University Times

The individual hired as the new dean of the School of Law should be a strong fundraiser; someone who can partner and foster relationships with the school’s alumni; someone who can build bridges with local and regional law firms; someone who can raise the national visibility of the school, perhaps even develop a national “identity” focused on one or two strong programs; someone who is well aware of the evolving changes in the legal job marketplace, as well as changes in the profession and in legal education; someone who can manage limited internal resources and deploy those resources in an effective way; someone who can advocate for a bigger piece of the University’s budgetary pie, and someone with excellent communication skills who can balance a teaching load while fulfilling the dean’s responsibilities.

These were among the suggestions made to the search committee charged with recommending candidates for the new dean of the law school. (See list of search committee members below.) The Oct. 3 open forum drew about 30 people, including faculty, staff, students and alumni.

The new dean will succeed Mary A. Crossley, who announced in May that she would resign the deanship effective July 1, 2012.

Crossley, who has served as dean since 1995, will remain on the law school faculty.

David DeJong, vice provost for Academic Planning and Resources Management who chairs the search committee, outlined the timeline for the committee’s work. The plan, DeJong said, is to submit a list of three-five unranked finalists to Provost Patricia Beeson by March 1. Semifinalists will be invited to campus to meet with the law school community in late January or early February.

“Before that we will be conducting interviews of a broader list of individuals to whittle down to semifinalists. What we’re doing right now is trying to generate as large a list of applicants as possible, and that includes doing significant amounts of ‘tree-shaking’ to get people to apply who might not think that they want to,” DeJong said.

The first order of business is to identify desirable qualities, he continued. “We’ve gotten a charge from the provost and have talked about some of the responsibilities we have, such as regarding affirmative action, nondiscrimination, those sorts of things.”

The committee is working with Chicago-based consultant Witt/Kieffer to generate a statement describing the position that will include a description of the school and the University and a list of desirable attributes.

DeJong said that statement is expected to be completed by the end of the month. He added that the committee expects to do a significant amount of national advertising once the statement is prepared.

DeJong then urged members of the audience, as well as members of the general University community, to recommend candidates, including themselves, by contacting him or a member of the search committee.

“We want to be very open about where the process is and where we stand and so on,” DeJong said. “The important caveat is that until the list of people coming to campus is announced, specific names of candidates will be kept confidential. The reason for that is many extremely qualified applicants who might not even think they’re interested will value that confidentiality as they mull a decision, and I think we’ll have a much stronger group of people to look at if we are successful in maintaining that confidentiality.”

Search committee member and Pitt law alumnus Robert Cindrich added: “It goes without saying that we want someone with high academic qualities, someone with respect in the legal community. At the same time we’re saying we want someone with various outgoing qualities to relate to alumni and raise funds. That’s a difficult combination to manage. I think it’s a good combination, but it’s a really difficult set of qualities to find in one person.”

One audience member suggested that the search committee, which he noted was made up mostly of academic lawyers, should extend its consultation to include officials from the Allegheny County Bar Association and like organizations to get the input of practicing attorneys, something DeJong said his committee would do.

Several audience members, as well as search committee members, reflected on the dilemma that all law schools face: The national emphasis on, and unintended consequences of, law school rankings and what the new dean’s attitude toward the rankings should be.

Faculty member George Pike, director of the Barco Law Library, said: “It is the 800-pound gorilla. But you do need to talk to the candidates about how they intend to approach this issue, both from a practical standpoint of how to improve our position but also a marketing standpoint, because there are limits to what a law school can do to improve [in the rankings].”

Law faculty member Harry Flechtner said, “I think it’s fair to say that on the faculty there are two attitudes. One is to fight against the whole idea of the rankings or to ignore them; and the other one is they’re a reality and you have to deal with them even when you don’t like them. Personally, I think they are a reality you have to deal with, and I would like to see a dean who recognizes that.”

Committee member Vivian Curran responded that only a tiny minority of Pitt law faculty believed that the rankings should be ignored, adding that a successful dean could not hold that view. “We can’t ignore them, or eventually we won’t have a law school,” Curran said.

DeJong added that the focus should be on those factors that the school can control and that enhance the value of the school. “For example, retention and placement are factors in the rankings that are obviously things we value and we can focus on,” he said. “To the extent external reputation also is a factor, there’s nothing we can do about that, at least directly, and you don’t worry about that as much. Certainly, whining about it doesn’t help either. But if you ignore the things we can do something about, that do matter, that can be counterproductive.”

Pike commented, “This is now the third dean’s search since I’ve been here. I recall on earlier searches that some candidates leave the impression that their goal is just to be a dean, not necessarily to be the Pitt law dean. There is a value in being committed to this deanship, however long the term will be and, hopefully, it will be a long term.”

DeJong responded, “Hear, hear. Searches can be challenging and we want this one not only to be successful but long-lasting.”

—Peter Hart

Members of the School of Law dean search committee are: chair David DeJong, vice provost for Academic Planning and Resources Management; law school faculty members Jessie Allen, assistant professor, John Burkoff, professor, Emily Collins, assistant clinical professor, Vivian Curran, professor, Haider Ala Hamoudi, assistant professor, and David Herring, professor and former dean; Robert Cindrich, chair of the School of Law board of visitors and senior adviser in the UPMC Office of the President, and Sarah Miley, law student.

The committee is staffed by Chuck Lyon, Office of the Provost.