© 2013 The Texas Lawbook.
By Natalie Posgate
Staff Writer for The Texas Lawbook
The search for a new dean at the SMU Dedman School of Law has barely germinated, but it’s already buried in controversy among the Hilltop community.
Some of the law school’s most prominent alumni and donors expressed open disapproval of SMU Provost Paul Ludden’s decision to remove John Attanasio, the current dean of the law school. Discontent and confusion grew even more this past week when the provost appointed Cox School of Business Dean Albert Niemi, a non-lawyer, to lead the search committee.
Even those who are on board with the university’s decisions have strongly differing, even conflicting visions about the focus of the next dean and the law school’s priorities moving forward, which complicates the search committee’s task even more.
“I think the jury is out on how this experiment turns out and we may not really know that result for several years,” said SMU Dedman alum and significant financial donor Mike Lynn of Lynn Tillotson Pinker & Cox. “I think alumni are hopeful for the future but concerned this change has not been managed well and most are awaiting a strong signal [that] better management will be forthcoming before committing time and resources.”
Other prominent SMU alumni have been less guarded in their criticism of university leadership’s handling of the situation and the new direction.
Darrell Jordan, a past president of the State Bar of Texas and SMU alum, said last week that the “way in which the provost handled this pretty well assures that no one of any stature will want the job.”
“I am surprised the president hasn’t terminated the provost over his ineptness,” he said.
Ludden informed Attanasio in December that his contract would not be renewed when it expires in May. Attanasio, who is the second longest serving law school dean in Texas, has been at SMU for nearly 15 years. Ludden, Turner, Neimi and Attanasio have declined requests for an interview.
According to SMU spokesperson Patti LaSalle, Ludden appointed Niemi as the search committee chair because Niemi is the senior dean at the University. It is SMU’s custom for a senior dean to chair a search committee for another dean.
Jordan, Lynn and dozens of other prominent alumni complain that SMU officials still have not given an adequate explanation about why Attanasio is being dismissed, but they’ve heard from university leaders that there are three primary reasons: the law school’s recent decline in the US News rankings, Attanasio’s insistence that the law school needed independence from the university’s strict oversight and the university’s desire to have a larger share of the law school’s fundraising successes in recent years.
“Fundraising tensions, from what I have been told, have been a big part of what the problem is,” said high-profile Dallas divorce lawyer Brian Webb, also an adjunct professor at SMU Dedman.
“The university had some jealousy about the fundraising abilities John and the law school had that was not being shared and if that’s behind it I think it’s a serious mistake,” Webb said. “It’s because of too much success of by the law school, not too little. It seems like an odd reason to fire somebody.”
Massachusetts-based academic headhunter Lucy A. Leske of the national search firm Witt/Kieffer said that there is a growing trend to increase collaboration between law schools, which have been historically more independent, and the universities they are tied to.
“I think that law schools were able to enjoy a very independent, almost un-scrutinized existence for many years,” said Leske, who is currently helping the University of Connecticut School of Law search for a new dean. “We have a number of universities needing to be capitalized in the wealth of their alumni… whether they’re law graduates, medical graduates, or science graduates. Presidents and provosts say they want access to the donor bases.”
Leske and others say law schools, including SMU Dedman, face increased pressure from university presidents to raise their rankings by US News & World Report and other organizations. SMU Dedman has witnessed a rankings decline in recent years as the US News made part-time and night law school students, which traditionally are more ethnically diverse but also have lower grade point averages and lower LSAT scores, a bigger part of their scoring evaluation.
“Rankings are changing and [universities] want deans much more metric and results oriented,” Leske said. “They don’t want to see their school dropped at any rankings or any compromise.”
There are many SMU Dedman alumni who, while they supported Attanasio as dean, believe that having Niemi lead the search committee could be a positive.
“The next law dean needs to be business-centric and do a better job of connecting the law school to the Texas business community,” said Chris Willis, a SMU Dedman alum and general counsel of Dallas-based Interstate Batteries. “The law school dean needs to do more joint efforts with the SMU business school, and having the dean of the business school leading the search could help make that happen.”
While Willis thinks the search committee should hire a law dean who focuses on expanding SMU’s local and regional presence in the business world, other alumni said the next dean needs to raise the law school’s national profile.
“If you want to start climbing in the rankings, you have to be less of a regional school and more of a national school,” said Scott Kimpel, a 1998 SMU Dedman graduate who is now a securities and M&A partner at Hunton & Williams in Washington, D.C. “The only way to do that is to send your graduates outside of the markets of Dallas and Houston.”
Kimpel, who spent four years on the executive staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission before joining Hunton & Williams, invested a significant amount of time visiting law schools around the country with SEC Commissioner Troy A. Paredes, a former professor at Washington University School of Law.
Based on his observations, Kimpel believes the new SMU Dedman dean should increase the number of endowed professorships, published work from tenured professors and academic conferences to help SMU step up to the nation’s top law schools.
Other alumni disagree, pointing out that Attanasio dramatically increased SMU Dedman’s national and international profile, as evidenced by the fact that the law school is hosting US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia as a guest lecturer this week and has had nearly every Supreme Court justice speak at the law school during the past few years.
In addition, some faculty members and alumni said Attanasio has pressured law school faculty to speak at more academic conferences and to be published in more legal journals.
The search committee will include law school faculty, law students, members of the Board of Trustees, law school executive board members, alumni and leaders from the local legal community, according to SMU officials. No official start date for the search has been determined, but the committee will hire an outside search firm to assist with the hunt for the new law dean.
Gene Roberts, an alum who served as a SMU student representative for the search committee that hired Attanasio in 1998, said that a history professor named Hal Williams headed that search. Roberts said bringing in a leader outside of the legal community could bring a fresh perspective.
“He was a great chair of the search committee,” said Roberts, who owns a litigation and dispute resolution firm in Dallas. “I think it’s a good idea as long as there are representatives of the community from various law school constituencies.”
Roberts said he respects what Attanasio has done for SMU Dedman, but doesn’t see the harm in trying to bring in fresh blood.
“He’s been there now for 15 years, which is a long time to be a leader,” he said.
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