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May 26, 2008
More Statistics on Law Professor Hiring
Last week, I posted data about the success percentage of law professor teaching candidates who obtained their JDs from particular law schools for the 2006-07 and 2007-08 hiring seasons. This data was based on applicant totals by law school from AALS and applicant hired totals compiled by Larry Solum. Although Solum's data is incomplete (it is based on reports he receives from applicants and others), it is currently the best (and only) data about hiring I could find.
The data I posted last week focused on schools with a US News ranking of between 1 and 29. Here is data on schools not included in last week's data. In Table 1 below, I’ve included all schools (not already included in my previous post and charts) with 10 or more applicants combined for 2006-08 – an average of 5 or more per year. In Table 2 (after the continuation break), I list schools with fewer than 10 applicants for 2006-08 that had successful applicants.
What these tables show is that any school regardless of US News ranking can have successful applicants. Some of the schools below have placed more successful applicants than a number of schools in the top 20.
TABLE 1
Table 1 includes all schools not included in my previous post (i.e. those having a US News ranking below 29) with 10 or more applicants combined for 2006-08 – an average of 5 or more per year.
| LAW SCHOOL | TOTAL JD APPLICANTS 2006-08 | JD APPLICANTS HIRED 2006-08 | % HIRED 2006-08 |
| Tulane | 25 | 5 | 20% |
| Case Western | 15 | 2 | 13% |
| Florida | 18 | 2 | 11% |
| Cincinnati | 10 | 1 | 10% |
| Texas Southern | 10 | 1 | 10% |
| Howard | 11 | 1 | 9% |
| Rutgers (Camden, Newark) | 15 | 1 | 6% |
| Wisconsin | 16 | 1 | 6% |
| Syracuse | 10 | 0 | 0% |
| Northeastern | 11 | 0 | 0% |
| UNC | 12 | 0 | 0% |
| Brooklyn | 12 | 0 | 0% |
| Hofstra | 12 | 0 | 0% |
| Ohio State | 14 | 0 | 0% |
| Temple | 15 | 0 | 0% |
| Suffolk | 17 | 0 | 0% |
| U.C. Hastings | 19 | 0 | 0% |
| Indiana | 22 | 0 | 0% |
| American University | 27 | 0 | 0% |
TABLE 2
Table 2 contains a list of schools that had under 10 total law professor teaching candidates in 2006-08 – an average of less than 5 per year – but that had one or more graduates hired during this time. I list these schools separately because they have sent so few to the teaching market that any one hire will have a dramatic effect on their success percentage. With numbers so low, the success percentage has little indicative value.
| LAW SCHOOL | TOTAL JD APPLICANTS 2006-08 | JD APPLICANTS HIRED 2006-08 | % HIRED 2006-08 |
| Hawaii | 2 | 1 | 50% |
| Georgia | 7 | 3 | 43% |
| Villanova | 3 | 1 | 33% |
| Connecticut | 4 | 1 | 25% |
| U. Washington | 4 | 1 | 25% |
| West Virginia | 4 | 1 | 25% |
| Willamette | 4 | 1 | 25% |
| Seton Hall | 5 | 1 | 20% |
| Chicago Kent | 5 | 1 | 20% |
| St. Thomas | 5 | 1 | 20% |
| Kansas | 6 | 1 | 17% |
| Arizona | 6 | 1 | 17% |
| Brigham Young | 6 | 1 | 17% |
| Denver | 6 | 1 | 17% |
| St. Louis | 6 | 1 | 17% |
| CUNY | 7 | 1 | 14% |
| Albany | 7 | 1 | 14% |
| William & Mary | 9 | 1 | 11% |
Posted by Daniel J. Solove at May 26, 2008 08:07 PM
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Comments
Dan--thanks for this. You're doing a great service, as always.
These data are sobering. And I hope we'll talk some about what this means to our profession.
One question, though, did you think about using the AALS directory instead of Solum's report? My thought is that you might go through all the people in the 2006-07 registry and see who appears in the 2007-08 AALS directory.
That obviously won't pick up people who're hired in 2007-08, but for the earlier years, I'd imagine it's a complete record of who's been hired. Also, it would pick up some people who obtained visiting positions and I'd think that would be desirable to include them in your tables, to give a fuller sense of who's able to "break into" the academy.
Posted by: Alfred at May 26, 2008 10:57 PM
"Some of the schools below have placed more successful applicants than a number of schools in the top 20."
Given that GW and Wash-St. Louis placed exactly zero, that is not hard. I think the more intuitive take from these numbers is that, unless you went to a top twenty school (really a top top 20 school), your chance of breaking into the legal academy is no more than 10% at most. The fact that that abysmal chance is true of several top twenty schools also, is cold comfort.
Posted by: anon at May 26, 2008 11:53 PM
A brief point--could you be double-counting candidates? That is, if someone was on the market in 06-07, and then again in 07-08, would you have counted them twice, making it look like there were more candidates from a school than there actually were? This could skew your results slightly. (This may be what Alfred was alluding to.)
Posted by: anon at May 27, 2008 08:26 AM
Hmm...actually, you repeated a school that you had in your previous post...namely, Boston College, which is still within the top 30 US News Report (26? or something like that).
Why was that?
Posted by: tom at May 27, 2008 08:10 PM
Tom -- my mistake. I've now deleted BC from the table in this post.
Posted by: Daniel J. Solove at May 27, 2008 08:13 PM
