next nine years, leading the law school from provisional to full American Bar Association accreditation and membership in the Association of American Law Schools. During that time, he fought a state legislative effort to eliminate the law school as a cost-saving measure. Strickman stepped down from the deanship in 1990, returning to teaching as a law professor at NIU after spending the fall 1990 semester as a visiting professor at the University of California, Hastings College of Law. In the spring of 1991, Strickman accepted an offer to serve as Dean of the University of Arkansas School of Law. In 1995,