By Katie Crowley & Kellye Y. Testy
From our two vantage points — one forged in the daily, often unseen work of serving as a Chief of Staff after coming up through the ranks of nearly every corner of their law school, the other shaped by years in the dean’s chair and national leadership roles across legal education — we have come to share a simple conviction: no dean should have to lead a law school alone.
There are just under 200 ABA-accredited law schools in the United States. While a growing number of schools have embraced formal Chief of Staff-type roles, many still rely on the dean to carry too much of the weight for strategic leadership, operational oversight, and institutional memory. To be sure, deans are supported by capable academic leaders, but their tenures are often too brief and their administrative portfolios are inherently part-time, layered atop critical teaching and scholarly responsibilities. Likewise, while the dean benefits from strong professional staff in key functional areas, such as admissions, career services, development, and finance, those leaders are necessarily focused on running their own complex operations. What remains missing in many schools is a senior role devoted to integrating these pieces, sustaining momentum, and ensuring that the work of leadership does not reset with each change in personnel.
In an environment marked by constant change, increasing complexity, and frequent leadership turnover, the legacy model of law school leadership and management is becoming harder to sustain. Modern legal education is demanding and increasingly “24/7.” There are seasons of confidence and forward motion, and other times when everything feels urgent, fragile, and on the brink. As such, long-term strategy is repeatedly interrupted by immediate realities. In that environment, the Chief of Staff becomes the person who holds the center: steady when emotions run high, attentive to what others miss, quietly absorbing pressure so the dean can focus on strategic priorities and resource development, and the institution can keep moving forward.
Where the Role Comes From, and Why It Endures
The Chief of Staff role did not arise by accident. It emerged in military settings where leaders learned, often the hard way, that strategy and execution, while inseparable, cannot always be carried by the same person at the same time. Commanders needed a trusted partner to translate intent into coordinated action, to absorb operational complexity, and to anticipate risk before it became failure. The corporate sector soon adopted the model as the size and complexities of business operations grew beyond the capacity of the “one CEO” model.
That logic translates cleanly to law schools. As institutions grow more complex, a dean’s effectiveness can depend on having someone to manage execution, so the dean can focus on mission, strategy, and long-term direction. The Chief of Staff does not replace leadership or compete for authority. The role strengthens leadership by making it sustainable.
The history matters because it explains not just why the role exists, but what it demands in practice.
Doing the Work So Leadership Can Lead
If the origins of the role explain why it exists, the work of the institutional doer explains how it functions day-to-day. The title “Chief of Staff” can be misleading. It sounds lofty. In reality, the role, when performed well, is grounded. If there is a mission-critical project without a clear home, the Chief of Staff becomes the home. Reaccreditation efforts, cross-unit initiatives, sensitive personnel matters, crisis response, and the work that inevitably falls between offices tend to land here.
Steve Payne, Dean of The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law describes the Dean-Chief of Staff relationship this way: my lane is the Chief of Staff’s lane. That’s not an invitation to overstep, but a recognition of what the role requires. A Chief of Staff cannot stay neatly within a single portfolio. The work cuts across academic affairs, admissions, student life, advancement, finance, marketing and communications, and faculty governance, often in the same day. For a Chief of Staff who is not a member of the faculty, this requires particular tact. Engaging effectively in areas shaped by faculty co-governance, especially academic affairs, demands diplomacy, credibility, and deep respect for faculty roles and norms. Just as important is the judgment to recognize when influence is appropriate and when a matter properly belongs to the dean or the faculty alone. The challenge is not learning one lane well, but learning how to move between them with judgment, trust, and deference.
By blocking and tackling the day-to-day execution of institutional priorities, wherever they arise, the Chief of Staff creates the space for the dean to think at a higher altitude about mission, strategy, and the long-term direction of the school. When the role is working as intended, the dean is freed to lead where only the dean can lead.
This is not a role for someone whose first instinct is to delegate. This work requires comfort with ambiguity and a willingness to pick up unfinished tasks and carry them forward, quietly and reliably. Institutions do not move forward on vision alone. They move forward because someone is trusted to move across lanes and ensure the work actually gets done.
Steadiness, Judgment, and Seeing What Others Miss
Law schools can be intense organizations. Strong personalities, high stakes, and real consequences create emotional turbulence. One of the least visible but most important parts of the Chief of Staff role is absorbing that turbulence without amplifying it.
Stoicism matters here. Steady does not mean cold. It means reliable under pressure. The Chief of Staff learns quickly, recovers fast from mistakes, is willing to have the hard conversations, and keeps moving forward without drama. People take their cues from steadiness, and the institution feels calmer when someone remains grounded and visibly committed to both people and purpose.
That steadiness is not passive. It sharpens perception.
Much of the Chief of Staff’s effectiveness comes down to awareness. Reading the room faster than the room reads itself. Noticing who is unusually quiet. Catching the energy shift after a single question. Understanding the politics of a situation without naming them.
Awareness alone is not enough. The role requires judgment about when to act and how. Sometimes it is a small reframing comment. Sometimes a quiet conversation afterward. Often, it is preventing a problem from becoming visible at all. The best crisis management is the crisis that never happens.
Memory, History, and Continuity
Deans move fast. They have to. Over time, the Chief of Staff becomes the institutional memory, tracking commitments, context, and history so that nothing important is lost to pace.
But memory in a law school is not only strategic. It is communal. In ways both expected and unexpected, the Chief of Staff often becomes a keeper of the community’s history, especially in moments of loss. That can mean ensuring a life is marked with care, that the right people are told, and that the dean and the institution pause, however briefly, to acknowledge what and who has been lost. It is quiet work, rarely noticed, but deeply important to the health and humanity of the community.
These moments honor lives, signal continuity, and remind the community that it is more than programs, rankings, or policies. In tending to these acts of remembrance and recognition of others, the Chief of Staff helps preserve the soul of the institution while allowing its momentum to continue forward.
Holding memory well also sharpens judgment in the present.
Over time, this work of memory becomes a matter of continuity. As is well documented and widely discussed among legal educators, the average tenure of a dean is often too brief, and academic deans, associate deans, and other senior leaders often turn over too quickly as well. In that environment, staff continuity is not just helpful; it is essential. The Chief of Staff becomes a stabilizing presence across leadership transitions, carrying institutional knowledge forward when titles, portfolios, and reporting lines inevitably change. That continuity allows new leaders to lead more effectively, protects the institution from starting over every few years, and ensures that progress is cumulative rather than cyclical.
Service as the Organizing Principle
All of this work, execution, steadiness, perception, memory, and continuity, rests on a single organizing principle: service. The students and the team come first. The institution comes first. The mission comes first. The dean comes first. The Chief of Staff often does the most when they leave the lightest fingerprints.
This is not a flaw in the design. It is the design. For those who need recognition or rigid structure, the role will feel uncomfortable. For those who value impact over visibility and service over spotlight, it can be one of the most meaningful roles in academic leadership.
The Partnership Depends on the Dean
The case for a Chief of Staff, however, is inseparable from the kind of leadership willing to build that partnership.
The success of a Chief of Staff does not rest on the role alone. It depends equally on the kind of dean who chooses to build that partnership. Not every leadership style makes room for a Chief of Staff, and that is worth saying plainly.
The model works best with a dean who is confident enough not to be threatened by a strong partner and secure enough to place real trust in that person. A Chief of Staff who is effective will see across portfolios, raise hard questions, surface inconvenient truths, and act with a high degree of independence. That kind of support is only possible when a dean welcomes strength rather than guarding territory.
Trust, in this context, is not abstract. It shows up in access, candor, and permission to act. It means knowing that when the Chief of Staff speaks or intervenes, they do so not on personal authority, but as an extension of the dean’s leadership and values. When that trust is present, the partnership becomes a force multiplier. When it is not, the role collapses into task management and loses its strategic value.
The Quiet Architecture
Thriving law schools are rarely built by accident. They endure and succeed because of the quiet, disciplined stewardship of many individuals and teams. Within that work, the Chief of Staff often serves as the unseen structure that helps keep the institution connected and upright through cycles of change and challenge.
As law schools face significant headwinds from many sources, we need effective leadership that lasts. Decanal and thus institutional success will be furthered by a structure that includes a capable Chief of Staff who stands together with the dean, holding the center when it matters most.
Katie Crowley serves as Associate Dean for Administration and Chief of Staff at The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law. Appointed in 2023 after seven years as Dean of Students and several other leadership roles at Catholic Law, she stepped into a Chief of Staff position created specifically for her by Dean Steve Payne and considers it her favorite role to date.
Kellye Y. Testy serves as the CEO of the Association of American Law Schools. Prior, she was President & CEO of the Law School Admission Council and also served as the dean of two law schools and is grateful for all of her Chiefs of Staff.