Dean of Saint Louis University School of Law Resigns After One Year

Annette Clark has resigned as dean of the Saint Louis University School of Law after only one year. In a letter to the university president, Clark complained that the university took $800,000 from the law school’s building fund and that the university administration decided to move the law school to a downtown building without consulting the law school’s leadership.

“From the beginning of my deanship, you have evinced hostility toward the law school and its faculty and have treated me dismissively and with disrespect, issuing orders and edicts that allowed me virtually no opportunity to exercise the very discretion, judgment and experience for which the faculty enthusiastically hired me,” Clark wrote.

In a response, university president Lawrence Biondi, stated the Clark resigned just hours before she was to be fired.

Professor Clark was named dean in July 2011. She was associate dean and then vice dean at the Seattle University School of Law.  She is a graduate of Washington State University and the University of Washington School of Medicine. She holds a law degree from Seattle University.

For the time being, Professor Clark will retain her post as a tenured faculty member at the law school, but stated that she would look for opportunities elsewhere.