University of Miami School of Law

Though no decisions were made at Monday’s meeting, I think it was the sense of the faculty members at that meeting that we should try to decide on procedures to be followed for indicating faculty preferences on dean candidates before we get into a substantive discussion of the candidates themselves. In the agenda she sent out Monday afternoon Donna proposed 10:00-11:30 a.m. as the time for the procedural discussion.

I would like to suggest that we consider two things during that part of Thursday’s meeting.

First, I would suggest the following procedures for determining the faculty’s preferences:

1. We would hold an initial screening vote.

2. If there is more than one acceptable candidate, and we decide to rank them, we would do so using (a) a single transferable voting system (STV) if we have at least three acceptable candidates, or (b) a straight vote if we have two.

3. After the determination of the ranking, the law school members of the Committee or the Committee will report to the faculty at a follow-up meeting on the report the Committee plans to give the president, in order to get faculty feedback.

These procedures would not be implemented at Thursday’s meeting; we would just be deciding on the procedures we would use later — after we’ve heard the committee’s report on all the candidates (e.g., check-outs, reports on student, staff, and alumni views) and had a full discussion of all the candidates. While the plan is to begin a discussion of the three current candidates on Thursday, there’s no way we can complete the discussion even on those three candidates this Thursday; among other things, I don’t think we’ll even have a report from the committee on Thursday. And there may be additional candidates to be brought through; I gather that the Committee’s plan is to let us know one way or the other about that later today.

I’ve put the details below. The most complicated issue may be the last one, concerning the report to the president.

Second, I think we need to address the mechanics of how we will conduct any balloting:

1. Should any voting we do be conducted immediately at the conclusion of the substantive discussion of the candidates (once again, I don’t think this would be on Thursday), or should we break for a day or so to give people time to digest or consider? If the latter, we would reconvene again in a day or two to conduct the actual voting. This may be something we could decide at the end of the substantive discussion, but it’s useful to consider it now because of the second point.

2. Should we use absentee ballots? I would urge that we not have absentee ballots, for two reasons. First, discussion is crucial to voting. Second, and equally important, the procedures I’m suggesting would contemplate more than one ballot taken. The first is a screening ballot; then there would be one or more ranking votes. Trying to accomplish this with absentee ballots makes no sense. If we are going to have absentee ballots we’ll need to design our procedures around accommodating absentee ballots, and that strikes me as backwards.

At the same time, I don’t think it’s necessary or wise to cut out faculty members who can’t be physically present for the meeting or meetings. We should have telephone conferencing for any faculty member is who is not in town on the day or days of the meeting, with a system for allowing them to get on the queue to speak, and also a way for them to indicate to a designated person how their written ballots should be cast in the course of the meeting. I realize some people may be in different times zones with all the inconvenience that entails, but no system is going to be perfect.

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Details:

1. Initial screening vote: We would begin by voting “acceptable” or “not acceptable” on each of the candidates (however many there are). We would not do this in a sequence. We would it on each of the candidates all at the same time, and announce the results at the same time. For each candidate we’d add up the acceptable and unacceptable votes, with the aim of screening out candidates who had a majority of unacceptable votes.

Comment:

This vote would function as the faculty counterpart to the screening the Dean Search Committee engaged in; potential candidates who did not pass that screening test were not brought before the faculty at all. In part because the Committee quite properly erred on the side of bringing someone in who might or not prove acceptable to the faculty (in order to minimize the risk that a candidate who could prove exciting to the faculty would never get before it), the faculty needs to make an initial determination of minimum acceptability. Equally important, it will be helpful to any dean candidate who may be ultimately chosen to have had at least a straight-out vote of “acceptability” from the faculty. This would be lacking if we used only a a single transferable vote (STV) scheme without an initial screening vote.

Michael’s initial memo, along with Terry’s e-mail and the lengthy exchange on the faculty blog between Michael and Patrick (see http://plan.law.miami.edu/?p=45#comments), all persuade me that all voting systems present complexities and difficulties. In this case, it’s possible that someone who thought that as a matter of principle we should send over only one name might mark all but his or her favorite as unacceptable, even if they thought that another candidate was also acceptable. But this represents a substantive choice concerning the way to handle the selection of a dean, not dishonesty or strategizing. And of course, someone might mark all but one candidate as unacceptable if they thought there was only one acceptable candidate. Once again, this is a substantive choice. If someone concludes, after our discussion, that (a) more than one candidate is acceptable and (b) we should send more than one candidate, there would be no real incentive to mark all but his or her favorite candidate as unacceptable.

It’s worth emphasizing that before we take the initial screening vote, one thing we will discuss is whether it would be a serious problem to send only one candidate to the president — and equally whether we should send any candidate at all. If someone is persuaded, for example, that even if we were to ultimately strongly prefer a candidate it would be highly impolitic to send over only one, there’s no rational reason why that person would then, under those circumstances, mark only one candidate as acceptable. Of course, this assumes that the Dean Search Committee effectively reports to the president that there was a very wide gap between the candidates in terms of faculty preference. Because of the importance of this aspect, it’s crucial for any voting system to work properly that the faculty know, while it’s voting (and discussing the candidates) that it will see the Dean Search Committee’s report with meaningful time to comment. (Stage 5, below).

An alternative approach would be to vote in stage 1 solely on the number of candidates to send over. One concern with this approach is that it would mean that no candidate would have a majority of the faculty saying on a straight up or down vote that they’re at least acceptable. There’s a virtue of having some simplicity at some point in the process. Further, by the time we get to the actual voting, we will have already had the discussion about the candidates on the merits. I don’t see how a vote on the number of candidates would be anything other than a vote on acceptability of particular candidates, but with the results obscured by the absence of names. We can know what an “acceptable/not acceptable” vote on candidates mean about the candidates; an outcome of “1″ or “2″ or “3″ doesn’t give us that information. In general, I think a voting system that gives us that information would be better.

In the end, I think an initial screening will have significant benefits and we should rely on the good judgment of the faculty in executing it in a way that avoids theoretical problems.

2. Ranking the candidates.

a. If there’s more than one acceptable candidate, we vote on whether to rank candidates at all or just discuss strengths/weaknesses. I tend to think that we should rank them, but I don’t know whether everyone agrees, and it’s something we haven’t really discussed, so we should have a point at which we decide this. It doesn’t seem to make sense to take this up before an initial screening, so this would be an appropriate point to determine this issue. Obviously, if we vote “no” on this, the rest of this second stage is irrelevant; only the third stage would remain.

b. If there are more than two acceptable candidates, we use the single transferable vote (STV) system to rank the candidates.

i. Exception: If there are only two acceptable candidates, we can just vote on those two for top rank.

iii. We hold a second vote using the STV system to pick the second choice, and so on if necessary until everyone’s ranked.

Comment:

Obviously stage 2 is irrelevant unless we have at least two candidates acceptable to a majority. Assuming we reach that point, I’m persuaded that STV can be a useful system for ranking where there are multiple candidates. But in my view, this conclusion is subject to one major caveat: I believe it’s useful only if used for a pool of candidates who have been determined to be acceptable. Without stage 1, we could have candidates in the mix who aren’t acceptable even to a majority of the faculty. Those faculty members would have no way to so indicate; they could only vote “2″ or “3″ for the unacceptable candidate. This would be misleading; voting “3″ on someone who you think is unacceptable or way below the top candidate or candidates, and should really be a “9″ or “10,” doesn’t capture people’s views. I realize the voting system is supposed to be ordinal, but mere ranking in a pool of people who could be unacceptable to a majority of the faculty looks to me intrinsically misleading. On the other hand, while ranking individuals in a pool of candidates who are all at least acceptable to a majority may not fully convey intensity of preferences, it’s still workable.

3. After the determination of the ranking, the law school members of the Committee or the Committee will report to the faculty at a follow-up meeting on the report the Committee plans to give the president, in order to get feedback.

Comment:

In some ways this may be the hardest procedural issue to be decided at Thursday’s meeting, perhaps more complicated than the question of specific voting procedures. The report to the president is a key part of the dean selection procedure. If we’re going to decide Thursday how voting procedures will be handled, we should also face this particular issue at that meeting. It would seem incomplete to decide on voting procedures but dispense with consideration of the end product.

Procedurally, I realize that the law school faculty as such probably can’t formally bind the Committee. But the law faculty members of the committee form a majority on the committee and would presumably follow the expressed wishes of the majority of their colleagues on the faculty. I don’t know fully how the committee operates; if there were some problem in its procedures with following what a majority of the committee wanted in this regard, that problem would have be confronted, but it’s important to have the faculty’s views on this key question made clear.

Figuring out the substance of what to say to the president and how to say it is going to be a challenging task, to say the least. I have great confidence in the competence and good faith of my colleagues on the committee (not to mention strong appreciation for all the work they’ve been putting themselves through), but experience in a variety of areas shows that it is very hard for any committee to get things right in a first draft or a first take on faculty sentiment, even after a discussion. Feedback from the faculty on what the committee or law school members of the committee believe are the faculty’s views is important.

In theory, we could postpone decision on this question until after we see the faculty’s views on the candidates. But even if the faculty were to decide that there were no acceptable candidates, for example, some follow-up meeting could be useful. There would still need to be a report to the president, and it would still help the law school committee members to get feedback from the faculty on what the committee plans to report.

As for the form of the report, it’s not clear to me how the committee plans to report to the president — just orally or with a written report, too. I thought I recalled the Provost remarking that there would be a written report, but I don’t think we’ve heard definitively from the Committee as to what it plans to do.

If there is to be a written report the substance of the report should be shared with the faculty with meaningful time to comment. At the same time, any written report poses real dangers. If it says anything meaningful, and if the faculty’s views are anything less than “these are 2 or 3 wonderful candidates and we can barely decide who would be more excellent,” having the report leak could be harmful to whoever became dean. The faculty owes it to the committee (as well as to itself and whoever the next dean is) to make sure that procedures adopted respect the need for confidentiality. E-mailing a draft report to regfac01 would be in serious tension with that aim. One possibility would be for the committee to give the report to the faculty on paper at a follow-up faculty meeting with numbered copies and collect them all back at the end of the meeting. A second possibility might be to provide a detailed oral report of the written report at a follow-up faculty meeting.

If the committee’s plan is simply to have a meeting with the president with no written report, or if there is to be a brief written report with the bulk of the report being oral, we would have a follow-up faculty meeting for an oral report to the faculty on what that report is to be, with feedback from the faculty.

I mention “the law school members of the Committee or the Committee” simply to indicate that there could be a question as to who on the committee should attend the follow-up faculty meeting.

Finally, a basic alternative to what I’ve laid out would be simply to have the discussion and voting on the candidates and leave the rest to the committee. We haven’t had follow-up meetings in the past, to my knowledge. But neither have we sent over more than one candidate (let alone no candidates), nor have we had any “strengths and weaknesses” reports to my mind. Once again, I think our experience in other areas shows that some opportunity for feedback from the faculty as to what the committee understands the faculty to think about the candidates should be of invaluable assistance to the committee. Only if we think that the confidentiality aspects of trying to give the committee this assistance pose such high risks should we dispense with it.

Strategic Voting Redux

A Proposal

A proposed procedure for voting: After a full discussion of the merits of the candidates presented by the Committee, the faculty complete a ballot for each candidate answering the single questions: “Is the named candidate an acceptable choice to become dean of the School of Law? Yes ____ or No ____.” Only those candidates determined by those ballots to be acceptable shall be considered further. After further discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate, the faculty shall cast a further ballot in which they rank the acceptable candidates.

The Rationale

All voting procedures encourage strategic behavior. My proposal starts from the premise that there is no circumstance in which a candidate whom a majority of the faculty thinks would not be an acceptable dean of this school should be submitted to the President, a premise that the faculty approved in the May 2007 bylaw. Michael’s proposed preferential voting procedure is dangerous because it creates the possibility that a candidate whom a majority of the faculty thought unacceptable could be submitted to and appointed by the President. A hypothetical should illustrate the point.

Assume that there are three candidates. Assume that a strategically aware faculty member (SAFM) thought that a substantial majority of the faculty believed that Candidate #1 was qualified or well qualified. Assume that the SAFM was, however, a “fan” of Candidate #2 and believed that President Shalala, given the opportunity, would select Candidate #2, but that SAFM also suspected that a majority of his or her colleagues would not agree that Candidate #2 was an acceptable candidate to be dean of this School. Assume that SAFM also believed that some of his or her colleagues were enthusiastic about Candidate #3, but that, again, the majority would not agree that Candidate #3 was acceptable. How could SAFM solve that problem?

The solution: The SAFM should recommend a “neutral” preferential voting system under which the faculty first decides how many candidates the Committee should present to the President and that then casts preferential ranking ballots to determine which candidates should be submitted. Strategically, all those who support Candidate #2, most of whom SAFM presumes would also support Candidate #1, should vote that the Committee should submit two names to the President. Strategically, all those who support Candidate #3, most of whom SAFM presumes would also support Candidate #1, should also vote that the Committee present two names. That “neutral” system would maximize the likelihood that a majority of the faculty would vote that two candidates should be submitted. (The strategy could fail if, but only if, a majority of the faculty believed that neither Candidate #2 nor Candidate #3 was acceptable.) Assume that SAFM believes that he or she can persuade his or her colleagues, if persuasion is necessary, that Candidate #2 is preferable to Candidate #3, SAFM will have maximized the likelihood that Candidates ##1&2 will be submitted and will have frustrated the views of the majority of his or her colleagues who may believe that Candidate #2 is not acceptable and should not be submitted to the President, in any event.

My proposal also permits strategic voting. If faculty members voted that only their preferred candidate was acceptable, notwithstanding their view that more than one candidate would be acceptable, then a candidate whom a majority of the faculty would, in fact, have found acceptable might be eliminated. Because we are aware that the President wants more than one name, I think this is a lesser risk and is, in my view, the more acceptable risk.

I am probably wrong but it appears that both the Froomkin and the Anderson approaches are open to strategic voting. Suppose that there are four candidates ABCD and that faculty member X — in isolation as it were — ranks the candidates in that order: ABCD. But X strongly prefers A over the rest and fears that other faculty members would put B first. In order to help A’s candidacy, X ranks the candidates — on the ballot — ACDB. This, I take it, is strategic voting. And if I understand the two voting systems X could vote this way — initially in the Froomkin system and once and for all in the Anderson system. If the Froomkin system is used with a single ballot — which would be necessary if (as we seem to have agreed) absentee voting is inevitable the effect of the strategic rearrangement could not be removed: Suppose A in fact finishes first in the first count; thereafter the A votes would be removed and only the rankings of BC and D would be considered. X in fact prefers B to C and D. But X ranked those candidates — on the ballot –0 in the order CDB and Froomkin’s method would have to take the ballot order as given (if there is only one ballot). So the strategic “misranking” would continue to influence vote counting. The Anderson system is simpler (I gather): we all rank candidates as we wish and then work out the aggregate order. The strategic “misranking” would impact this system — plainly — as well.

What follows? Strategic voting is a way of communicating preference intensities. If preference orderings were not therefore distorted, I’m not sure why strategic voting would be problematic. We would not need to worry about strategic voting — perhaps — if we thought that we were engaged in only an effort at weak ordering: trying to identify a set of candidates that we — as a group — regarded as roughly equivalent. Especially if we erred on the side of a larger set (seek to identify 4 equivalents rather than 2, say) I suspect that the significance of strategic voting would be much reduced.

This would mean, of course, that discerning differences in the candidates would be less a matter of reading the voting returns and more a matter of appreciating the discussion of strengths and weaknesses. This would mean — especially for those who doubt the fealty of (at least some) committee members that there should be a competent note taker at the meeting and the notes should be reviewed — with the ultimate idea that committee members would use the notes as their script if President Shalala chose — as in the business school case — to be briefed orally rather than writing. This, I take it, is the gist of the Schnably proposal.

Am I wrong?

I thought it might be useful to share my notes of the Provost’s remarks. These are certainly not verbatim — indeed words not in quotes may be my impressionistic summary of his remarks — and are slightly re-organized by topic, but I think I captured the main points (corrections and additions welcomed).

The Provost attended the faculty meeting on Feb 29.

Provost’s reactions to the strategic plan

“This document is not a call for revolution” (also it seems the things proposed are not likely to show

The next draft of the document should be designed to educate a (relatively ignorant) reader about the current strengths and weaknesses (and competitive position) of the law school, and lay out a menu of choices with price tags for radical (or less radical) improvement.

The document should lay out the school’s ambitions and a path to reach them (complete with accountability and benchmarks).

The current draft if “a good starting point” but doesn’t do those things.

The next draft needs to be more “donor-friendly”

• Clear picture of where you are now (”Exactly who are you”)
• Statement of where you want to be “Top 40″ or whatever (”Precisely where do you want to be)
• Steps to get you from A to B
• Price tags for those steps (aimed at donors, with measures of what they can see for their money)

[Note that this is radically different from what he said he wanted previously –mf]

We should not be afraid to give a menu of options, some with very high price tags.

Document has to make a case as to where we want to stand. Either that is rankings, or it has to make a case for alternative metrics/measures.

If the rankings are the right measure, what do we need to fix to improve them.

Need to explain more about what we get for the various proposals: e.g. if you want more LLM’s explain why (typical reasons for more grad schools: 1) enhance reputation of school; 2) make money; 3) support research needs of faculty - e.g. lab rats)

Generally, he wants more ambitious ideas, suitable for donors, even with high price tags [but, as he indicted previously, he wants things with fast payoffs]

We don’t need to prepare a new draft this semester, but we should be talking to the dean candidates about this stuff.

“Faculties get the leadership they deserve”

At the faculty meeting on Friday, I presented a very off-the-cuff list of items that seemed to me likely to profit from some preparatory work this semester. Most of these are things that it would be very good to have in place when classes start next year; others are prerequisites to things we would probably want to work on next year.

It is my sense that the Dean’s office is not as invested in this project of early implementation as I deem optimal, perhaps fearing out of an excess of caution that such actions might be seen to tie the hands of the next Dean. The faculty will therefore need to do an unusual degree of self-organization to make some of these things happen in a timely way.

Fortunately there is a lot we can do without spending much or any money (although some are regrettably labor-intensive). Some of these tasks may require an ad hoc committee. Others would work best if someone took the lead in drafting a proposal and then posted it here for comment and revision prior to taking it to the faculty. Still others might simply be done collaboratively online (I’m happy to set up blogs or wikis for any person or group that wants them). This is a good moment to be innovative about how we do things.

The list I presented to the faculty was:

• Drafting the center template
• Cloning the Leipzig program
• Whether and how to re-organize our entry level hiring process in order to get a greater of number of candidates before the faculty
• The skills survey
• Drafting the rules and setting up the online student forum so it’s ready on day one of next year
• Aggressive measures to solve administrative blockages to cross-listing more of our classes (ideally making it check-the-box simple for our faculty)
• Making a link with the B-school to seat some undergrads in contract or tort (an idea that originated with them)
• Defining the writing requirement
• Starting the study of the Legal Writing Program [might profit from waiting for new Dean?]
• Setting up corporate & NGO externships
• Devising attractive semi-retired status
• Creating new student awards and institutionalizing mechanisms for selecting winners

There is nothing canonical about this list, which I drafted in haste, and I hope that faculty will free to modify it at will.

As we learned at the faculty meeting, a few of these things are already in progress:

• Cloning the Leipzig program — Rob and the International Committee
• Setting up corporate & NGO externships — I think this is being done by the clinical committee?
• Donna volunteered to take the lead on solve administrative blockages to cross-listing more of our classes; I would hope this extends to the B-school initiative.
• Also, I’ve since learned that the appointments committee has had some preliminary discussions about how and whether to restructure their processes. (There’s also an argument to be made that the new Dean might have views on this, so waiting a year wouldn’t hurt.)

My sense is that the following items would benefit from an ad hoc committee:

• Drafting the center template
• Devising attractive semi-retired status

In contrast, the following items could probably work well if one person took the lead in drafting something and then circulating it for comments (but if many people want to participate up front we can always go the committee route!):

• The skills survey (ideally this would be run via the administration?)
• Drafting the rules and setting up the online student forum so it’s ready on day one of next year
• Defining the writing requirement
• Creating new student awards and institutionalizing mechanisms for selecting winners

I’m personally unsure if we should start now or put off until next year

• Starting the study of the Legal Writing Program

I think for this work we need to keep our working groups small (”lean and mean”) and either work online in the open and/or circulate drafts widely. But that still requires some volunteering. I know that the strategic planning process was fairly exhausting and that enthusiasm for taking on more administration will not be great. But a relatively small investment now should pay off next year.

If there is interest in proceeding in this fashion, I will volunteer to take part in the design of the centers templates. If, on the other hand, colleagues believe that some other way forward is better, or some other set of goals would be more useful, I’m fine with that — so long as we do something.

To: Faculty
From: Strategic Planning Committee
Re: First Draft of Strategic Plan Outline
Date: October 29, 2007

The first draft of the strategic plan outline is attached to this cover note. The final document we submit to the Provost will also include a narrative that links the initiatives. That narrative will also have to be discussed intensively by the faculty before going to the Provost but we do not plan to write it until the faculty chooses the initiatives it wishes to include in the Plan.

The committee understood its initial task as reviewing and developing ideas that were generated in the faculty planning meeting, in prior planning discussions, and in other informal conversations with faculty. The plan reflects some but not all of the ideas that emerged from the faculty. We are recommending those that we thought would be most appropriate to a strategic plan and within the reach of the School.

The ultimate readers of the Strategic Plan will include the President, the Provost, the Board of Trustees, potential donors, potential Deans, students, and alumni.

We have been mindful that the President and the Provost challenged us to offer something “big” that would warrant significant resource or fund-raising efforts on their part. We also believed that we had to respond to the challenge to be a part of the University’s broader ambition – to define our mission more closely aligned to making the University as well as the Law School a stronger institution. We further concluded that it was in the interest of the School as well as in the interest of the University for us to become better integrated with other schools and departments – and that given the increasing quality of the University we would find this to be more benefit than burden.

But only if the faculty is convinced of the Strategic Plan’s value will it be likely to succeed. The Committee’s aim is to help the faculty adopt a plan that reflects the aims of the faculty.

This outline is a work in progress. The Committee will be undertaking extensive efforts to solicit feedback. Further work will be required after the Strategic Plan is adopted in order to implement the various goals.

The nature of the Plan’s commitments vary: In some cases the commitment is to do something; in other cases, it is a commitment to do something after certain conditions a re met. In a few cases it is only a commitment to undertake a serious exploration of an option, but the Strategic Planning committee has tried to keep these “agreements to agree” to a minimum.

Unfortunately, we operate under significant time constraints. The Provost has set a time line for Deans that requires us to complete this process before we break in December. A faculty vote on the Plan is currently scheduled for the faculty meeting on Thursday, December 13th.

Key Opportunities and Constraints

Relations with Central Administration & University Generally

The University is taking the strategic planning process very seriously and the reaction of the University’s senior leaders and the Trustees to the plan we present them will have significant consequences for the Law School. We have a very real opportunity here. The President has stated on several occasions that she is willing to engage in significant fund-raising for the Law School, provided we have ambitious but realizable plans.

The situation presents both opportunity and risk. The Law School’s prior plan (like those from other units) did not meet the criterion of ambition. If we do not present a plan that does, we are at risk of being, at best, ignored when goals are set in April by the Trustees for the next capital campaign. Within that context it is important that our plan also speak to the ambitions of the University as a whole.¹

Financial Resources
Our internal resources – savings and unallocated but available income from endowment – allow us to self-fund some initiatives.² The Plan Outline includes proposals that are feasible without additional, external funding. On the other hand, we are not necessarily limited to our current resources. A strategic plan, especially a bold one, becomes an occasion for fund raising. We include a mix of initiatives: some things that can be accomplished readily; others that are dependent on fund raising. We focused on initiatives that (1) provide substantial potential benefit, (2) are likely to appeal to the President as potential fund-raising opportunities, and (3) are likely to appeal to donors.

Roads Not Taken

The committee considered, but did not put forward, three proposals: (1) a significant down-sizing of the student body; (2) a significant increase in the number of regular faculty (beyond filling open lines) without corresponding programmatic changes; (3) a ’surge’ in scholarships.

Down-Sizing the Student Body. We believe that significant downsizing is economically untenable. The reasons for this conclusion are discussed in the Note on Downsizing on page 15 of the draft Strategic Plan Outline.

Increasing the Number of Faculty Lines. An increase in faculty lines that is tied to a strategic initiative has a much stronger chance of receiving support from the President and the Provost than would be the case without such a link. A number of faculty at the extended planning meeting proposed that we adopt significantly smaller classes for the first year class (e.g. 50 average) and that we tie this idea to an increase in faculty lines. While we were generally supportive of the idea, we concluded that it was not likely that the President or the Board of Trustees would support substantial fund-raising to support this initiative. Our consultant tells us that were we to fill all of our existing lines, our student-faculty ratio, based on tenured and tenure-track faculty, would be comparable to competitor or aspirational schools of comparable size. ³

Surge in Scholarships. A ’surge’ in scholarships could help the Law School’s competitive position. We included this proposal in the strategic plan sent to the University last Spring. The Provost has made it clear that this was a non-starter because it was not related to an improvement in the quality of the education we provide.

Key Issues

Two themes were sounded by practically everyone at the extended planning meeting: (1) increase support for faculty scholarship; (2) increase support for faculty engagement with students.
Faculty Productivity. There is evidence that our publication rates have failed to keep pace with other law schools. Many at the non-retreat urged more support for faculty scholarship. The Plan addresses this concern in several ways described in Section 3.

Student Experience. We face a significant problem of student dissatisfaction. The Plan addresses these issues in sections 4 and 5.

Facilities. As the site visit team noted, our physical plant needs upkeep, improvement, and expansion. The Dean has commissioned advisers to help us better understand our space needs and how they might best be accommodated in our current facility or elsewhere. Michael Katz, working at the behest of the President, continues to examine various possible locations including some near the Coral Gables campus, in the Brickell area, and in the downtown area. None is a well-developed proposition at this point. The committee believes that the proposals in the Strategic Plan are neutral as regards the Law School’s ultimate location; nothing in its proposals requires that the Law School move. On the other hand, some proposals will at least require either that we acquire more space (e.g. by moving ‘back-office’ functions that do not require daily contact with students to a nearby off-campus location) and/or that we make difficult decisions to reconfigure the space we have.

Fund raising for facilities will be a big part of the next capital campaign regardless of our location. The University will seek funds either for a new location or for the proposed skills center on the Coral Gables campus. And, in either case, our current location requires renovations.

Detailed Curriculum Changes. We limited ourselves to broad-based curricular proposals, leaving more detailed curricular reform to the normal forms of faculty governance. Most of the broad-based curricular reforms proposed in the Plan will be found in Section 4.

Metrics. The items in the outline vary dramatically in the scope of their ambition. Many are for new initiatives and new commitments, while others do little more than reaffirm our commitment to continue to improve at what we do now. There is a reason why this is so. There are simply some items that a Plan should not be without, even if you believe the area does not warrant major change. The Plan Outline includes metrics where appropriate. In many cases no specific metric is needed other than the item itself: Did the School adopt the program it said it would? Did it take a serious look at matters it said it would explore? But there are also initiatives for which some specific measure might be appropriate; these metrics are included in the outline of initiatives.

Where We Go From Here

• Copies of the draft plan outline, this memo, and the notes to the plan draft, will be posted on the faculty’s strategic planning blog at http://plan.law.miami.edu. Each section of the plan will be posted separately to encourage grouping of faculty comments.
• A discussion of the draft plan outline is scheduled for the faculty meeting on Friday, Nov. 2. We have asked our consultant, Pete Wentz, to attend the meeting. In addition to issues raised by the faculty, we will need to discuss the issues that the committee has flagged as open. Faculty with specific proposals they would like included in the plan outline are encouraged to circulate proposed text to the faculty before this meeting.
• The committee intends to collect the entire faculty’s views on the plan outline. Meanwhile, faculty are invited to comment by whatever means they find most congenial.
• It is likely that the committee (and others) will be circulating partial re-drafts of sections for additional faculty discussion on a rolling basis and that there will be additional meetings if there is faculty demand for them.
• We will make every effort to get the final proposed plan outline and the narrative to the faculty not later than Dec. 7.
• A faculty vote on the Plan is currently scheduled for the faculty meeting on Thursday, December 13th.

We have marked the draft – because it is a draft – as ‘confidential’ to suggest the value of keeping this text, and the discussion, within the University community.

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educatinglawyers_summary1.pdf

The Several faculty have expressed interest in the Carnegie report on legal education. The summary is attached here. Faculty who are interested in thinking more about what we do in the classroom may also want to read Beth Mertz’s book, Thinking Like a Lawyer. The Planning committee decided that we should not tackle broad-based curricular reform, both because it’s beyond our more limited mandate and because there simply isn’t time. I think that was the right choice, but I remain very interested in questions raised by both the Carnegie report and Mertz’s book.

In the spring - when we catch our breath — I would be very interested in forming a study group with interested faculty re the emerging questions of how students experience law school, whether our teaching methods adequately prepare students for practice, etc.

To: Faculty

From: Strategic Planning Committee

Re: Process for Discussing the Draft Strategic Plan Outline

Date: 10/30/07

We propose the following process for discussing the draft strategic plan outline that we distributed on Monday. This Friday’s faculty meeting is just one of several opportunities to discuss the draft.

1. Committee members will be “point persons” for particular faculty. (The list is given at the end of this e-mail.) You are encouraged to discuss your thoughts regarding the draft outline with any committee member or via electronic discussion. The assignment is a mechanism for making sure that the committee hears from everyone. If you would prefer to give your thoughts to a different committee member, feel free to do so. In the next few days you will hear from your “point person” inviting you to provide feedback, either in-person or electronic.

2. It would be very useful to get through an initial discussion of the major portions of the Plan at this Friday’s meeting. We plan to divide the discussion in this Friday’s meeting into six segments. The first five will be for the first five parts of the plan (International, the University and the Law School, Intellectual Community, Teaching, Students). The sixth segment will be for other matters (e.g., further thoughts on the public policy proposal, which was also discussed last week; suggested additional initiatives or alternatives.) Alternatives can be alternatives to the whole plan; alternatives to part of it; or specific additional initiatives. Faculty who want to raise specific proposals at Friday’s meeting are encouraged to circulate proposed text to the faculty before that meeting. Of course, ideas or proposals can be circulated at any time, but distributing them prior to the meeting will help us make more efficient use of our meeting time. This is a particular concern, given the demanding time schedule the University has proposed.

3. We realize that even with 2-1/2 hours, time for discussion at this Friday’s meeting may well feel tight. It seems very likely that faculty will want to have more time for discussion. On that assumption, we have scheduled a second meeting for Friday, November 9, 3:10 - 5:10 p.m. The meeting will begin immediately following the faculty candidate coffee. (A candidate talk is scheduled for the noon period.)

4. After the second faculty meeting discussion and after committee members have made an effort to communicate individually with all faculty members, we will survey the entire faculty in writing. The result of this survey will be distributed to the faculty.

5. Once this period of discussion is complete, the committee will re-draft the outline and add narrative for each section. This revised document will be distributed to the faculty. At that point, we will determine what meetings and other forms of faculty discussion and input will be most useful.

6. The faculty will meet again prior to the December 13th meeting to discuss and vote separately on each section of the revised plan including proposed amendments.

7. The final up or down vote on the entire plan is scheduled for the December 13th faculty meeting.

9 Infrastructure and Support

1. We will implement our library’s initiatives to continue to provide excellent service to faculty, students, alumni and staff and to reevaluate the collection in order to create an appropriate balance between on-line and physical materials.
2. We will provide the technology and service to meet the needs of the faculty, students, and staff
3. We will renovate our existing facility and we will build a new facility for skills and classrooms or move the Law School to an entirely new facility. Specifically with respect to our existing facility, we will:
1. Update classroom technology,
2. Reconfigure classrooms as needed to improve their functionality.

9.1 Metrics

1. Increase in student and faculty satisfaction with library and IT services, as measured by surveys.

8 Alumni, Development & Communication

We will expand outreach to our alumni, our region, the academic community, policy makers and the wider world.
1. 1. We will more effectively engage our alumni by:
1. Expanding the outreach by the Dean, faculty and staff to the Miami legal community;
2. Encouraging more alumni to participate in the life of the Law School;
3. Increasing communication with alumni;
4. Increasing the percentage of alumni who contribute to the School and the average contribution per alum;
5. Strengthening alumni and development programs among the graduates of our various LLM programs.
2. 2. We will develop and implement a comprehensive marketing plan to present more effectively the Law School, its plans, and the achievements of its faculty, students, and alumni.

8.1 Metrics

1. Number of alumni who participate in the educational mission of the School.
2. Number of alumni who attend reunions and other Law School events.
3. Percentage of alumni who donate and the average donation per alumnus.
4. Increase in membership of Dean’s Circle.
5. Increase in alumni satisfaction with the Law School’s outreach, as measured by surveys.