George Mason’s Kenneth Randall On Entrepreneurship, Tech, And The DC Market

The veteran dean and tech company founder weighs in on his new role leading the Scalia Law School. 

As technology and the entrepreneurial mindset become ever more central to legal practice, firms will need law school graduates who grasp both. 

Kenneth Randall, who became dean of the Antonin Scalia Law School of George Mason University in December, has a background well-suited to the challenge. 

Randall served as dean of the University of Alabama law school for two decades. 

During his tenure, the school’s position in the U.S. News & World Report law school ranking rose from 96 to 21, according to Scalia Law’s announcement of its new dean. 

Randall went on to found iLaw Distance Education, a technology company acquired by BARBRI Holdings in 2017.

ATL recently spoke with Randall from his office in Arlington, Virginia. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why did you choose to move from the private sector back into higher education?

I really enjoyed being an entrepreneur and loved my work in the private sector. I’m a real advocate for leveraging technology, which is what iLaw was all about. But after seven years outside of a traditional law school setting I was eager to jump back into it. There were things that I missed about being a part of a faculty. I missed interacting with law students and being a part of a major university. 

You founded iLaw, a distance learning company, which is certainly of the moment. What is happening at Scalia Law in this field?

When we founded iLaw, there was no specialist in legal education. You had very large online program management companies that worked primarily with large undergrad programs, but the whole point of iLaw was to leverage technology within the legal education sector. In a sense, I was able to connect two things that I’m passionate about: one is legal education and another is technology.

Scalia Law School is a good fit because, even before the pandemic, Mason was ready to try new things. It’s a fast, hard-charging school, very decisive and ready to move ahead, and it has really done a lot with technology, particularly in the non-JD space. 

And when the pandemic hit, the leadership team got the classes up online quickly and efficiently, and I think with a really high quality. They had started on that path well before the pandemic and it really gave this school a head start.

And is this hard-charging, fast, and adaptable nature what attracted you to the school?

Well, one of the things that attracted me to the school was that it’s innovative, decisive, and entrepreneurial. Before I took this job, I knew Mason as a school that was open to trying new things. Those are characteristics that have always been important to me in my career.

Why should students choose George Mason and Scalia Law School? 

One reason would definitely be location. I mean, we are two Metro stops away from Washington D.C. 

It’s also the third largest legal practice community in the world. We probably have some advantages that we’re in Arlington, because for the day-to-day schedule of a student, it’s easier to get from an apartment into Arlington and the law school than it may be in D.C. Less traffic and all of that, but you still get all of the opportunities: the internships, the externships, working with agencies, working with large firms, working with great nonprofits, and public interest groups. I mean, you really cannot beat the D.C. market.

And then, within that marketplace, Mason has a really good pricing point because it’s a small public law school. We have a small incoming student body, which provides a great student-faculty ratio. 

Another thing is, the school has what I consider to be a top-10 or top-15 faculty. The faculty are strong teachers and incredibly strong researchers and scholars who are really passionate about their areas of law.

The next thing I’d say is the school has seven academic centers that are really something special. Two of them are the best academic centers in the world. One is in law and economics, and the other is in global antitrust. These are not just centers located in one faculty member’s office that may put on one thing a year. I’m talking about centers that put on eight conferences a year and have a huge staff and plenty of internship opportunities for students.

In addition to law and economics and antitrust, we have academic centers in intellectual property, in national security, and in what we call liberty and law, which certainly includes the First Amendment. And we have one on the administrative state and then we have one in the international area

When you really think about the most important areas of legal practice today, we have extensive centers in all of them and I think it really provides some great opportunities.

And because of your location, do you have people teaching courses who have served in government?

Yes. First, the full-time and tenured faculty is, in my view, again, a top-10 faculty who could be teaching anywhere. But then we have an amazing array of adjunct faculty who are in government, who are in the large firms. 

We have judges who teach at the law school. We have faculty who actually spend time in government and then come back and forth, who bring really great experiences.

Our student/faculty ratio is one of the lowest in the country. The curriculum is very broad and we really take advantage of all the great talent. 

And then another thing I should mention in terms of location — Amazon is building a headquarters within a couple minutes of the law school that is going to provide tremendous opportunities for the students. Amazon will interface with our intellectual property center, and there will be opportunities for students to interact.

One of the really important things about having Amazon nearby is that when we train law students today, we need to be aware that lawyers work collaboratively. They work as a team, and they work with innovators, and they work with business people, and they work with industry leaders. 

And that’s really what being a lawyer in 2021 is all about, not being a lawyer who toils by himself or herself, individually. You work with fiscal people and entrepreneurs and you learn to work as a team, to solve problems. And that’s where opportunities for internships in a place like Amazon will be really valuable.

Scalia Law also offers various clinics to students, which reflect a practical, hands-on approach to legal education. Would you say that’s an accurate description?

What I would say is we really have a good spectrum of opportunities. We have classes that are highly theoretical because we have a really strong intellectual faculty. But we have plenty of practical or hands-on, practice-oriented clinics

For example, we have a clinic for veterans and there is a new center for veterans that’s going up in Arlington and it’s important for students to have those opportunities. We also have an institute on diversity, the Corley Institute for Diversity & Inclusion Education. Almost 20 other law schools have requested access to the D&I toolkit that our institute created for instructors. About seven schools have students receiving D&I training directly from our institute this spring.

What kind of feedback have you heard from students about the Corley Institute and your other speaker programs? Have you able to measure their impact in any way?

In October, November and December [of last year] I had virtual meetings with probably 15 to 20 leaders of student organizations, my first real contact with the student body. 

Their backgrounds are diverse. Their interests and career goals are varied and it’s just a really impressive group of students. And we have a pretty high ratio of students who are first generation lawyers in their families. 

I was a first generation lawyer in my family and this is another thing that makes the school attractive to me. I think there is really something special about having inclusive education.

When it comes to inclusive education for people of varied backgrounds, part-time programs can be important, and yours has a very good reputation. Could you speak about that?

Yes. The part-time program is the fourth-ranked program in the country. We’re trying something really new with it. 

We’ve created something called the Flex JD, which will allow part-time students to take some of their coursework online and come to campus, if they want, only two nights a week. Now, if the students want to come to the campus every day, they can. 

But what this does is gives them the flexibility so that if they only want to come to campus two nights a week, they can do it. And I think this really is a game changer, because for working adults, people with other responsibilities, family responsibilities, work responsibilities, coming to school four and five nights a week is really very difficult, and it really cuts down on the numbers of people who can come to law school.

And we’re really hopeful that the part-time Flex JD will help to really make it for an even more inclusive student body. And they will be in the same classes, so these will be synchronous classes that we’ll do through live virtual programming.

What about the National Security Institute at Scalia Law? Given the recent hack of government systems, it seems that cyber security is more important than ever.

Yes, absolutely. And national security is a critical area today for law students. 

It’s not just a small concentration but provides tremendous opportunities for students. There is a lot of coursework and curriculum that students have in this area, including cyber security plus an abundance of conferences in national security with an amazing group of speakers. Students can attend them all. 

There are internships during the year and at the center during the summer. And then, when you have that many professionals working in the building who are in the national security network, it provides tremendous opportunities for students when it comes to placement and career services.

Considering what’s happening with big tech these days, is there a lot going on with your Global Antitrust Institute?

Yes. The global antitrust center originated with the Law & Economics Center. Mason has the best law and economics concentration in the world. 

Once students graduate and go into law practice, they really understand that finance and economics drive litigation, drive transactions, and that the understanding of finance and economics is really critical to the practice of law. 

What are your plans for the law school? Any big ideas on the horizon?

This is already a really fantastic law school. We want to be sure that we get the word out to students and to others about, really, the breadth of opportunity, the breadth of viewpoint, the breadth of the curriculum. We’ll be working on providing what’s an accurate representation of the law school with all of its opportunities.

We’re going to be leveraging technology. We’re going to do it with the part-time program. We’re going to leverage technology in the non-JD space to educate non-lawyers, many of whom need coursework in the law but don’t necessarily want to be a practicing lawyer. And then we’ll continue to provide for lawyers through online learning in some of the specialized areas where we really excel. 

We’ll continue to work on diversity. We have a task force on diversity, equity and inclusion, and that’s going to be another important part of the law school.

I feel really honored to come to the school at this point. At Alabama, we moved the school considerably in rankings. And I know our ranking doesn’t yet reflect where we are, but this is a school that’s in great shape and part of our job is to communicate and let people know just how strong the school is in so many areas.