Law school dean

[2] 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.

[5] 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".

[6] 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".

[4] University of South Dakota School of Law dean Thomas Geu wrote an article comparing a law school deanship to a complicated game in which the dean must marshal and hold onto resources which will be meagerly awarded for feats like increasing bar exam scores or negotiating an amicable collective bargaining agreement with the faculty, but removed in much larger measure if bar exam scores fall or if the collective bargaining agreement is reached acrimoniously.

[8] This contrasted with the experience of prior eras, in which the average tenure of a law school dean was 12 years.