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Law School Dean Search -- The Most Interesting Committee Assignment I've Had so Far

By Gordon Smith, Christine, Hurt, Vic Fleischer, Fred Tung, Lisa Fairfax, David Zaring

As some of you know, I was on the University of Illinois Dean Search committee from August 2007 until December 2008.  (I assume that I'm not on it anymore -- our wonderful new dean, Bruce Smith, was announced in early January.)  While most of what I learned is not bloggable, I do have to say that the (very time-consuming) experience was invaluable.  I learned an awful lot about my home school, other schools, and the state of legal education in general.  Being in an 18-month debate about the future of law schools tends to hone one's knowledge and opinion.  In fact, in addition to sitting/former deans and associate deans, past members of these types of committees seem to know more about how law schools operate than anyone.

Relatedly, we're hearing a lot about how the demand for law school deans may be higher than the supply of talented candidates.  I will say that the pool of dean candidates out there is shallow, and the number of qualified candidates is fairly small within that pool.  Here is a recent National Law Journal article on this phenomenon, tying it to the economy.  Well, this may be true, but the pool was just as shallow in the summer of 2007 when the economic outlook was not as bleak.  So, here in a nutshell are some of the take-away lessons from my dean search stint:

If someone wants to be the dean, then you don't want them.  When our committee first started meeting, this maxim was frequently spoken around our table.  I didn't understand it then, but I do now.  At the most basic level, those who apply for a deanship from the nationally-circulated ad are not usually qualified.  These are people browsing the want ads in the back of the trade journal or the NYT (very expensive, btw).  They are generally attorneys at firms or in-house, or perhaps magistrates or trial court judges who have never thought about legal education but think they would be good at anything they set their mind to.  On a larger level, there seem to be people in academia who want to try their hand at deaning -- doesn't much matter where or how.  Naivete does not go a long way in deaning.

Deaning is different.  Great scholars have a set of skills, and none of them are budgeting, fundraising, negotiating with main campus, or motivating "the talent."  Many law firms are run poorly by partners who are great litigators because the skill set doesn't transfer well.  And, unfortunately the skill set required to be dean contains skills that may not be co-extensive.  Someone may be a good administrator but not understand or respect the scholarly enterprise sufficiently to gain the trust and respect of the faculty.  An amazing scholar very in the loop on the ways of rankings, hiring, publishing, etc. may not play well in front of donors.

Deaning is hard.  Today's successful law professor works many hours a week teaching, researching, writing, traveling, workshopping, blogging, speaking to the media, etc.  But, law professors generally set their own schedules, working in creative bursts at night or over a period of days.  I take my job very seriously, but I don't miss my kids' events (usually), try to get in exercise, and am able to eke our a work/life balance that I'm proud of.  Deans do not have this luxury of scheduling.  They work crazy hours and travel much more than most professors.  I once had a dean who told me that she ate two meals a day with strangers.  Many of us law professors prefer having students to clients; alumni are probably closer to clients, I would think.  The demands, the pressure -- it's all different.

Being a Dean means putting being a law professor on hold for awhile.  As our co-chair Tom Ulen told the National Law Journal, being a law professor is a great gig.  Asking a law professor to give that up for awhile to be a dean is difficult.  Bracketing work schedule changes and added stress, most scholars love to write.  Some deans are able to write while being a dean, but it is very difficult.  So, writing less, teaching less -- these are the trade-offs.

The more elite a school is, the less there is for a new dean to arbitrage and "make a mark."  Deans begin jobs at schools out of the Top 50 by promising to move their schools up in their rankings.  There's a lot of movement in the second through fourth tiers, and by tweaking certain things, moving up is quite do-able.  But schools don't move around that much in the Top 25.  One of our candidates told us that the only way Illinois is going to move into the Top 15 is if someone completely drops the ball or their school burns down.  Nice.  So, if you're a dean candidate worried about what your legacy will be, then you look to see if you can build a new building or some other visible project.  Growing the endowment seems so mundane.

Internal candidates can be great candidates.  Internals generally have a love or loyalty to the school that an outsider (unless an alumnus) probably doesn't.  An internal knows a lot about a school and already has thoughts on improvements.  Internals will usually have other benchmarks for considering their deanship to be successful other than rankings, buildings, etc.  Also, our consultant told us that people are far less willing to move these days because of the economy and the housing market.  How many laterals do you know with "rental properties" (i.e., their former primary residence) in quaint college towns?

I was never convinced of the "out-of-the-box" profile for candidates.  A lot of people make the argument that BigLaw managing partners and other very successful attorneys could make great deans.  I have two thoughts about that.  One, even if they would be able to fulfill the administrative requirements of the job, the faculty may not embrace them.  If the faculty never embraces the dean as one of their own, then it's not going to work no matter what.  Second, I'm not convinced that success in one legal field transfers to another.  I thought about this a lot during the presidential election.  Very impressive people may be excellent at what they do, but that doesn't mean they should lead a law school into the next era of legal education.

If you buy me a soda at a conference some day, I may have more to say, but this is enough for now.  Our fearless leader Tom liked to call me "indiscreet."  I prefer "guileless."

Full post as published by Conglomerate on February 05, 2009 (boomark / email).