Legal Commentary

Live from Cleveland (where I'm attending a really good AALS mid-year meeting on Con Law), here's Part 2 of my set of dos and don'ts for new associate deans.  (Part 1 can be found here).

5. Keep secrets. As associate dean you won't just be privy to confidential information, such as all student evaluations, but you'll also be the recipient of confidential personal information your colleagues provide about themselves.   I didn't expect this, and I was shocked at how much my colleagues told me about themselves.  Absolutely respect the confidentiality of that information.  They're giving it to you either because it's relevant (at least in their minds) to some decision they need or want you to make or because they view you, by virtue of your position, as a confidant, advisor or mentor.  In either case your effectiveness as associate dean depends on their confidence that you won't breach the confidence.  There are limits, of course; talking to the dean about something relevant to a decision she might have to make may be justifiable.  But talking to your friends on the faculty never is, at least not without the consent of the individual.  If it gets out that you're not keeping confidences your effectiveness as associate dean is gone.

6. Make mistakes.  Not on purpose, of course.  But don't be afraid to take a risk.  You have discretion, which means you have the authority to do something that's not been tried before.  If you do your due diligence and conclude something is worth a try, then don't be scared away by the fact it's not been done before.  Deviating from past practice means you run a risk of things not working out.  But if you think it's a risk worth running, then do it, and don't beat yourself up if it doesn't work out.  You wouldn't have known unless you had tried.

7. Don't expect to make a lot of policy.  For most associate deans the main task is to make sure the trains run on time.  This is not very glamorous, and for most of us it's not as much fun as setting your law school's policy.  But at most schools policy will be made by the dean and the full faculty.  You'll certainly be consulted heavily by both as they consider policy issues, but you won't be the boss.  Get used to that, and embrace your inner train conductor.

8. Don't be chained to your email.  This is more of a general piece of professional advice, but since law professors probably aren't inundated every day with email it's worth giving this nugget here.  You'll get lots of email, every day.   It's terribly tempting to make dealing with that email your first task every morning.  I had a particularly bad time with this; indeed, at some points I succumbed to the body count strategy of counting as a victory a day where fewer emails were in my inbox at the end of the day than at the beginning.  Don't do this.  Figure out some way to manage your email so (1) you identify the most urgent ones and deal with them, (2) you don't let less urgent emails sit in your inbox for an inordinate time, while (3) not making email the center of your day.  In particular, consider turning off your email (not just minimizing the screen) after you do your initial check in the morning, returning to it only at intervals during the day.  Otherwise you'll be constantly notified of new emails, and you'll be tempted to drop what you're doing to respond.   Don't let email run your day.

More to come in a subsequent post.