Criminal defense attorney Richard T. Oakes was the first dean of the Midwestern School of Law, which opened on January 2, 1973.
Besides hiring new faculty and staff, Oakes scouted various locations for the law school, arranged for students to move furniture from one to another, coordinated library acquisitions, and assembled a Board of Directors that included the students. Oakes also supervised yearly ABA inspections and pursued mergers with local universities, agreeing with Hamline University to locate the law school on its campus. Under his leadership, the law school was granted ABA provisional accreditation and became Hamline University School of Law in 1975.
Oakes resigned the deanship to teach Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure full-time on July 25, 1975. He served as a Fulbright Fellow in Albania and was a founding member of Street Legal, a motorcycle club of lawyers and judges that regularly holds CLEs in Sturgis, South Dakota.