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The Secret Law Dean Rules For Participating On The Deans' Listserv

What are the rules for when deans email in secret?

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AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION — RULES FOR THE DEANS’ LISTSERV

Reminders and Protocols Governing the Use of the Deans’ Listserv

The Deans’ Listserv maintained by the staff of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar provides a useful way for ABA-approved law school deans to candidly exchange information and points of view on topics of mutual interest. Given that purpose and based on surveys done over time and ongoing feedback from deans, we created the following guidelines for the listserv:

1. This is a list for deans. While it is unrealistic to expect complete confidentiality for postings to a list with some 200 members, please keep in mind that messages are posted with an expectation that the content of messages and the identity of the author of a message are intended for the list audience only.

2. Please use the “reply to all” function carefully and only when appropriate. If your response is a reply to the sender of the message, please use “reply to sender.” Only if your response is aimed at the entire list should you use “reply to all.”

3. The listserv is not intended for the following purposes:
o To distribute or disseminate promotional material about your school
o To post job announcements/position openings at your school
o To circulate petitions about issues not directly related to legal education

4. It is not appropriate to use the listserv to discuss or as a means of collecting and sharing faculty and staff salary, benefits, and perquisite data and analogous information.

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5. It is appropriate to use the listserv to introduce yourself to the list, announce your resignation, solicit nominations for your successor, and to introduce your successor.

6. Please do not forward listserv messages to others, particularly those outside your own faculty/staff. The exception to that rule is that you may forward to others within your law school non-sensitive information of a factual nature in a message sent to the listserv that may be of assistance to them. In such a case, remove identifying information from the posting and inform the recipients that they should not further distribute the information. When in doubt about the propriety of forwarding a listserv posting, ask permission from the author. It is a breach of your obligation to your fellow deans to forward messages to the media, including blogs.

7. If you author a posting and do not want it forwarded, mark the posting “confidential.” NEVER forward a posting that the author has marked confidential.

8. Finally and obviously, as you use the listserv, please exercise discretion and exhibit professionalism and courtesy to your colleagues.

Some reminders:
o The list includes the dean (including interim or acting deans) of every ABA fully and provisionally approved law school, the executive director of AALS, and the president of LSAC, the managing
director of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, and key staff members in the Managing Director’s Office.
o There is an archive for the listserv. To access it, type the following into your browser: http://mail.americanbar.org/scripts.wa.exe?INDEX . The first time you access the archive (or perhaps if you return to it after a long period of non-use) you will be asked to login and provide a password to proceed and view the archived messages. Remember to login using the exact email address that is subscribed to the listserv. If you have questions about this, please send an email to [Redacted]

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The First Rule of Deans’ Listserv [WSJ Law Blog]

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