I would greatly appreciate it if someone could let me know where I can find published (and reliable) data on the average number of years a newly-hired law professor (at the assistant or associate professor level) remains at the initial law school that hires him (i.e. s/he decides to give up teaching at law school or the school asks the individual to move on).

Of course, the burn out rate of public school teachers is available and high.

Thank you,

Ethan S. Burger

Number of hires/Total number of applicants

It would be interesting to see how the various schools outperformed the average hire rate for all applicants.

http://lsolum.typepad.com/legaltheory/entry_level_hiring_report/index.html

I think that these new figures will change the percentages quite significantly, specifically for Stanford (who had 4 hires reported since then) and Yale (which had 5 more hires)

http://lsolum.typepad.com/legaltheory/entry_level_hiring_report/index.html

change the percentages quite a bit, specifically for Stanford (who had 4 more hires reported) and Yale (which had 5 more).

Perhaps you can update the percentages with these new numbers to reflect the most recent information?

2. Are the applicant numbers distinct? Or is it the same dozen or so getting rejected from Yale every year?

3. Seems strange to me that it’s more important to have an above-average placement rather than an above-average article. Are articles ever read during the AALS process, or is quality irrelevant?

I think Leiter was responding to the chart by success rate (percentage) not by absolute numbers of profs. That is the first chart, where Penn is in 19th place behind Washington & Lee in the rate of success of its applicants for law professorships.

I count only 12 schools that have placed more than the 3 Penn did in 2006-8 according to the data above, and some of those have much larger class sizes than Penn. So this seems like it is pretty close to the top 10 to me, even though I suspect the data is missing some people.

Very very interesting data.

Defending Leiter, it’s worth noting that he didn’t “single” out Penn, he also pointed out Cornell. You could argue that he should also have pointed out Duke. All 3 of these schools are repeatedly “top 10″ law schools by the definition of those who worship USNews, but are nowhere near the top 10 by this metric of law prof placement.

I’d say most primary journals in the US News Top 100 clearly qualify as moderate reputation or above. There are also some primary journals outside the US News Top 100 that are quite good as well, but outside the Top 100, it is more hit or miss. Secondary law reviews (topical ones) are more likely to be viewed as less strong in quality. Some are excellent and have stellar reputations, but there are some (even those at top schools) that are not so great.

Journal placement becomes a rough proxy — if a candidate has a piece published in a well-regarded law review, that can help a lot at the initial stages. Later on, when the number of candidates a school is interested in pursuing is winnowed, the articles will get read, and even if they are well-placed, a poor article can spell doom for a candidate.

The biggest function of journal placement is to act as a quick proxy for article quality at the early stage (there’s no way the hiring committee is going to read everybody’s articles at the initial screening stage when there are nearly 1000 applicants per year).