Deans’ List Protocols, Reminders, Information
The Deans’ List maintained by the staff of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions 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. We created the following guidelines for the list:
1. This is a list for deans. Members of this list are the deans of every ABA-approved law school. We monitor the membership of this list. Dean-designates, former deans, senior associate deans, and the dean’s assistant will not be subscribed to the list.
In addition to the dean of each ABA-approved law school, the ABA Managing Director of Accreditation and some members of the staff, and the senior staff person at the other key national legal education organizations (AALS, Access Group, LSAC, and NALP) are subscribed to the list.
2. Replying to messages. Please use your judgment in “replying to all,” which sends your message in response to a posting to all members of the list, or “replying to sender,” which will send your reply just to the sender of the message. The simplest way to assure that a message gets to the sender and not to the entire list is to type or cut/paste the sender’s email address in the “to” line of your email message. Senders can make it easier for responders to do that by including their email address in the original message. “Reply to all” is appropriate when the original message asks a question or communicates information about legal education or the operation of a law school generally. “Reply to sender” is appropriate for messages about transitions (appointments, resignations, and the like). Everyone appreciates the sender who raises a question and offers to collect information from “reply to sender” emails and to post a report or summary of responses to the list.
3. Uses of the list.
• The list is there to facilitate conversation and exchange of information about legal education among the deans.
• Please do not use the list to discuss or collect and share faculty and staff salaries, benefits, and perquisite data and analogous information.
• Please do not use the lists to distribute or disseminate promotional material about your school (conferences, new programs, awards, major gifts, etc.)
• Please do not use the list to circulate petitions about matters not related to legal education.
• While you are invited to use the list to introduce yourself, let others know you are resigning or leaving your position, to solicit nominations for your successor, and to introduce your successor to the list, please do not use the list to post job announcements/position openings at your school.
4. Confidentiality of the list. Generally, messages to the list should not be forwarded to others. If you author a posting and do not want it forwarded, mark the posting “confidential.” Please do not forward a posting that the author has marked confidential. When in doubt about the propriety of forwarding a listserv posting, ask permission from the sender.
For your information, in some states, messages from this list received by the dean of a public law school may be subject to FOIA requests.
5. Be kind to your colleagues. Finally, and obviously, as you use the list please exercise discretion and exhibit professionalism and courtesy to your colleagues.
6. Archive. There is an archive for this list. To access it, type the following into your browser: http://mail.abanet.org/scripts/wa.exe?INDEX . The archive allows you to search the list by topic dating back to 1999. 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 list.
7. Contact for tech issues. If you have trouble accessing the list, please send an email to Enna Rios at [email protected].