From next week’s National Law Journal:  Green by Design; Law Schools Bring "Sustainability" to Buildings, Courses, by Peter Page:

Last April, the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program awarded the [University of Colorado School of Law’s Wolf Law Building] a gold rating for its exceptional energy and water efficiency, recycling of construction debris and use of "green" building materials. "We really needed a new building and I wanted whatever we built to be LEED certified," said the law school’s dean, David Getches. "We have a very strong reputation for environmental law and I thought we needed to walk our talk." The Wolf building is the second law school built with the environment in mind — the neighboring University of Denver’s Frank H. Ricketson Jr. Law Building was certified LEED gold in 2003 — and will not be the last.

Law academics around the nation agree that climate change has created an imperative for law schools to consider the elusive concept of sustainability in how they build, operate and educate.

"The interest in sustainability has impacted virtually every element of legal education. It affects the physical plant, how schools operate and it will affect what law schools teach and the research agenda,” said Barton H. "Buzz" Thompson, professor at Stanford Law School. "It changes what you teach and how you teach it," he said. "Every law school that claims to teach the important subjects has to have a course on climate change and energy resources from the perspective of new technologies and efficiency.”