As I mentioned yesterday, being in the middle of a Dean search forces one to engage in many big-picture conversations about the goals and aspirations of your institution and how best to achieve them.  Michael Froomkin (whose institution is also searching for a Dean), has some thoughts about why he feels that "practitioner deans" (i.e., well-established attorneys, judges, etc.) aren't usually a good idea.  As you can see from the comments, different law school constituencies feel differently about this issue.  Professors seem to be the least amenable, while alumni and students may be more inclined to go with the nonacademic candidate.

The ideal law school dean candidate would be (if it existed) an excellent scholar, an excellent administrator, and an excellent fundraiser.  ( I personally believe that Heidi Hurd came very close to this ideal.)  Once you accept that you probably aren't going to find this ideal candidate, then the next question is which one of these facet your school is wiling to sacrifice, or at least allow for learning on the job.  For different schools, this answer may be different, and for some constituencies within a school, the answer may also be different.  What complicates this is that most law schools, like other parts of a research university, do at least two things.  Law schools train and graduate future attorneys, but they also conduct research and provide valuable contributions into the marketplace for ideas.  At the highest level, law schools use great "legal scientists" who inform the elected and the populace on the issues of the day.  So, as the comments to Michael's post suggest, those who see the first contribution of a law school as training and graduating future attorneys will be more attracted to a well-known attorney or judge who brings great knowledge of the legal profession and the challenges that face the local and national bar.  However, if one is committed to the second contribution of law schools, then one sees a potential disconnect between the nonacademic candidate and the need for a dean to promote and develop meaningful legal scholarship.

In any event, a school is generally looking at candidates whose skills don't entirely map on to that unique skill set that the ideal dean would have.  Teaching and producing excellent scholarship don't teach someone to be able to supervise all the employees of a law school, keep the trains running on time, move the school up the rankings, recruit great students, recruit and retain great faculty, and raise gobs of money.  Being an extremely successful attorney may teach someone an awful lot about an area of the law, the working of the courts or dealmaking, and how to develop clients, but it may not develop some of the skills listed above, as wells as being able to converse internally and externally about the past, present and future of legal scholarship and legal education.  I've always thought it was interesting that in law firms, attorneys who are great litigators or deal lawyers then get elected managing partner, which requires a completely different set of skills, just like the excellent scholar/teacher who gets appointed dean.  In the perfect world, any successful academic candidate will also have some sort of administrative experience, and I would think that the best practitioner candidate would also have some scholarly record.

A very knotty question, but a good conversation worth having.

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