Cardozo Dean David Rudenstine is stepping down in June after eight years. The Cardozo website and National Law Journal have detailed interviews with Dean Rudenstine. Here are his ten pieces of advice for his successor, which are equally applicable at other law schools:
- Set your aspirations so they are slightly out of reach but not so far that people feel discouraged, then go after them. Top-down leadership is anabsolute necessity; bottom-up initiative and inventiveness invites greatness.
- Ignore anybody who tells you that you can't achieve something because you are shooting too high. Don't let people with conventional expectations stand in your way. Kick 'em in the shins.
- Keep the students at the heart of your attention.
- Embrace and love your faculty, because no law school is going to be better than its faculty.
- Try to say yes instead of no. Conventional wisdom has it that you earn your bread by saying no; my experience is that you really earn it by saying yes.
- Work diligently with the University to make it and the Law School better than they both are today.
- Support your administrators, because you can't do a darn thing if you don't have wonderful people throughout the Law School. Remember, the secret to good hiring is good hiring.
- The future of the Law School requires funds that tuition income alone cannot provide, and the heart of your donor base will be your alums. Nourish them. Their daily involvement with Cardozo is essential, and their financial support is absolutely critical.
- Be imaginative and courageous in your aspirations and pragmatic in your strategy. 10
- Prepare to work damn hard. You will get a lot done. You will be deeply gratified, and you will have some fun along the way.
