Legal Commentary

Dan Filler follows-up on my description of recent events in the FIU dean search with an excellent contextual point that we both are sharing: One of the challenges for a new law school working itself into an established university is educating the university about the ways in which law schools are different--explaining differences in compensation, hiring commitments, status, teaching load, scholarship standards, etc., and getting the university to understand and accept those differences and incorporate them into the operation of the university.

We have most consciously dealt with this in the promotion and tenure process--explaining why five medium-to-long pieces in student-edited journals satisfies productivity norms in the legal academy and thus warrants tenure. Fortunately, the chair of P&T has taken this education function very seriously and been very precise in how candidates and their records are framed so the provost understands that, in the realm of legal academe, this person is tenure-worthy.

Perhaps some of the confusion we have had in the dean-search process (especially as to the application of the Sunshine Laws to these faculty-centered elements) can be tied to an absence of a similar precision in performing that education function.