An Interview with Yale Law School’s First Female Dean

This week, Yale Law School announced the appointment of a new dean: Heather Gerken, a constitutional and election law professor, with a track record for helping students get practical experience working on cases.

The selection of Gerken is more than a routine promotion: the 48-year-old former Jenner & Block litigator marks the first woman to hold the title of dean at Yale Law School, which has ranked No. 1 in U.S. News and World Report’s rankings of top law schools since 1994 .

In a recent interview with Big Law Business, Gerken spoke about her plans for Yale, her thoughts on the role lawyers play in the face of the Trump administration and how state and local law offices can shape how laws are developed and implemented.

Below is an edited copy of our conversation.

Big Law Business: You will be the first female law school dean at Yale. Can you talk about what that means to you personally, and also for the legal profession?

Gerken: It means a lot for me personally... because I have a fourteen-year-old daughter. I guess the way I feel about it, as a professional matter, is that there are a lot of people who tread this path for me. At the law school, Tracey Meares was the first African American professor to be granted tenure, Cristina Rodriguez was the first Latina [tenured faculty member]. A lot of people have taken these steps ahead of me and they’ve made the path a lot easier.

Big Law Business: What are your plans as dean? What would you like to change at Yale Law School?

Gerken: One of the things about taking the helm of the greatest law school in the world is your first priority is to preserve what makes it extraordinary... We need to help prepare law students for the 21st Century practice, which is a different world than before. There are opportunities available here that are available nowhere else, but it’s really important that everyone has access to them and we need to think through the puzzle of how networks operate and make sure students who come from families without lawyers... can take advantage of everything available here. It’s one thing that I plan on working on when I take the helm.

[caption id="attachment_43246" align="aligncenter” width="288"][Image “heather gerken2" (src=https://bol.bna.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/heather-gerken2-e1487803037378.jpg)]Heather Gerken speaking at Yale Law School in 2012. Photo by Harold Shapiro.[/caption]

Big Law Business: How do you see the legal environment being different today, and what is Yale doing to respond to that?

Gerken: There is enormous pressure right now from the bar to produce students that are practice-ready. The amazing thing about this place, and it runs against every stereotype about Yale, is that Yale has the most theoretical-oriented structure, and yet more law professors per capita are doing experiential work in the world in one fashion or another. Just in the last three weeks, four clinics have been involved in high-profile work related to what’s been happening [in the national public discourse]. We have managed to bridge that practice theory divide more than anyone else.

We’re thinking about the training we’re providing to students. Eighty percent of our students do clinics. It’s pretty extraordinary what practice experience they get while working here. I think those pressures are coming from financial reasons at law firms. I think law used to be under an apprenticeship model, where you did your apprenticeship after law school, and now they aren’t financially able to.

Big Law Business: Speaking of the law practice, you worked at Jenner & Block as an associate from 1996 to 2000. What was your experience like?

Gerken: When you’re asked about [your Big Law experience], you’re expected to say it was dull. I actually had an amazing experience. I’m not one who left screaming from practice. It made clear to me that practice is as intellectually stimulating as being an academic. And two, it really honed my writing skills and my sense for what it means to be a good lawyer. I learned from the very best lawyers in the country and I watched them conduct themselves with the highest level of ethics and professionalism and that’s very important if you want to live in a world that respects lawyers.

[Editor’s Note:At Jenner, Gerken said she learned from lawyers such as the now-former U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, Georgetown University Law professor Paul Smith and the late First Amendment lawyer Bruce Ennis.]

Big Law Business: How do you plan to make sure prospective students who come from different backgrounds have the same access to legal education?

Gerken: I think the solution to the problem of networks is better networks. These opportunities are available to many students but they don’t know how to access them. You can’t just give someone a handbook. It’s the one-on-one mentoring that really matters. So what I want to do is build out a robust mentoring structure among students, faculty and alumni to make sure every student, no matter what they do, can figure out a path forward. It’s not like people are born knowing how to become a lawyer in Silicon Valley or an appellate litigator in Washington, D.C. I want to make the path clear and give students great advice along the way so they can do what they want to do.

Big Law Business: Your work has focused on federalism , diversity and dissent. What are the biggest points that you’ve focused on in your studies?

Gerken: I’m a nationalist who believes in federalism and that’s a rarity in the academy. I don’t fit particularly well in either camp. I’m a person who believes federalism is for everybody, not just conservatives, and progressives should pay attention to the role it plays in changing people’s minds. The past two months have been busy for me because there are a lot more people on the progressive side interested in federalism than there have been before.

Big Law Business: You’ve written extensively about federalism. What is it?

Gerken: Federalism just means that we have states and localities with different control over people in power. I think progressives are skeptical of it because of the role it played in the civil rights movement and Jim Crow. But I say, this is not your father’s federalism. When I think of federalism, I think of the same-sex marriage movement and how important it was for people who believe in marriage equality not just to go to the courts, but to go to cities like San Francisco and across the country to get involved in politicking. I think that’s something we just don’t pay enough attention to when we think of our democratic design.

Big Law Business: Along that line, you created and run the San Francisco Affirmative Litigation Project . This initiative uses federalism?

Gerken: Definitely. The city of San Francisco can sue almost anyone or anything as if they were the AG of the state. What that means is they can use their power to enforce local and state and federal law and to achieve good. So what happens with that program is my students help dream up the litigation and they get to work on it. The cases they have worked on have been on the same-sex marriage trial — some call it the trial of the century — a $1.1 billion lead paint case and the first one to succeed and get a judgement [ against Sherwin-Williams Co., NL Industries Inc. and ConAgra Grocery Products LLC ], as well as a case over credit card fraud . The city has thought imaginatively about the role they can play in San Francisco and California and the way our country thinks about these issues. It’s hard to get better work than this. It’s the cases you get once in a lifetime and my students are working on them every day.

Big Law Business: How does the process work? The San Francisco City Attorney’s Office files an independent lawsuit?

Gerken: The city originates its own lawsuits. They have a special power under California law to allow them to act like a state attorney general. Because the city is smaller, it’s more nimble and is often the first in the country to bring such a suit. Recently, San Francisco filed a first-in-the-nation lawsuit to the city sanctuary order from the Trump administration .

Big Law Business: You mention Trump’s city sanctuary order. What role do you think lawyers have in today’s environment generally to uphold the rule of law, in light of recent actions like Trump’s immigration order?

Gerken: I want to emphasize that this is an entirely non-partisan enterprise. I do think lawyers and law schools have an important role to protect the rule of law and these values are deep inside the profession and they are entirely non-partisan and cross the political aisle. These are values that extend from the Marshall’s court to the Robert’s court. Our politics these days are falling apart. Some things that make the legal profession so honorable is what we are teaching to others: how to go to war with someone, but to respect them. Law allows you to see the weakness in your own argument, while seeing what’s constructive about the other side. I think that’s what is a value of the profession, and it has nothing to do with the president in any given moment, but what’s going on generally.

Write to Big Law Business with news tips and inquiries at biglawbusiness@bna.com .

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