UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND LAW REVIEWVolume 31, No. 4SUMMER 2008
Commentary
Session 4: Succeeding in the Candidate Pool
W. H. Knight(fn*)
I am honored and delighted to have been asked to speak at this conference, more especially so because I am no longer a sitting dean. It is gratifying to see a number of dear friends and even more inspiring to see the number of you who are interested in pursuing deanships. The task of dean-ing will challenge and reward you like no other position in the academy. Before I begin, let me thank Dean Kellye Testy and the Seattle University School of Law for hosting an event focused on people of color and women, historic minorities in legal education leadership positions.
As a former Dean, I have the luxury of talking a bit more frankly than some of the people you will hear today. You see, every "how-to" session needs an example of what-not-to-do. I am that person-the good, the bad, and the unusual have all been a part of my experience as Dean and will likely be part of anyone who chooses to go down this path. For the next few minutes, I hope to talk about how one might navigate some of these inevitably difficult waters.
Let me begin by noting that, for the most part, the rewards for your labor as Dean come after you step down. Although the average tenure for a law Dean has increased over the past few years, the length of time is still a bit less than five years. In such a short time, a law dean does not remain in office long enough to see her recruited faculty advance through their careers to tenure. Strategic plans frequently take a few years to develop and even more time to bear fruit. Five or six years as Dean simply does not give one enough time to make the impact that most of us dream about when we become candidates for such a post. All of us of course, know the stories of those remarkable women and men who serve with distinction for seven, ten, or even fifteen years. By almost every account, those people should be, and are, acclaimed as great successes. They have toiled long enough to see curriculums change; young faculty become recognized experts in their fields; alumni grow to love their alma mater even more than they did as students; and, plans (whether fund-raising, capital construction, or strategic goals) become realities. Indeed, most law schools acknowledged as top-tier institutions have had the experience of a long-sitting dean who has helped their law schools develop and evolve. Unfortunately, most deans do no stay in their positions long enough to experience a cultural change/evolution in their institutions. So, let me begin by asking, why do we have this relatively short revolving door?
A. Mismatched Expectations
The first explanation centers on your reasons for seeking a deanship one of my closest mentors was David Vernon,(fn1) a former law school Dean and AALS President.(fn2) When I was first asked to consider entering a dean search, I went to David to discuss the flattering fact that someone might be interested in my serving as dean. His response caught me a bit by surprise, "why do you want to be a dean?" He offered no encouragement, no congratulations, only a simple-yet-difficult question. I told him that I thought there were things in legal education that I wanted like to see take place and that I thought one would be better situated to achieve those things from the position of dean. He received my answer with a wry smile and said, "That is precisely why you should want to be dean." There should be no other reason for your seeking a deanship-not status, not pay, and certainly not any sense of entitlement (whether by scholarly achievement or, by the mere passage of time). If you do not have a burning desire to make legal education better, stronger, then you should never seek the job. I have always thought that this was the most important piece of advice that I, or anyone could be given. The job of dean is filled with extraordinary responsibility and few thanks. Think long and think carefully about whether you want to pursue it.
A second...
