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Jack Weiss arrived as chancellor of LSU’s Paul M. Hebert Law Center more than nine months ago, and he’s been busy.

He ruffled some feathers among faculty members who thought Weiss lacked sufficient academic credentials to lead the law school, coming as he did from a law practice environment rather than a law education environment. He also ran afoul of some faculty members by going against a recommendation to grant tenure to a [now former] law center professor, Alberto Zuppi.

Finally, Weiss chaired the search committee that wound up selecting Duke Athletic Director Joe Alleva to succeed Skip Bertman. Business Report sat down with Weiss to talk about these and other matters, including his plans for the law school.

Question: Among your major goals for the law center is to create “the faculty of the future.” Is that another way of saying “diversity?”

A: [Diversity] is an element of both the faculty-of-the-future priority and the attracting-top-students-to-LSU priority. It’s a subcategory of the two. We’ve hired three new full-time faculty and one visiting faculty member for next year. One of the four professors we have hired for next year is Raymond Diamond, who’s a tenured professor at Tulane. He’s an outstanding professor in constitutional and criminal law, among other things. Professor Diamond happens to be an African American. Our faculty is not moving in the wrong direction in terms of diversity.

Q: Isn’t just about every law school in America trying to do the same thing?

During this past recruiting season, since I’ve been chancellor, we made offers of tenure-track appointments to three other African Americans. Unfortunately, all three of them decided to go somewhere else. One decided to go to Stanford, for example. It’s a very, very competitive market. It’s something we’re going to continue to work at. There are a lot of people out there competing with us for candidates who will make their faculties more diverse.

Q: I assume “diversity” applies to students as well.

On the student side of the equation, again, it’s a challenge. I want to be sure that we’re not missing any steps as far as our efforts to recruit minority students here. So we’ve hired the assistant director of admissions from the University of North Carolina, Michael States, who’s very well known in the law school world as a leader in the field of admissions, to make sure we’re leaving no stone unturned to recruit minority students. From everything I can tell, our minority recruitment was slightly up this year over last year. For this coming year, it appears to be holding its own in the 10% range. Most of our peer universities across the south, it’s a comparable challenge for them.

Q: You want to raise tuition significantly as well.

We are in the process now of seeking a tuition increase that will pay for additional scholarships. It’s a tuition increase that will be phased in over a period of time. It won’t affect any of the students that are here now. It’ll be in $1,000 increments. So the class coming in fall ’08, next year, if the Legislature and Board of Supervisors approve our tuition increase proposal, would have a $1,000 increase, from $10,700 to $11,700. They would keep that $11,7000 throughout their three years of law school. Then the class coming in the fall of ’09 would have a $2,000 increase, from $10,7000 to $12,7000, and that would carry them through their three years of law school, and then the class coming in the fall of 2010 would have a $3,000 increase. So it would be fully implemented really only in the 2010-2011 academic year. That’s the plan.

Q: What will you do with the extra money?

The tuition increase will be largely used for scholarships. The quality of one’s student body bears directly not only on everything that is going on inside these walls every day, it also is an important component of our U.S. News ranking. That in turn affects our ability to attract top faculty members. That in turn affects our ability to attract top students. Students and faculty. That’s really what we’re about.

Q: What else is in the works?

We’re drastically ramping up our clinical legal education program. On June 26 last year, five days before I got here, the [American Bar Association] had sent a letter saying we had to show cause by March 1, 2008, why our accreditation shouldn’t be called into question because we hadn’t complied with ABA standards requiring law schools to offer clinical legal education—an opportunity for students to represent live clients or have other real-life experiences. I set out from early on to address that problem. I think the news here is very good. And that is we as a faculty have adopted a detailed plan for the implementation of clinical legal education here at LSU law school.

Q: Where did the Zuppi matter issue wind up?

No one wishes more than I do that I hadn’t had to make the recommendation that I did, but it was something I felt like I had to do. From the very inception of my review of this tenure matter, I looked for various alternative ways to permit Professor Zuppi to stay at the law center, at least for some additional period of time. I offered him the possiblity of directing an international human rights law clinic in connection with our new clinical program. He didn’t want to do that. After the faculty learned of and objected to my recommendation, I offered to recommend that Professor Zuppi’s appointment be extended for an additional year, and that his tenure be reviewed again in the fall of ’08. He rejected that proposition. I would just like it to be understood that in my view I’ve done everything I can consistent with my own conclusions about the recommendation to try to accommodate the faculty’s concerns about my recommendation. Unfortunately none of that has worked out. [LSU System officials upheld Weiss’ recommendation, and Zuppi was not promoted.]

Q: Some faculty felt you lacked sufficient academic qualifications to lead the law center, plus there was disagreement with faculty over the Zuppi tenure issue. How’s your relationship with faculty these days?

You should ask them. But I’ve been immensely gratified at the experience of working closely with a number of faculty colleagues on these very intitiatives I’ve just discussed with you. I hope they feel that I’ve given them a meaningful, relevant voice and role in all of those actitivites. I hope they’ve gotten some sense from me of my collaborative style and my respect for them. I hope overall they’ve been reassured about what they can expect while I’m chancellor.

Q: What do you say to criticism that Parker Executive Search Firm, which LSU used to find a new athletic director, wasn’t necessarily working in the best interests of LSU?

I felt that we had aired that issue, and I didn’t hear anything or see anything that caused me to believe that the Parker firm was doing anything but acting in the best interests of LSU. I think Parker, from everything I could tell, conscientiously scoured the nation to produce the best candidates for the search that they could find. I think it came to a very good conclusion. I think Joe Alleva’s going to do an excellent job. I’m optimistic about it.

Q: Is there anything else you want to talk about?

I want to add one overarching priority: to create an environment here in which my colleagues on the faculty and the students of the law school felt a sense of energy, a sense of positiveness, a sense of excitement, a sense of change—overall what I would call a can-do culture. You’ll have to ask others whether I’ve succeeded in my nine months here. It’s certainly been something I’ve tried to do. It colors our ability to succeed in accomplishing these specific goals. If it’s successful it means that people feel a stake in the outcome, that people are willing to contribute their time and their energy to accomplishing things.

THE WEISS FILE

Occupation: Chancellor, LSU’s Paul M. Hebert Law Center

Age: 61

Hometown: New Orleans

Previous job: Partner with Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher in New York; principal outside lawyer for Dow Jones and Co.

Family: Married; three children.