by Richard Prior
Staff Writer
This ad should have a short life, especially as the nights get longer and the days colder:
“We average a year-round temperature of 80 degrees. We’re also located less than half an hour from the beach in good traffic.”
The goals laid out in the ad should grab plenty of attention, too:
“We’re searching for a dean who can lead the school into the 21st Century as part of the front wave of legal education.”
Florida Coastal School of Law, founded in 1996, started small but already has reason to think big, said interim Dean Dennis Stone, who taught the first class on the school’s first day.
The law school opened that first spring with 60 part-time students. There are now better than 600 full-time equivalents representing 34 states.
“We really understood there was a big demand here,”said Stone. “And there was a demand nationally for the kind of education we provide.”
The school has been without a dean since Richard Hurt left in March to go to Berry University in Orlando.
Stone took over the interim job in August when the school, which had been owned by a partnership of private individuals, was bought by Sterling Partners, an investment group based in Chicago.
The company represents “a number of retirement funds, like the University of Pennsylvania Retirement Fund and others that are very highly regarded.”
Stone has been a legal educator for 30 years and has served twice as academic dean. He specializes in torts, maritime law and computer law. Over the years, he has taught international law and intellectual property, and is teaching a maritime law course this semester.
“I particularly like torts and maritime law,” said Stone, who is eager to return to teaching full time. “Jacksonville is a good place to do that.”
With so much work to do, Stone has “very little extra time on my hands. I have two young children, and they take a lot of my time. I jealously guard that time.
“So that’s one reason why I’m not as interested as others in the deanship.”
A nationwide search for a new dean is being conducted by the executive search firm Korn/Ferry International.
Ad will be posted on the Internet, placed in a number of publications and sent to all law school deans and associate deans.
“I think it’s a real opportunity for somebody,” said Stone. “Jacksonville is such a growth city. The law school has grown with the city, and the city has a lot more growing to do.
“I think our candidates will see that, see it as an opportunity to have an impact on a larger community.”
“The dean is basically the CEO of the law school,”said Stone. “Law schools have anywhere from 100 to probably 300 employees and anywhere from 400 to 2,000 students. You have an academic program. And you have your external audiences — from the local community to the ABA to the Board of Governors.
“The dean has to act as an intermediary between the law school and those entities.”
Stone said he expects the search committee will complete its canvassing of candidates and select three resumes to submit to the Board of Governors by early January.
“Clearly, the dean has to have good management skills, excellent people skills and an understanding of legal education,” he said. “It doesn’t mean they have to be a legal educator, per se. They might be from private world, but they appreciate legal education for what it is. They understand how it operates.
“We’re looking for somebody that’s highly entrepreneurial, motivated, energetic. Their ability to bring the law school up into the higher ranks of American law schools is probably one of the top priorities for us.”
The new dean would also be comfortable with the “student-centered” theme of Florida Coastal, said Stone:
“We look for students who are interested in hitting the ground running when they graduate, being involved in 21st Century law, who aren’t interested in a tradition-bound type of legal education.
“We’re looking for students who are interested in the future of the law and law practice.”
Students’ scores on the bar exams and their ability to find jobs after graduation continue to improve, Stone said.
“It’s largely because of a combination of factors,” he said. “The quality of our student body, the quality of our teaching and the curriculum we offer have resulted not only in better bar results but in better employment.
“On the ABA reporting scheme, we’ve gone up 15, 17 points on the bar results out of 100. And we’ve gone up on employment from 82 percent last year to almost 90 percent employed after they graduate.
“So we’re doing something right. And we spend a lot of time on that, making sure we continue to do it right.”