Ten Questions for Unconventional Dean Candidates
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Ten Questions for Unconventional Dean Candidates
NEIL FULTON*
Entering a decanal search is a daunting prospect. Any candidate, facing
a long process to get a hard job, should ask themselves some key questions
before undertaking the process.
This is particularly so for unconventional candidates. By that, I mean
any candidate not moving from tenured faculty or law school administration
to a deanship.1 There is tremendous diversity among a group defined
exclusively by what they are not (current law faculty or administration) as
opposed to what they are (any variety of other legal professional
backgrounds). But, as an unconventional candidate, both the search process
and the job of being a dean hold different challenges.2 An unconventional
candidate does not start as a member of the legal academic community.3 It is
fair to say that they do not know what they are getting into in the same way
as traditional candidates. They, therefore, face threshold questions that are a
little more numerous and pressing.
Thinking back on my experience as an unconventional decanal
candidate,4 there are questions that I believe candidates must ask before
tossing their hat into the decanal search ring. Conveniently, those questions
fit into a top ten list.5
* Neil Fulton is the 14' Dean of University of South Dakota School of Law. Prior to becoming dean, he
was in private practice, chief of staff to Governor M. Michael Rounds, and Federal Public Defender for
North and South Dakota. The author wishes to think everyone who advised him as an unconventional dean
candidate and particularly his wife Molly who was the most patient sounding board and confidant
imaginable.
1. Peter Keane, Interloper in the Fields ofAcademe, 35 U. TOL. L. REv. 119 (2003); See e.g., John
D. Hutson, From Admiral to Dean, 35 U. TOL. L. REV. 101 (2003) (noting he is a non-traditional dean as
he became dean following retirement from the Navy).
2. See, e.g., Willis Whichard, From a Warm Bench to Hot Seat: The Transition from Judging to
Deaning, 36 U. TOL. L. REV. 221, 222-23 (2004) (noting both the ability to work[] on one case at a time
until it is finished as an appellate judge, an amenity not permitted to the law school dean and that most
of an appellate judge's work is performed behind closed doors while most of the dean's work ... takes
place in the open); Hutson, supra note 1, at 107 (noting from experience as a former Navy JAG officer
that [a] commander is given the authority and responsibility to lead but [a] dean isn't given the same
clear authority as authority and responsibility are often separated); Peter Keane, supra note 1, at 122
(claiming that [t]he job of a law professor is the worst possible training ground for being a dean).
3. See Keane, supra note 1, at 119; See also Whichard, supra note 2, at 221.
4. My background had been private practice, state government service, and indigent defense. I
had no connection to the legal academy when I applied to be dean.
5. A top ten has been good enough for great thinkers like Moses, David Letterman, and in the
context of decanal literature R. Lawrence Dessem. See, e.g., R. Lawrence Dcssem, Top Ten Reasons to
Be a Law School Dean, 33 U. TOL. L. REv. 19 (2001) [hereinafter Dessem, Top Ten]; R. Lawrence
71](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/onulr46&div=7&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Ten Questions for Unconventional Dean Candidates
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