We Knew Deanships Were Getting Shorter.
Now We Know Why.

It is no small thing when a law school loses its dean. The departure triggers a national search, stalls institutional momentum, disrupts fundraising, and requires rebuilding years of relationships with faculty, alumni, and university leadership, all while the institution navigates one of the most turbulent periods in legal education’s history. Approximately 25 percent of the nation’s law schools transition to a new dean in any given year. That reality prompted this study.

This study combined a survey of 624 current and former law school deans, which yielded 256 responses and data on 294 deanships, with 70 qualitative interviews conducted between November 2025 and February 2026. What the study found should concern everyone who cares about the future of legal education.
 

Relentless: The Pressures Shortening Law School Deanships and What Must Change
Table of Contents 1 Acknowledgements 2 List of Tables and Figures 3 Executive Summary 5 Introduction 6 Study Methodology and Survey Respondent Characteristics 8 Law School Dean Tenure Over Time 11 Understanding the Change: Why Do Deans Step Down? 20 Other Factors Influencing Deanship Tenure 32 The Good News 34 Conclusion: The Case for More Formal Training, Mentorship, and Institutional Support for Law School Deans 38 Study Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research 39 Endnotes 41 Works Cited 43 Appendix A: Survey Questionnaire
Katie Kempner | Patricia Roberts Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank everyone who contributed to this project, beginning with Kellye Testy, AALS Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director, for her support of this collaboration. Thank you to AALS staff members who contributed to this research and report, including Katherine London, Faith Nchang, and Elliott Ward. We would also like to thank Dean Jim Rosenblatt for the years of careful, comprehensive data collection and for making the AALS Rosenblatt’s Deans Database a valuable public resource for information about so many law school deans and deanships. Special thanks to St. Mary’s University School of Law students, Sarah Carrasco and Bryant Norskog, both of whom served as research assistants for this project. Most of all, thank you to all the current and former deans who participated in this research, and for your valiant efforts in leading our nation’s law schools.
List of Tables and Figures Page 7 Figure 1. All Survey Respondents by Gender Page 8 Figure 2. All Survey Respondents by Race/Ethnicity Page 10 Figure 3. Average Length of Deanships Reported in Rosenblatt's Deans Database (Excluding Interim), 1920-present Page 10 Figure 4. Average Deanship Length (Years) by Deanship Start Year: Survey Respondents' Most Recent and Additional Past Deanships Page 11 Figure 5. Top Challenges and Sources of Stress for Current Deans Page 12 Table 1. Major or Extreme Challenges by Deanship Start Year: All Deanships Page 15 Table 2. Major or Extreme Challenges by Length of Tenure: Former Deans’ Most Recent and Additional Past Deanships Page 17 Table 3. Average Length of Tenure by Gender: Former Deans’ Most Recent and Additional Past Deanships Page 17 Table 4. Average Length of Tenure by Race/Ethnicity: Former Deans’ Most Recent and Additional Past Deanships Page 18 Figure 6. Primary Reason for Departure from Most Recent or Additional Past Deanship Page 20 Figure 7. Current Deans' Reported Support Levels from Stakeholders Page 21 Table 5. Support from University President or Chancellor by Tenure Length in Former Deans’ Most Recent Deanship Page 22 Table 6. Support from Law School Faculty by Tenure Length in Former Deans’ Most Recent Deanship Page 23 Figure 8. Expectations by Tenure Length, Former Deans’ Most Recent Deanships Page 24 Table 7. Alignment Between Deans’ Expectations from Hiring Process to Starting the Job Page 9 Figure 9. Current and Former Deans’ Self-Reported Levels of Preparation for the Deanship Page 10 Figure 10. Top Five Important Skills and Qualities Helpful to Success as a Law School Dean Executive Summary We Knew Deanships Were Getting Shorter. Now We Know Why. It is no small thing when a law school loses its dean. The departure triggers a national search, stalls institutional momentum, disrupts fundraising, and requires rebuilding years of relationships with faculty, alumni, and university leadership, all while the institution navigates one of the most turbulent periods in legal education's history. Approximately 25 percent of the nation's law schools transition to a new dean in any given year. That reality prompted this study. This study combined a survey of 624 current and former law school deans, which yielded 256 responses and data on 294 deanships, with 70 qualitative interviews conducted between November 2025 and February 2026. What the study found should concern everyone who cares about the future of legal education. Key Findings Deanships have dropped from nearly 10 years on average to fewer than 5. Average tenure fell from nearly 10 years for deanships beginning in the 1920s to just over 5 years for those beginning in the 2010s — with the sharpest decline following the historic drop in law school applications after 2010. Today, the average is less than 5 years. As of 2025, a full quarter of law schools had a new dean. Over 60 percent of deans cited financial pressure as a major or extreme challenge, more than any other stressor. Budget constraints top the list of challenges, but what the interviews make clear is that the pressure is rarely just about money. It is about being held responsible for outcomes while lacking the authority, the resources, or sometimes even an accurate financial picture needed to address them. More than one dean used the word "untenable." Nearly two-thirds of deans who served fewer than four years cited a strained relationship with university administration as a major challenge. One in four universities changed presidents in 2023–2024 alone, making law school alignment with the university more of a challenge. Deans described the “middle management” nature of the role as one of its most underappreciated dimensions: accountable upward and downward simultaneously, with less unilateral authority than anyone, including often the dean, expected.
Survey data revealed that women deans serve an average of two years fewer than men. Nearly half of deanships held by Black or African American survey respondent deans lasted fewer than four years. These are not incidental findings. They point to structural inequities that mentorship programs alone will not fix, and that require focused institutional attention. Fewer than 20 percent of deans received formal leadership training before taking the role. Only 5.5 percent had executive coaching. The most common pathway to the deanship — serving as an associate dean — was widely valued but consistently described as insufficient for the financial, governance, and relational demands the role of dean now requires. The position has evolved but the pathways and preparation have not kept pace. A quarter of departures happened earlier than the dean had planned. When asked why, deans described burnout, health consequences, broken commitments, and governance failures, not the orderly transitions that "voluntary resignation" in the survey might suggest. What the Deans Want You to Know Despite the weight of these findings, the deans interviewed for this study were remarkably consistent in affirming the value of the work. Student impact was the most durable source of reward — a joy that renews itself with every entering class. Several current deans called it simply "the best job in the world," and meant it. The goal of this study is not to discourage anyone from the deanship. It is to make sure that those who pursue it, and the institutions that hire them, go in fully informed and prepared. Key Recommendations For aspiring deans: Develop financial fluency. Serve as an associate dean and seek deliberate exposure to fundraising, budget conversations, and governance. Conduct honest due diligence on the institution where you apply. If offered the position, negotiate for what you need to do the job well, including prospective separation terms, before you accept the role. For institutions: Conduct transparent pre-search planning that names known financial challenges and clarifies the authority the incoming dean will actually hold. Provide structured onboarding, mentorship, and genuine mid-tenure support, including, after approximately five years, a summer or semester sabbatical for renewal. Plan for departures with the same intentionality brought to hiring. For the legal education community: Invest in the pipeline with intention, particularly for women and deans of color who face qualitatively distinct challenges that general programming does not adequately address. Expand AALS mentorship, shadowing, and leadership development opportunities. Bring provosts and university administrators into the conversation about what this role actually requires. RELENTLESS: THE PRESSURES SHORTENING LAW SCHOOL DEANSHIPS AND WHAT MUST CHANGE Introduction Law school dean departures are happening with alarming frequency. Approximately 25 percent of the nation’s 198 ABA-accredited law schools transition to a new dean in any given year. Roughly 50 institutions annually are experiencing that disruption, often before a dean has served even five years. Exploring the reasons for this high rate of turnover, and identifying ways to help extend deans’ tenures, prompted this study. A law school dean’s departure sets in motion a cascade of consequences: a national search, an interim period that typically stalls momentum, the need to rebuild relationships with faculty, alumni, and university leadership that can take years to reestablish, and an institution left to navigate an already turbulent landscape without its leader. A search conducted through an executive search firm can easily cost between 25 percent and 35 percent of the dean’s first-year total compensation, plus expenses for consultants and candidates — and that figure captures only the most visible costs. The indirect burden of senior administrator and faculty time devoted to the search, the fundraising relationships that are left in limbo until alumni connect with a new dean, the bar and employer relationships that must be rebuilt, the strategic plans placed on hold or discarded entirely. All of these costs rarely appear on any budget or balance sheet, but institutions absorb them nonetheless upon every dean transition. The costs compound in ways that are both measurable and deeply human. An interim dean holds the position temporarily and will be less likely to make bold changes or innovate. During a sitting dean’s final year, faculty and staff are drawn into the search process itself, diverted from work that would move the institution forward. When a new dean arrives with different vision and priorities, it triggers a reset: strategic plans stalled or rewritten, leadership styles adjusted to, new administrative appointments made. Deans are also the primary ambassadors for their law schools — internally to faculty and students, externally to alumni, donors, employers, and the bench and bar. Leadership transitions disrupt all of those relationships simultaneously, leaving institutions in a period of suspension while trust is reestablished. Responses from longer-serving deans in this study described ambitious and consequential work that was only possible because of sustained leadership; shorter tenures, by definition, foreclose such impactful work. For purposes of this report, "tenure" refers to a dean’s continuous service in that role at a single institution, not including interim appointments. While leadership turnover in higher education has been examined broadly, largely at the president, provost, and chancellor level, law school deanship turnover has received comparatively little focused attention. It deserves more, because the pressures bearing down on legal education are significant and accelerating. Accreditation standards are evolving. Bar admission requirements are shifting and a new exam is on the horizon. Access to justice demands creative institutional responses and national collaboration between law schools and the profession. The future of law practice itself is being rewritten as we consider the role that AI should play, and what it necessitates that law schools teach, and in which modality. These are not challenges that benefit from a revolving door of leadership, and yet that is increasingly what legal education faces.

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