Mary Algero, Associate Dean for Faculty Development and former Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Academic Affairs at Loyola University, New Orleans College of Law has taken time to provide a thoughtful account of why someone might wish to serve in the role of associate dean for academic affairs and how one might make good use of it. You can find her article posted on SSRN here. Below are the title and citation to her work. We’ve come a long way from Dean Griswold’s snarky line that an associate dean is a mouse in training to be a rat.

Algero, Mary, Behind the Scenes of Law School Administration & Leadership: What Does an Associate Dean Actually Do & Why Would I Want to Do That?  (May 14, 2026). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6885778 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6885778