Michael Wolff’’s journey to the Saint Louis University School of Law makes for both a good yarn and an illustration of how smarts and serendipity contribute to the making of a law dean.

Graduating from Dartmouth College, where he was editor of “America’s oldest college newspaper” (founded 1799), Wolff eschewed journalism for a law career, though he worked for what was then the Minneapolis Star throughout his University of Minnesota Law School years. “I thought I’d have more autonomy as a lawyer,” he said in an interview. Continue reading →

Turns out that Nick Allard was a kind of stealth appointment as dean of Brooklyn Law School in 2012. Not that he or the law school’s board of trustees planned it that way. A consummate Washington, D.C., lawyer and lobbyist – Allard was for more than 20 years a partner at Latham & Watkins and then at Patton Boggs, chairing government relations and public policy groups at both firms – he has delivered on his obvious government, agency and institutional connections. Continue reading →

The job of law dean, as Gary Myers sees it, is mostly about constituencies and collaborative relationships. “I only wish I had realized in advance how many different constituencies we serve beyond the obvious ones – students, faculty, staff and alumni,” Myers, dean of the University of Missouri School of Law, said in an interview.

Every interaction, he said, allows him to move beyond a limited connection to a long-term alliance that will benefit the law school. It’s a multitasking challenge, Myers said, in which he is sometimes “learning by doing.” Continue reading →