Canadian Lawyer

w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6 29 hardly unique to new institutions. Imme- diately after he was appointed as law dean at the University of Alberta, Paton says he was thrust into a very public discussion on resources. "I was working with the stu- dents to successfully secure support for a 60-per-cent tuition increase," he says. "The proposal went forward and what I did here was engage in a dialogue and build a coalition with students, with law firms, with individual lawyers, with alumni, with the judiciary, and there was a lot of overt opposition. It's certainly not easy." As 2015 came to a close, University of Toronto law student newspaper Ultra Vires reported that dean Ed Iacobucci is planning to recommend increasing tuition by five per cent this year. Fees for the 2015-16 academic year topped $33,000. At a council meeting, "Iacobucci said that, despite tuition revenue, the faculty regu- larly spends more money than it brings in," the paper reported. In an e-mail to Canadian Lawyer, Alexis Archbold, U of T's assistant law dean, said all Ontario law schools increase their tuitions each year. But annual increases are something Lorne Sossin, dean of Osgoode Hall Law School, says will be "unsustainable" in the long run. "To say to students or govern- ment that we intend to charge more next year for the exact same program we offered this year is in my view unsustainable. This puts pressure on all deans whether at big or small law schools." To be sure, finding new sources of funds for their law school has always been part of the job description for law deans, but that role is now "different and pronounced" as expectations change, according to Paton. Since he joined U of A, Paton says he has doubled the school's career services capac- ity and arranged on-site psychological counselling and referral services. "These are the sort of things we didn't have when I was going through law school that students now are looking for," he says. The make-or-break power of faculty Increasingly, law deans cannot be every- thing to all parts of the legal community, but without the support of their faculty, they could flounder very quickly. Alice Woolley, assistant dean, academ- ic, and a professor at Calgary's law school, puts it like this: "A dean who can't generate resources has a problem. The faculty can't use resources to create growth, opportu- nity, or change. And the dean can't hire or fire people to create growth, opportunity, or change — the former would require resources (which are unavailable) and the latter isn't possible because of tenure. So all the dean has in his or her arsenal is personal relationships with faculty, which requires interpersonal skills — empathetic relationships with faculty, working with [or] around more challenging personali- ties, being willing to consult but also being able to advance progress. Some deans have that, but some don't," wrote Woolley in an e-mail to Canadian Lawyer. On the flipside, Woolley says some faculties are more willing to respond to the efforts a dean makes than others. In addition, most major decisions in a law school have to go through a faculty council, which means the majority of the dean's colleagues have to agree with the decision. A dean who wants faculty mem- bers to take up particular responsibilities would have to persuade them to do so, Brooks says. "You don't have extra pay to get people to do harder jobs. There isn't, unlike most places anyway, a formal review process that results in people feel- ing like they need to pick up the pieces in ways that they might if you were working in a kind of corporate or private setting. That just means the relationship between the dean and faculty members and staff members becomes all the more impor- tant." When in March last year, Levitt walked abruptly out the door at UNB, quickly fol- lowed by the resignation of the school's associate dean, an image emerged of a faculty that was, at least from the outside, divided. "Not everyone is comfortable with the change that I represent," Levitt told the The Daily Gleaner, Fredericton's local newspaper, at the time. Eben Otuteye, a professor of finance at UNB, has a daughter who attends the law school and friends who are part of the fac- ulty. The way Otuteye sees it, Levitt walked into a dysfunctional faculty that formed itself into different cliques. "There's hardly any sense of collegiality among them. You either belong to this clique [or another] and that's the limit of your collegial fair," says Otuteye. The dean turnover at UNB "should tell you something," he adds. "The deans are changing and the relationship is not changing. I would say we should look at the faculty and stop pointing at the deans. You're wasting your time looking at the deans, who are different, instead of look- ing at the faculty, who are the same. It's a graveyard for deans; so look at the grave- yard instead of the victims." Levitt did not respond to a request for an interview for this article but UNB says current law dean John Williamson has had "a long and successful association" with the law school, having served in the past as interim dean, acting dean, and associate dean. He was first appointed as an associ- ate professor at the university in 1974. UNB says it's impossible to say why its own law school or others across the country are having a tough time recruit- ing and retaining deans, but it recognizes "It's not an easy job at all. Everything you do is potentially the wrong thing in someone's mind." Ian Holloway, law dean, University of Calgary

• Cover