Darby Dickerson
Darby Dickerson

The John Marshall Law School announced the appointment of a new dean on Monday.

The new dean will be Darby Dickerson. Dickerson has been the dean at Texas Tech University School of Law since 2011.

Dickerson, 52, will assume her new duties on Jan. 1.

Prior to leading Texas Tech, Dickerson was the dean of Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, Fla.

Dickerson was selected unanimously by the law school’s 25-member board of trustees, according to board President Leonard F. Amari.

He said Dickerson was both his and the decanal search committee Chairwoman Paula Hudson Holderman’s personal choice for the position.

“The law school was fortunate to have three outstanding candidates, however, Dean Darby Dickerson from Texas Tech, stood out head and shoulders above the rest,” Amari said. “She was by a wide margin the first choice of every constituency of the school.”

“Her record of success in law school administration speaks volumes about her ability in leadership and talent as a dean,” he added.

Dickerson said she sought the position for many reasons, chief among them that she agrees with the school’s mission.

“They value producing practice-ready lawyers, they emphasize skills training, diversity and inclusiveness,” she said.

“When I make a decision of where to go, it’s where am I going to have a positive impact, where do I think my skills sets fit, and I really think that where John Marshall is right now, the opportunities presented in the challenges that it is facing are within my wheelhouse.”

The school began its formal search for a dean in May, when in an invitation for applications, the school outlined challenges and opportunities for the next dean, which included goals such as increasing the bar passage rate and supporting students in their job searches.

Both of those are goals Dickerson said she plans on addressing.

“I want to make sure that our students are prepared and pass the bar at high levels and get great jobs, not just in Chicago but I want to explore different partnerships with the collar counties and firms downstate and in the region up in Wisconsin, I think there are some opportunities we can pursue there,” she said.

Other big-picture goals Dickerson said she plans to address include working to attract more students and increasing fundraising totals.

“We cannot be as tuition-dependent as we have been,” she said.

“I am passionate about fundraising, I love matching resources to people and to programs, so I want to hit the ground running and try to increase the revenue in that area,” she added.

One reason Amari cited as to why Dickerson was the board’s pick was because she values “the agenda of access and opportunity” that he said is important at John Marshall.

“It has been the mantra of The John Marshall Law School since its inception well over 100 years ago to have a law school that provides access and opportunity for people wanting to become lawyers,” Amari said.

Dickerson said focusing on a diverse faculty was one of her major contributions at Texas Tech.

“We, I think, almost effectively doubled the amount of women on the tenure-track faculty,” she said. “I’m very much a proponent of equal status regardless of what you’re teaching at the law school.”

Dickerson also said she was “very intrigued” by the fact that John Marshall is a standalone school when considering applying for the dean position. She said people have recommended that she try to be president of a school, but she wanted to stay in the legal field.

“It’s kind of like having my cake and eating it too,” she said. “I love legal education and the legal profession, and I’ve done a lot of work in higher ed and I didn’t want to get detached from that love that I have for this. John Marshall presented a unique opportunity because it’s one of the few remaining in that area, and Chicago is such a world-class legal city … all of those things seem to have come together at the right time for me.”

Since she’s overseen Texas Tech University School of Law, Dickerson said there has been an increase in faculty who have had work published in top law reviews. She also runs a regional externship program in which third-year students go to other Texas cities and serve as apprentices with organizations.

Dickerson also created the law school’s Academy of Leadership in the Legal Profession aimed at helping connecting students with working lawyers.

“I was raised primarily by a single mom and didn’t know any lawyers until I went to law school. We offer programs for students to gain business and leadership skills that fill in the gaps of their knowledge in the classroom,” she said.

Also at Texas Tech, Dickerson holds the W. Frank Newton Endowed Professorship.

She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 1984 and 1985 at the College of William & Mary and she graduated law school at Vanderbilt University in 1988.

She is a native of Columbia, S.C.

After graduating, she clerked for the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals and practiced commercial litigation with the firm now known as Locke, Lord LLP in its Dallas office.

She was named the Outstanding Young Lawyer in Dallas and Outstanding Director of the Texas Young Lawyers Association in 1995.

She serves on the Association of American Law Schools’ Executive Committee and is also a past chair of several association sections.

Dickerson is an elected member of the American Law Institute, a Sustaining Life Fellow of the Texas Bar Foundation and an inaugural member of The Texas Tech University School of Law American Inn of Court.

She also serves on the Council of the Appellate Section of the State Bar of Texas and is a past president of Scribes — The American Society of Legal Writers.

In 2013, she was the inaugural recipient of the Darby Dickerson Award for Revolutionary Change in Legal Writing that was named after her by the Association of Legal Writing Directors.

Dickerson will succeed John Marshall dean John E. Corkery, who is retiring after serving as dean since 2007.