About

Dennis Tonsing currently serves as Dean of Students and Academic Support Program Director at Roger Williams University School of Law.

Dean Tonsing graduated from the Integrated Liberal Arts Program (a seminar study of the Great Books of the Western World) in 1969. After teaching school in southern California for two years, he attended Southwestern University School of Law and took the California State Bar Exam. His professional practice of law began in 1974.

From 1974 through 1992, Dean Tonsing practiced law in the San Francisco Bay Area. As a trial lawyer he appeared in state and federal courts throughout California. As an appellate lawyer, he argued appeals before California's District Courts of Appeal. As a transactional lawyer he represented financial institutions, corporations, real estate owners, developers, and entrepreneurs.

For the past 12 years, Dean Tonsing has devoted himself to education. He both learned and taught at Flagstaff’s Northern Arizona University, earning a Master of Arts degree in English, and serving as a faculty member in NAU’s College of Business Administration. At NAU he taught law and communicative skills to undergraduates and MBA students.

He later developed and directed Vermont Law School's Academic Support Program. In 2002, he moved to the School of Law at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, where he designed and now administers the school's Academic Support Program.

At Roger Williams, Dean of Students Dennis Tonsing helps students achieve their "personal best" from Orientation through Bar Preparation. His recent book, 1000 Days to the Bar – But the Practice of Law Begins Now, emphasizes the relationship between the professional practice of law and the opportunities to learn, practice and perfect the skills that successful lawyers employ daily, throughout law school.

Dean Tonsing speaks frequently before groups of law school student service professionals and law students across the country, stressing the importance of "achieving fluency in the language of the law" and explaining the "nuts and bolts" of excelling in law school.

Products

Book: 1000 Days to the Bar – But the Practice of Law Begins Now