Craig Boise

Craig M. Boise, one of legal education’s leading innovators, is Dean Emeritus and Professor of Law at Syracuse University College of Law, where he served as dean for eight years. Prior to that, he was Dean and Joseph C. Hostetler-Baker Hostetler Chair in Law at Cleveland State University College of Law. At Spivey Consulting, Craig works directly with law school deans seeking to generate new program revenue, improve business operations, address budget issues, and successfully raise money.

While dean at Syracuse, Craig built just the second (and largest) ABA-accredited online JD program in the nation—and the first to utilize virtual Zoom classrooms—and the nation’s only online joint JD/MBA program, in partnership with Syracuse’s Whitman School of Management. At Cleveland State, he launched the Center for Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection, established the nation’s first law school-based solo practice incubator, developed one of the earliest Master of Legal Studies programs for non-lawyers, and created a “risk-free” JD program granting a master’s degree in law to students who successfully complete their first year of law school but elect not to pursue a law career.

Craig has supported innovation with an outstanding record as a fundraiser able to build development teams that linked his vision to financial support from alumni and friends. At Syracuse, the College of Law surpassed $1 million in annual fund contributions each year for the first time in school history and exceeded the College’s $38 million Forever Orange Campaign goal a year ahead of schedule. At Cleveland State, he doubled annual fund giving and secured the first endowed chair in school history. During his five years as dean, he also drove Cleveland State’s U.S. News ranking up 35 places, from #141 to #106.

Craig’s experience includes successful fiscal management of law schools operating within both RCM (responsibility center management) and traditional incremental budget models. At Syracuse, he turned around an institution that had recorded multimillion-dollar deficits for nearly a decade—producing a surplus in his third year as dean.

As a member of senior leadership cabinets at both public and private universities, Craig has had significant engagement with higher education management broadly, encompassing a variety of organizational structures, enrollment strategies, and institutional research across various disciplines. He has led several university-wide task forces and multiple executive leadership searches.

As an academic, Craig has taught a variety of tax and business courses, and his scholarship on U.S. corporate and international tax policy and offshore financial centers has been published in the Texas International Law Journal, the George Mason Law Review, and the Minnesota Law Review, among others.

Before beginning his academic career, Craig practiced tax law for over eight years at Cleary Gottlieb and Akin Gump in New York, and at Thompson Hine in Cleveland, Ohio. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Pasco M. Bowman II of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. He earned his LL.M. in Taxation from NYU, his JD from the University of Chicago, and his bachelor’s degree in political science, summa cum laude, from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he also completed substantial coursework in piano performance at the University’s Conservatory of Music.

Craig served a five-year term as a member of the ABA’s council of the Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, which accredits U.S. law schools; a five-year term on the Section’s Standards Review Committee; and as a re-accreditation site team member. He served as a co-chair with former Attorney General Loretta Lynch of the transition team for New York Attorney General Tish James, and as a member of both the New York State Judicial Institute on Professionalism in the Law and the New York State Bar Association’s COVID-19 Recovery Task Force. He is a past chair of the Board of Trustees of the Everson Museum in Syracuse.

Craig is an avid sailor, still plays piano, travels as often as possible, and enjoys scuba diving.