Richard D. (Richard Dudley) Currier

Educated at Yale and later at law schools in Boston and New York, Richard D. Currier built a career that mixed legal practice, teaching, and institution-building. Rutgers sources identify him as the founder of the New Jersey Law School in 1908, and later histories note that the school grew rapidly and eventually became part of the University of Newark before joining what is now Rutgers Law School.

Currier was more than an administrator. Contemporary and archival sources describe him as an attorney and educator who also wrote on legal subjects. His surviving works include Commercial Law, prepared with Samuel Williston and Richard W. Hill for the American Institute of Banking, and Cases on Torts, showing his interest in making legal instruction practical and accessible.

A 1947 death notice remembered him as the founder of three schools later merged with Newark University. That mix of teaching, writing, and school-building helps explain why his name still appears in the early history of legal education in New Jersey.