New Law School Dean at Chicago

For those that follow faculty and administrative changes at top law schools like it’s a sport, you already know that the University of Chicago Law School has announced the appointment of its newest dean, Michael Schill. Dean Schill's appointment takes effect on January 1, 2010, which means that current dean Saul Levmore has a few months left on a gig that spanned over eight years.

The things we know about Schill -- that he was the dean at UCLA for five years, that he has a knack for recruiting top professors, and that he has authored a widely used casebook -- are interesting. But it's what we don't know about him that is far more fascinating.

The University of Chicago is a unique law school in many respects. It is dogmatic and relentless in pursuit of "the life of the mind," favoring intellectual rigor over practical legal study. It is steeped in law and economics, a scholarly foundation once in vogue but now viewed by many as a dinosaur in light of current financial and social changes. It avoids specialization. It prizes the Socratic Method. It shuts off Internet in the classroom. To put it simply: Chicago is not like any other top school. Not even close.

(Disclaimer: I graduated in Chicago in 2007 and loved it, both because of and in spite of the reasons above.)

So what happens when a new dean -- an outsider -- comes in and takes the wheel? When Levmore took over as dean for revered Chicago professor Douglas Baird, he did so as a fellow member of the faculty and as a "U of C guy." He was an insider who prized certain Chicago traditions and while Dean Levmore was more liberal and less libertarian than many of his peers, his dogged pursuit of "the life of the mind" was both singular and unrivaled. He took many of Chicago's unique features and not only preserved them, but actually exaggerated them.

Schill, on the other hand, seems to have a slightly different approach. His first comments on the record and the motivation behind his decision to accept the post both seem to place a premium on the Chicago Way. However, Schill built his legacy and the law school at UCLA by being very open to change and aggressively ushering his program into the 21st Century. He is known in part for creating new and exciting specializations and now he takes over at a law school that has stiff-armed the specialist approach to law.

So what will happen when Mike Schill takes over? Will his inclination for innovation and his passion for philanthropy move Chicago into a new age, one that features more specialization and a greater focus on social justice (at the expense of law and economics)? Or will the shared premium that both U of C and Schill put on "intellectual values" lead to more of the same (for better or for worse)?

It should be fascinating to see how this plays out.

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