Business leader Jay H. Shidler has donated $1 million in cash to the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii to establish the Dean’s Innovation Fund, encouraging legal education that keeps pace with today’s fast-changing business landscape.

The legal profession must evolve “when we consider things we never thought about 10, 20 years ago — nonfungible tokens, cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, big data, privacy, cybersecurity, health care, constitutional discord, you name it …” UH Law School Dean Camille Nelson said in a statement. “We weren’t talking about that in law school and we’re still trying to figure out the legal role and impact.

“Whenever there are vanguard-type questions, lawyers ought to be involved in the problem solving,” Nelson continued. “While we don’t think of law schools as hubs or labs for innovation, lawyers have to be creative, increasingly entrepreneurial, and innovative to meet the challenges of the future.”

The new fund may be used to help the law school reach potential students and faculty, including those who may come from nontraditional backgrounds or who may believe legal education is not available to them, officials said.

“Some of the conversations made possible by the gift will consider ongoing societal change, social justice and equity issues and help to refocus the discussion about who we are as Americans, the disparities between us, the laws that govern us and who writes them as communities continue to confront these issues around the country,” the news release added.

Shidler, a UH alumnus, said of Nelson and the law school fund: “I’m just betting that we’ll get a lot of bang for buck out of this donation that will manifest itself in innovation that will have multiple financial and educational impacts. I trust her.”

Shidler’s gift to the UH Law School follows his 2017 landmark gift of $117 million in cash and ground leases to the Shidler College of Business. His philanthropic efforts with UH since 2006 have totaled $228 million.