Middle-class college applicants face a common conundrum: their families make too much money to qualify for financial assistance but too little money to afford the high costs of college outright. As a result, these students often take out large loans to pay for their education.
Bill, J.D. ’78, and Gail Robinson understand this plight. Now retired, the couple, who do not have children, did well in their respective careers — Bill as an intellectual property lawyer, Gail as a high-level administrator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory — without having to carry student loan debt. Although they both came from middle-class families, tuition was more affordable during their college years, and they both worked steadily while earning their degrees. Since then, the cost of higher education has skyrocketed, and the couple have watched as younger generations struggle to afford college.
Bill was first recruited by JPL as a summer intern before starting college at UCLA and continued as a part-time technician and later engineer while attending both UCLA and LMU Loyola Law School. After earning his J.D., Bill combined his technology and legal interests into a 45-year career as a technology trial lawyer specializing in patent and trade-secret litigation at national law firms.
“While I got out of law school with no money, I also had no debt,” Bill says. “Kids cannot do that today by themselves. I have seen young lawyers starting out with huge debt and still paying that debt down as partners.”
Gail began her career in 1970 at JPL where she met Bill five years later. She oversaw business operations for interplanetary flight projects and served as the business manager for Charles Elachi, Ph.D., who became the director of JPL and later appointed Gail chief of staff. Gail retired in 2023 after more than 50 years at JPL and noticed throughout her career, especially in recent years, a similar trend at the company: young workers’ debts limited their options, and the company’s recruitment efforts suffered.
When making their estate plan, Bill and Gail decided they wanted to do something to change this debt trajectory for students. Through their trust, they committed to a bequest of $5 million to LMU Loyola Law School to establish the Bill and Gail Robinson Scholarship Fund, supporting middle-income students with financial need.
“Bill and I came from very middle-class families,” Gail explains. “Middle-class students and their families receive minimal need-based assistance but cannot cover the total cost of tuition. They are the lost economic strata for scholarships. So, they are the focus of our scholarship gifts.”
“We want to invest in people, not buildings,” says Bill. “Young people should be able to start their lives without being burdened by debt.”
The gift to LLS is part of a suite of planned gifts made by the Robinsons to honor the various institutions that have played big roles in their lives. Localizing their giving to Southern California where they grew up, the couple have established similar endowments for middle-income scholarships at California Institute of Technology, which manages JPL; UCLA, where Bill earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering; and Keck Medicine of USC, which provided critical medical care to Bill and his mother when each was battling cancer.
“The Robinsons’ thoughtful gift changes the playing field at LLS,” says Brietta Clark, Fritz B. Burns Dean of LLS. “With this gift, more students will be able to afford a quality legal education with a manageable debt load or perhaps even no debt at all. As a school committed to increasing access to legal education and paving the way for future lawyers to help expand access to justice, this gift is wonderfully aligned with our mission and values.”
Bill and Gail feel they have much to be grateful for, and these bequests are a way for them to give back. With their giving, they want to afford younger generations the chance to experience the transformational nature of college and its educational, cultural, and social grounding that allowed them to be successful both in the workplace and in life. They also hope their gifts will inspire others to leave gifts in their estates that will help students achieve educational and career success.
In addition to giving back to the institutions that have been close to their hearts, Bill and Gail believe in safeguarding American productivity in important fields such as law and technology. “Americans have been the most innovative, technologically advanced people on the planet, and we have to keep our technology edge strong,” Bill says. “That means supporting not only the engineers who invent this stuff, but also the specialized lawyers who protect it. We are where we are now in large part because Americans are inventive, hardworking people, and we need to protect that.”
If you’d like to join Bill and Gail Robinson in igniting a brighter future for LLS students, you can make a gift here. To discuss making a legacy gift of your own, contact Bonnie Hayden, executive director of development, gift planning, at bonnie.hayden@lmu.edu or 310.338.2920.
