© 2013 The Texas Lawbook.
By Natalie Posgate
Staff Writer for The Texas Lawbook
(December 2) – The SMU Dedman School of Law appears to be one step closer to finding a new dean.
Students and faculty confirm that the search committee and its outside search firm, Russell Reynolds Associates, have identified six potential candidates for the permanent dean position, which is currently filled by Interim Dean Julie Forrester.
It’s not certain that any of the six will become the next dean, however, because the ultimate decision is up to SMU Provost Paul Ludden. If Ludden doesn’t find any of the candidates to be the right fit, the search will continue, sources say.
SMU spokesperson Kent Best said in an email last week that the search process is ongoing.
The law school invited the six candidates to visit the campus and meet with faculty, staff and students. According to students, the school sent email invitations to attend an open meet-and-greet each time a candidate visited.
The six candidates are from all over the nation, and two are currently deans at other law schools. The rest are law professors. Some members of the faculty have contended that they consider the frontrunners to be Paul McGreal and Beverly Moran.
McGreal is currently the dean at the University of Dayton School of Law and received his J.D. from SMU Dedman in 1994. Moran is currently a professor at Vanderbilt Law School and has taught at universities all over the world. In January 2012, Moran was one of the finalists to become the University of Missouri School of Law’s new dean. If selected, Moran would become the first woman African American law dean at SMU.
McGreal’s roots with SMU go even beyond his law degree. His very first teaching job was at the law school in 1996 as a visiting professor in constitutional law.
Scott Kimpel, one of McGreal’s students from 1996, implied that it is uncertain whether McGreal’s SMU roots could work in his favor in gaining the dean position.
“The fact that Dean McGreal is an SMU Dedman alum can be both a blessing and a curse,” said Kimpel, a 1998 SMU Dedman graduate who now practices securities and corporate law at Hunton & Williams. “There is certainly a great story to be told about an alum coming home to run the law school.
“On the other hand… many law schools nowadays prefer to hire from outside the alumni ranks, especially when a graduate from a higher ranked (or elite) program is available,” Kimpel added, alluding to McGreal’s LL.M. that he received from Yale Law School.
However, the J.D. tends to be most important when weighing academic backgrounds, Kimpel said.
The search is a result of longtime SMU Dedman Law Dean John Attanasio departing earlier this year after Ludden and the university’s President R. Gerald Turner declined to renew Attanasio’s contract, which expired in May.
In February, Ludden formed a search committee and appointed real estate law professor Julie Forrester as interim dean. The 18-member search committee, which is chaired by SMU Cox School of Business Dean Albert W. Niemi, includes DFI Management CEO Robert H. Dedman, Jr., AT&T General Counsel Wayne Watts, former Texas Supreme Court Justice Deborah Hankinson, Akin Gump partner Alan Feld and Haynes and Boone founder Mike Boone, who also serves as chair-elect of the SMU Board of Trustees.
The following are the six current candidates and their bios:
Courtesy of udayton.edu
• Paul McGreal is a 1994 SMU Dedman alumni, and is currently the dean at the University of Dayton School of Law. He also received an L.L.M. from Yale Law School. His areas of expertise include constitutional law, religion and the law, First Amendment rights, corporate compliance and business ethics. Before joining Dayton Law in 2011, McGreal was at Southern Illinois University School of Law, where he served as interim associate dean for a year. McGreal has also taught at SMU Dedman, Texas A&M University’s Executive MBA Program, George Mason University School of Law and South Texas College of Law, where he established the Corporate Compliance Center. Before joining academia, McGreal worked in the Dallas office of Baker Botts.
• Beverly Moran is currently a law and sociology professor at Vanderbilt Law School, where she has been since 2001. Her expertise is in tax law, and her work includes an analysis of the disparate impact of the federal tax code on blacks as well as a text on the taxation of charities and other exempt organizations. She also focuses research on law and development, interdisciplinary scholarship and comparative law. Other schools she has taught at include the University of Wisconsin Law School, the University of Cincinnati College of Law, University of Colorado, the University of Asmara in Eritrea, the People’s University in Beijing, the Peking University and the University of Giessen in Germany.
• Katherine Hunt Federle is a professor and director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Law & Policy Studies at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law. Her areas of expertise include children and the law, criminal law and family law. Other schools that have been part of Federle’s teaching career include the University of Hawaii School of Law and Tulane Law School. While serving a fellowship at Georgetown University Law Center, Federle supervised third-year students in the Juvenile Justice Clinic and represented children and adults in the Washington, D.C. court system as well as the federal courts.
Courtesy of fsu.edu
• Donald Weidner is the dean of Florida State University College of Law and is a recognized expert on partnership, fiduciary duties and real estate finance. Weidner, who has been dean for a majority of his 22 years at Florida State, was named one of the nine transformative law deans of the last decade in 2011. Weidner has also served as a visiting professor at the University of Texas School of Law, Stanford Law School, the University of New Mexico School of Law and the University of North Carolina School of Law.
Courtesy of bu.edu
• Kevin Outterson is currently a professor of health law, bioethics and human rights at Boston University School of Law, where he co-directs the school’s Health Law Program – currently ranked No. 5 in the country. Outterson is also the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics; faculty co-advisor to the American Journal of Law & Medicine; immediate past chair of the Section on Law, Medicine & Health Care of the AALS; and a member of the Board of the Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics. Outterson co-led a team at Boston University that filed four amicus briefs supporting the Affordable Care Act, which was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in spring 2012.
• Jennifer Collins is the Associate Provost for Academic Initiatives and professor of law at Wake Forest University School of Law. She teaches criminal law, criminal procedure, family law and gender and the law. Before joining Wake Forest, Collins spent more than seven years as an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of Columbia, where she specialized in homicide cases.
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