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- A law school dean is usually the highest-ranking administrator in a law school. Almost every American law school refers to its highest-ranking administrator as a dean. Most have several assistant, associate, or vice deans as well (such as an associate dean of academics or an associate dean of students). The American Bar Association regulations on the operation of law schools, which must be followed for such an institution to receive and maintain ABA accreditation, define the role of the law school dean. These regulations specify that "A law school shall have a full-time dean, selected by the governing board or its designee, to whom the dean shall be responsible." Thus, a law school dean may not simply be a professor selected by fellow professors, nor even by the president of the university. In 1980, Jeffrey and Thomas O'Connell published The Five Roles of the Law School Dean: Leader, Manager, Energizer, Envoy, Intellectual, the authors identified five functions that must be undertaken by those holding the position. Boston College Law School interim dean James Rogers noted, "[i]n general, to be a successful law school dean... you need to be a distinguished scholar", but lamented that the position itself "allows you very little time for those activities that led you to the job in the first place". In particular, law school deans are also widely expected to engage in fundraising activities. In order to advance the interests of their institutions, law school deans must generally "maintain a positive relation with the state supreme court, the bar examiners, and other organized bar leaders who exercise some power to regulate law schools". More recently, fundraising has become a critical element of the profession, with Harvard Law School dean Robert C. Clark observing in 1998 that fundraising had gone from almost a nonexistent activity to taking up a third of his time, also stating that as a law school dean, "[y]ou've got to be the CEO of a large administrative staff... while being an intellectual, a political leader, and a fund-raiser". In 1987, it was noted that "the average deanship tenure is less than four years", a trend that continued into the 2010s, with the average tenure as of 2017 being 3.66 years. This contrasted with the experience of prior eras, in which the average tenure of a law school dean was 12 years. (en)
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- A law school dean is usually the highest-ranking administrator in a law school. Almost every American law school refers to its highest-ranking administrator as a dean. Most have several assistant, associate, or vice deans as well (such as an associate dean of academics or an associate dean of students). The American Bar Association regulations on the operation of law schools, which must be followed for such an institution to receive and maintain ABA accreditation, define the role of the law school dean. These regulations specify that "A law school shall have a full-time dean, selected by the governing board or its designee, to whom the dean shall be responsible." Thus, a law school dean may not simply be a professor selected by fellow professors, nor even by the president of the university. (en)
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