Be Careful What You Wish For: Succeeding in the Dean Candidate Pool

• Publication year: 2008
• Citation: Vol. 31 No. 04

UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND LAW REVIEWVolume 31, No. 4SUMMER 2008

Be Careful What You Wish For: Succeeding in the Dean Candidate Pool

Gail B. Agrawal(fn*)

As a relatively new dean, my first thought upon receiving an invitation to serve as a panelist at the conference that gave rise to this series of papers was, "Where was this program when I was in the dean market?" The conference provided invaluable insights to those legal academics considering whether to relinquish, for a time, their role as full-time teachers and scholars to take on leadership and management responsibilities as the dean of a law school. I am grateful to the conference organizers and to Seattle University School of Law for convening it. My conference assignment focused on the second step of the process: how does a decanal candidate become a sitting dean?(fn1) In this short essay, I share some thoughts on what I know now as a successful candidate and contented dean that I wish I had known then as a dean candidate.

After a law professor or lawyer decides to submit or permit his or her name to be submitted in response an announcement seeking nominations for dean, the candidate will first find himself or herself in a large, undifferentiated candidate pool. Assuming the candidate has already decided he or she wants to become a dean, I would encourage her to reflect back to an old adage repeated to many would-be law professors when they decide to enter the teaching market: A great number of law teachers and law deans are teaching and leading at schools about which they knew very little before accepting an invitation to interview. A candidate's goal throughout the process is to seek the right fit: on what faculty could he or she make the greatest positive difference in the life of the law school as its dean? For most of those who would be dean, the time for narrowing a search is after learning more about a school than simply its geographic location and its U.S. News ranking.

The ideal time to prepare for success in the candidate pool is before becoming a candidate. Read the literature on "deaning." The deans' leadership issues of the University of Toledo Law Review are especially helpful.(fn2) My predecessor at University of Kansas School of Law, Bob Jerry (now dean of the University of Florida), provides excellent insights in his Primer for the First-Time Law Dean Candidate. (fn3) Engage in some introspection about why you want to be a dean, what skills you bring to the position, and what you hope to accomplish with the school you lead. To jumpstart this internal dialogue, a helpful source is Jeffrey O'Connell and Thomas O'Connell's article, The Five Roles of the Law School Dean: Leader, Manager, Energizer, Envoy, Intellectual.(fn4) You will want to know if these roles do not describe your career aspirations before you expend significant amounts of time on the dean search process, or worse, accept a deanship.

While the faculty is the heart of a law school, the dean of the law school has responsibilities that extend well beyond the crucial task of building and nurturing the very best faculty possible. If a dean candidate has spent most, or all, of her professional career as a faculty member, she will need a crash course on the non-faculty components of a law school.(fn5) Learn about recruitment and admissions of students, including students of color and other groups under-represented at the Bar. Understand career counseling and placement in general and, for a candidate further along in the search process, for the students at the school where you are interviewing. Consider the role of the law library as a provider of information, not merely a repository of books, and the role of technology in contemporary legal education. Give serious thought to your level of interest in alumni relations and fundraising. Finally, if you would be a dean of a public law school, consider your commitment to the local bar and bench and your likely interaction with the State's political leadership. These are important aspects of a successful dean's work.

After deciding that a law deanship might be for you, alert the faculty or professional colleagues who you would like to serve as nominators or references. Select those who know the legal academy and who know you well. Three or four faculty colleagues, including perhaps the dean or associate dean, are sufficient at the beginning of the process. As your candidacy advances, however, you should have a list of references that includes law school administrative staff, faculty, and perhaps some former students. Your references should be able to speak knowledgeably about your leadership, management, and communication styles.

When a candidate is notified that he or she has been nominated, the search committee will ask for a letter of interest and curriculum vitae, including a list of...