Cumberland's Dean and Proud of It

It has been a while since my last blog. This Fall's travel schedule has been significant. Last week, I was with members of our faculty in Washington D.C. interviewing prospective faculty members. We will be hiring two new faculty members for the Fall of 2009 and identified some outstanding candidates. Those candidates will be visiting the law school over the next month along with some local and in-house candidates.

I have also been spending time on the E-discovery lecture circuit. Last week I spoke at the meeting of the Sedona Conference Working Group I. Those of you that follow e-discovery law know that the Sedona Conference is a national think tank on complex litigation issues. I am proud to me a member of its board. This week I will be heading to the Georgetown University Law Center to participate in another e-discovery program. I will be moderating a panel of judges who will be talking about the 2006 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

At these meetings, I always talk to lawyers and judges about legal education and always come away with the sense that we are doing the right things here at Cumberland. Judges and practitioners bemoan the current state of legal education. First of all they cannot believe that E-discovery is not being taught in most law schools. Second, they believe that law schools have become completely disconnected from the practice of law.

They are always amazed and gratified when I tell them about what we are doing at Cumberland. We were the first law school in the country to offer a course in E-discovery and although there are a few other schools offering the course, I think ours is light years ahead. More importantly, I am able to tell them that them that at Cumberland we value the practice of law and embrace as our mission training our law students to be lawyers.

At Cumberland, we are clearly on the right path for legal education. We understand that the right mission for a law school is to be produce ethical and comepetent lawyers who care about their community . I am proud of what we do and proud to be the Cumberland dean.