Georgia Law Dean Search

The University of Georgia School of Law has formally announced its dean search and named its committee members. The announcement is here.  The committee is here.  Like UNC Law, this has to be one of the most appealing deanships in the country.  Why not move to Athens, court a committed alumni base and lead a great faculty at regionally dominant law school?

Comments

[Former Editor]

I see that there is a current student on the search committee. Is that normal? Student involvement in a dean search at my alma mater is much less meaningful.

[Saurabh Vishnubhakat]

Anecdotally, some schools that tout practice-focused and skills-based curricula seem to do this/do it meaningfully, perhaps because these schools already conceive of the institution-student relationship somewhat differently. I, too, would be interested to learn how prevalent the practice is.

[Roger Sterling]

http://www.lstscorereports.com/schools/georgia/2013/

UGA Law School has a 67.1% Law School Transparency score, with 15% non-employed, so 35 slots in each class need to be eliminated.

[Peter Yu]

It's actually not that uncommon, but school cultures and traditions vary quite significantly. At Drake here, we have students in our faculty meetings as well. I think schools are shooting themselves in the foot by not letting students see the complexities of the decision-making process within a university (which is in a world of its own, whether we like it or not). The more students listen to and participate in our debate on the pros and cons, the more they realize our challenges, and the more feedback they can provide. Many matters we discussed (e.g. whether to allow students to earn credit for unpaid internships with law firms or private corporations) are not that straightforward; they help some students but inevitably hurt others (e.g. those who already can secure paid internships). When I consider making changes to the intellectual property curriculum, I consult members of our Intellectual Property Law Society as well. It's really hard to provide student-oriented programming without consulting our students.