Kent Syverud, the successful and highly regarded Dean of Vanderbilt’s law school since 1997, will step down at the conclusion of his second term next summer. The Vanderbilt press release is here. While the press release contains the obligatory puffery on such occasions, it’s worth saying that there really is lots of tangible (i.e., certain faculty recruitments and retentions) and intangible (i.e., conversational) evidence that he was an exceptionally good Dean, and Vanderbilt was fortunate to have him. I strongly suspect other law schools in search of a Dean have already come calling, and will continue to do so for quite some time.