Legal Education Commons^™

Freeriders And Diversity In The Legal Academy: A New Dirty Dozen List, Ediberto Román, Christopher B. Carbot

Faculty Publications

Latina and Latino student enrollment in U.S. law schools the last few decades has increased. This increase, however, has not resulted in a comparable increase in Latino and Latina law professors. To foster diversity in law school faculties and to increase Latina representation, the “Dirty Dozen List” was published. The List was comprised of the top twelve U.S. law schools located in high Latina populated areas but lacking a single Latina professor on the faculty. The List served to increase awareness of the lack of diversity at some of the nation’s top legal institutions, as well as “shame” these schools …

Leading Change In Legal Education: Good News For Diversity, Antoinette Sedillo Lopez

Seattle University Law Review

Two recent influential books on legal education, Educating Lawyers and Best Practices for Legal Education, come to similar conclusions about the problems with many legal education programs today. Many other suggestions for improvement in legal education programs are also similar. A major point made in both books is the need to train lawyers in their roles and skills as professionals. The books both contemplate a move from the current model of large classes taught through modified Socratic dialogue to a sequenced set of courses and experiences that build on basic legal analytical skill and provide opportunities for real life and …

Selected Commentary, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

First, why become a dean? This is the million-dollar question. It is a critically important question to ask yourself. To adequately answer that question, you must ask some related ones: What are the rewards and challenges of deaning? When is the right time--professionally and personally--for me to be a dean? These are as much personal as professional queries.

Deaning For Whom? Means And Ends In Legal Education, Hon. Kristin Booth Glen

Seattle University Law Review

I was an accidental dean. Law school deanship, or any kind of administration, was something that had never occurred to me. But after almost thirty happy and rewarding years as a constitutional litigator, state trial and appellate judge, and frequent law school professor, my dear friend, W. Haywood Burns, asked me to apply for the deanship at City University of New York School of Law (CUNY). Any request from Haywood was a good enough reason for complying. When, to my surprise, I was selected, I had to confront the more profound question of why I should become a law school …

Be Careful What You Wish For: Succeeding In The Dean Candidate Pool, Gail B. Agrawal

Seattle University Law Review

My conference assignment focused on the second step of the process: how does a decanal candidate become a sitting dean? 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.

Knowing Which Deanship Is The Right One, R. Lawrence Dessem

Seattle University Law Review

In order to maximize the chance of a good fit between the dean candidate and law school, the candidate should (1) carefully plan her law school dean search; (2) conduct thorough discovery concerning schools of potential interest during the search process; (3) be candid and open during the interview process; and (4) take time to thoughtfully consider any offers received. Each of these steps in the dean search process will now be considered.

Succeeding In The Candidate Pool: Resources Available For Persons Interested In Becoming A Law School Dean, David A. Brennan

Seattle University Law Review

This presentation covers three areas that fall under my supervision as Deputy Director of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). First, I will discuss the two Deans Databanks that I administer, which relate directly to increasing diversity among the ranks of law school deans in America: the Women Deans Databank and the Minority Deans Databank. In particular, I will address how these two databanks reflect the core values of the AALS and how the databanks function in the deanship process. Second, I will discuss the Law Deanship Manual, an AALS publication that addresses nearly every aspect of what it …

Recruiting Sexual Minorities And People With Disabilities To Be Dean, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

As our day-to-day work lives make abundantly clear, a law faculty is a many-headed creature: an assortment of people with a variety of interests, strengths, foibles, personalities, and identities. Within the legal academy, a dominant consensus acknowledges that a strong faculty embodies diversity along multiple axes, including, for example, race, gender, religion, age, political ideology, research and teaching methodologies, and subject matter expertise.

The dean, however, stands alone, and stands above. Thus, issues of expectation, representation, comfort with and fear of difference operate quite differently when deans are selected, and when they do their jobs. The dean exercises authority over …

Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Find Me The Perfect (Decanal) Match, William B.T. Mock

Seattle University Law Review

I have been asked to address the question, “How do you know which deanship is the right one?” Since I am the only panel member never to have served as the dean of a law school, this naturally involves some speculation on my part. I have interviewed for some decanal positions, and have even had my name forwarded to university presidents more than once, but I have never found the right fit premised by the panel's topic. As a result, a little further into this essay, speculation even ventures into fiction or, as law professors like to call it, a …