Smith is the second-longest serving dean of the J. Reuben Clark Law School at BYU. He was initially appointed to a five-year term as dean in May 2016, which was eventually extended to a second term with the potential to serve through May 2026.

For Smith, BYU Law’s success is likened to a relay race. He has run his leg, and now it’s time to pass the baton on to another deserving candidate.

“I think a lot of people were thinking I would stay longer, but I’m very much of the opinion that you can go farther and faster as an institution if you run a relay rather than having one person just run the whole race,” he said. “I felt like I had had a really great chance to do my leg of the relay, and it was time for someone else to take the baton and run their leg of it.”

Smith has seen BYU Law through innovations in technology, law and corpus linguistics, scholarship, and global engagement, including the launch of the legal design lab LawX, the development of an annual corpus linguistics conference and a dedicated Law and Corpus Linguistics Technology Platform.

Now, Smith is looking forward to pursuing new projects, as well as returning to familiar ones. He plans to write a book on the history of the corporation, devote time to BYU Law’s Inspiring Leadership Initiative and Global Business Law Program and complete several previously unfinished papers.

“Every educational administrator probably starts in education for other reasons, they love to teach, they love to do research, they love to write, they probably don’t go into legal education at least thinking ‘I really want to be a Dean,'” Smith said. “I’m going to go back to the life of a regular professor and do teaching and research and writing.”

When asked what has been most rewarding about his time as dean, Smith responded, without missing a beat, that it has been the people he was able to work with.

“That includes our faculty, it includes the staff of the law school, the students of the law school, alumni, administrators from the university, and other members of our broader community,” Smith said. “I’ve really loved this job, and I love BYU Law School.”

BYU has launched a search committee to find the next dean of BYU Law. The search committee will accept nominations and suggestions for consideration.