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Support Indiana Law

Bill Hunt
Current Position:
Chair, Hunt Capital Partners LLC
Activities:
Board of Visitors; Kelley School of Business Dean’s Advisory Council; IU Well House Society; IU Foundation Board of Directors; Advisory Board for IU Research and Technology Corporation, IUPUI, and IUPUC; Chair of former Advancing Indiana campaign; Chair of Indiana Law’s Matching the Promise Campaign

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Volunteer Spotlight

Finding a Meaningful Way
to Serve Indiana Law
Bill Hunt, JD’69

When Bill Hunt was an Indiana Law student in the 1960s, law school rankings didn’t exist. “You knew if you applied at certain places either you had a chance or you didn’t have a chance, but it was nothing like today,” he says, adding that the increased competitiveness makes scholarship packages increasingly important. “When I was in law school, maybe 2 or 3 percent of the student body had scholarships. Today it’s roughly 50 percent. The costs are much higher, and state support is less than it was then for all of our state university programs, and top students are very much in demand,” he says. “To achieve our goal of being one of the top 10 public schools in the country, we have to have scholarship money. You can analogize it to college athletics and say ‘if you don’t have scholarships, you’re not going to have a nationally ranked team.’”

Before his retirement in 2001, Hunt was CEO of Arvin Inc., a global manufacturer of automotive components, then vice chairman and president of ArvinMeritor Inc. after a merger with Meritor Automotive Ind.

Through Hunt Capital Partners, he advises companies and serves as director for several companies, some of which he has invested in.

A longtime IU advisor and volunteer, Hunt is helping the Law School raise scholarship funds as chair of the Matching the Promise campaign and his involvement with Indiana Law’s prestigious Board of Visitors. “When I started attending Board of Visitors meetings, I really felt I could make a difference here. A lot of times volunteer activities are hard to measure, but we know what our target is and we’re regularly tracking our progress. It’s been a meaningful way to continue serving the institution.”

What law school did for me: “I think the most valuable takeaway from law school is this: the thought process developed through use of the Socratic method—and the way it prepares you to assess issues and to anticipate the counterarguments to your position. I think always turning the issue inside out, frontward, and backward is very important to find those win-win resolutions.”