This essay is by Dean Frank H. Wu, who is Chancellor & Dean of University of California Hastings College of the Law. It was originally published on LinkedIn.
I once was honored to speak at a conference to colleagues (law school deans) about how to bring about change. During the Q&A, we panelists were asked by a newer appointee to this unusual role how she might realize her desire to create for students a new clinic that was oriented toward transactional practice rather than litigation.
My answer was contrarian. She should do nothing.
What I mean is that she personally and directly is not likely the best person at her institution to undertake this initiative. Her own enthusiasm is neither necessary to nor sufficient for the project. She could be an effective catalyst, possibly superlative as the spark. For reasons both political and practical, after that point her intentions would be well served by delegating.
I share with my peer the belief that skills training is crucial for law students. Every graduate of law school needs exposure to the actual work of attorneys, gaining hands-on experience with cases and transactions on behalf of real clients — under the supervision of experienced teachers, without anxieties about how to make a profit. Virtually the whole of the bar agrees about imposing such a prerequisite to entry into the profession.
That is what a clinic offers. Clients who cannot afford to retain full members of the bar benefit from the assistance of attorneys in training; they in turn acquire vital experience. A transactional clinic is all about doing deals, not fighting disputes — it's a type of legal practice less often depicted on television and in movies. To meet the demand, law schools increasingly are establishing clinics of all types. It's common now, though it was not a generation ago, for a law school to boast an array of clinics.
At my school, for example, we have established multiple such programs: in elder law, a field that barely existed when I was a student but which has become enormous since; representing startups and nonprofits, both of which are abundant in the San Francisco Bay Area where we are located; and on national security and privacy, issues of increasing concern to all Americans in an era of high-tech surveillance.
I take no credit for any of it. A person with passion exceeding mine has been the prime mover in each instance.
My responsibilities include developing a strategic plan; ensuring an environment supportive of ideas and risks; coordinating among departments and resolving conflicts that are inevitable; balancing personal ambitions with shared norms; and ensuring actions can be sustained over time within budgetary constraints. They do not encompass the actual day-to-day work, from "next action" to "next action" on a Gantt chart, to achieve the goal.
Schools are slower than I wish they were. That's a function of deliberation. The more unhurried the decision, the more genuine the discussion. It might take more than a year to set up a clinic, because windows open and close in the academic calendar, and multiple approvals may be needed within a bureaucracy.
Academic institutions may be an extreme example. They are different than companies, government agencies, or nonprofit organizations. The closest counterpart would be a co-operative.
The tradition of faculty governance remains strong. It is a democracy of individuals with tenure. It is they, not the nominal leader, who determine who else will be invited to join the club and the academic policies.
When I visit law firm managing partners, who perceive of us as holding the same job more or less, they express surprise at the limited range of actions deemed appropriate for addressing personnel matters within higher education. They would be shocked at the rights that must be respected: even the notion that a law school dean is similar to a law firm managing partner might trigger an adverse reaction about corporate values being imposed upon campus culture.
The requirements of colleges have increased profoundly since antiquity. An itinerant sophist would have recruited disciples at the agora (the public square). A faculty is no longer a collective of leading minds devoted to their own respective investigations and attracting a following of apprentices.
The expectations have accumulated in a manner that could not have been imagined by the teacher-scholars who held tutorials and conducted scientific experiments. A school is to offer health care, psychological counseling, disability accommodations, technological support, job placement services, and enrichment programming for the public. A school has to compete against rivals. A school also operates in the same environment as any other venture: reporting to government regulators, outside auditors, and independent watchdogs.
For anyone who heads an institution of higher education, the challenges have changed correspondingly. It is necessary to be outward facing — raising money, advocating for reform, ensuring good relationships with neighbors, and making public appearances in general. Yet it also involves demonstrating competence at and interest in the academic activities that scholar-teachers regard as the core of their career, while being enough of a businessperson to oversee the operations of an enterprise of considerable complexity.
Even without these constraints, however, any leader has to adapt her skills if she began as someone with skill in a specialized subject. Beyond higher education, with its emphasis on professorial prerogatives, every executive must be mindful of her limits. A good manager almost certainly knows less than those who report to her, as to the specific task they perform. A new supervisor has to avoid the temptation to take on tasks herself that she could assign to others.
A law school dean who presents the vision of a school dedicated to students, training them to join a service profession, must have support from those around her. She cannot implement everything or even anything; they will do so. She encourages; they execute. To get things done, she must find champions for the cause.
None of this is to suggest that one should strive to be a figurehead. I have to set up the process and the infrastructure within which everything else occurs. That includes assessing whether a proposal is more than good — if it is the best, taking into account the opportunity costs. It entails allocating the appropriate funding, whether by making a judgment call among competing choices or generating new resources.
An abstract concept becomes a concrete reality through teamwork. That is why a law school dean who wishes to open a clinic must rely on others. The same applies to all who have someone else reporting to them whatever the industry. A loner cannot become a leader; a dictator will not last as one.