Archive for the ‘Law School (Hiring & Laterals)’ Category
Ibrahim v. Secunda on Appropriate Lateral Etiquette
posted by Dave Hoffman
Who has the better approach to the lateral hiring “market”?
[A]s long as you do not have concerns about people knowing your looking, you might as well go forward with all the approaches: get known, file a FAR, and target letters/emails to appointment committees. Although I think letters are by far the least effective method (no one wants to be added to a long stack of paper), you just never know.
And that, my friends, sums up the lateral market in general: you just never know – sometimes you try to put yourself “out there” without actually being “out there,” and other times you do nothing proactive and are “out there” anyway.
or Darian Ibrahaim:
To lateral candidates, do not write directly to schools you’re interested in, and do not go through the AALS process. You do not want to appear anxious to escape your current situation, even if you are. The best way to get the word out that you’re open to a move is to let your well-respected friends at other schools know that. These folks will inevitably be contacted by appointments committees looking for people who might be moveable. Also, the standard advice about going to conferences, publicizing your papers all holds true. If you’re doing good work, getting yourself out there, and are at a school from which one would reasonably assume you are extractable, you’ll get calls.
My view: Darian is correct on the tactics. And he’s equally right about the appropriate move for entry-level faculty: “write directly to schools you’re interested in.” This is a real change. When I was on the entry market in 2003, I had no sense that it was appropriate to write to schools directly, though I lacked a mentor so I could have missed many tricks. Now, writing directly to committees is apparently almost necessary (though not sufficient).
[Update: An earlier version of this post credited David Zaring for Darian Ibrahim's post. I have no idea how I made that mistake. Sorry guys!]
September 6, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Posted in: Law School (Hiring & Laterals)
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Fellowships for Aspiring Law Professors 2009-2010
posted by Daniel Solove
Over at TaxProf, Paul Caron has posted an updated list of fellowships and visiting associate professorships for aspiring law professors.
August 31, 2009 at 11:24 am
Posted in: Law School, Law School (Hiring & Laterals)
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AALS Hiring Process
posted by Gerard Magliocca
So as the hiring chair at my school, I’m currently wading through hundreds of resumes. I thought I’d make a few observations about them as a group, though this is obviously an “inside baseball” post that won’t be of interest to many of you. Thus, the rest of it is after the jump.
August 21, 2009 at 8:04 am
Posted in: Law School (Hiring & Laterals)
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Hiring for Tenure-Track
posted by Gerard Magliocca
I wanted to mention that I’ll be the hiring chair at IU-Indianapolis for the 2009-2010 year. We are looking to hire up to four people. After the jump I’ll list the subjects that we’re looking for. The comments section would be a good place for other hiring chairs to declare themselves!
May 22, 2009 at 6:00 am
Posted in: Law School (Hiring & Laterals)
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Breaking into Legal Academia with a Non-Top-5 J.D.
posted by Kaimipono D. Wenger
I get a variation of this e-mail at least once a year, from friends or acquaintances in law practice. It always starts out the same way. Basically, “I didn’t go to law school at Yale or Columbia, and I’m wondering whether that means I can never become a law professor.”
The short answer is “No, your non-Yale J.D. does not absolutely doom you. It does lengthen your odds, and it increases the importance of other factors, but it absolutely does not shut you out of the process.”
Really? Yes. Let’s go over it. Read the rest of this post »
May 13, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Tags: academia, hiring
Posted in: Law School (Hiring & Laterals)
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Larry Solum’s Entry Level Hiring Report 2009
posted by Daniel Solove
Over at Legal Theory Blog, Larry Solum has posted updated stats for entry level hiring for 2009.
April 23, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Posted in: Law School (Hiring & Laterals)
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Early Returns on Entry-Level Hiring
posted by Corey Yung
I was perusing through Solum’s entry-level-hiring list for this year. I was struck by the number of candidates that had either advanced degrees besides a J.D. or experience at a law school through a fellowship or visiting professor program. For the past few years, observers have noted that the entry path for law professor jobs was moving in those directions. However, the early results this year really underscore the incredible degree to which the market has shifted. The new survey reporting method being used at Legal Theory has a few kinks so the brief biography for a few reported candidates is incomplete. In some cases, I was able to find some more information with a quick Google search. However, my numbers below might be off in a few instances. By my count, there are:
95 total hires with adequate information
14 PhD’s
5 SJD’s
14 MA’s
15 LLM’s
58 hires who were VAP’s or fellows at a law school
15 hires with neither an advanced degree besides a J.D. nor teaching experience at a law school
I was most astounded that there were only 15 of the 95 hires so far were “naked” J.D. candidates (and one of those was a former U.S. Supreme Court clerk). Notably, that percentage roughly matches last year’s rate of “naked” J.D. hiring.
I wonder if, now that the entry-level hiring preferences of law schools seem clearly established, there might be some significant effects in the hiring process. The consequences of such information might start showing up in future AALS FAR candidate lists. It is my impression from reading the last two years of FAR packets, the majority of candidates are of the “naked” J.D. type. In the future, such J.D. candidates might recognize that their odds are long and either abandon their quests to become academics or apply to the various fellowship programs without ever going on the market for entry-level hiring. Before I was on the market (as a “naked” J.D.), I read every piece of advice around the Web about how to become a law professor (and there are a lot of great resources). However, with these new hiring patterns, those guides are largely out of date and many future candidates will surely recognize that the path to becoming a legal academic is quickly changing.
From the perspective of hiring law schools, I wonder if there is a substantial arbitrage opportunity for hiring “naked” J.D. candidates. With the incredible proliferation of VAP and fellowship programs, their aggregate ability to serve as proxies for ability and/or potential has probably diminished. For one-year VAP programs in particular, the amount of information available to hiring law schools is almost nil. The candidate submits their CV through FAR before he or she even begins the VAP. The opportunity for writing has, thus, not emerged. And faculty members at the visiting school are unlikely to offer any significant insight to the candidates. Hiring these “naked” J.D.’s to a tenure-track position as an alternative to a VAP might be a potential market opportunity for some schools. It’s unclear based upon Solum’s information how many of the hired candidates have visited at a school for more than one year. However, even compared to some two-year VAP candidates, a “naked” J.D. with publications might be undervalued in today’s market. Just as the Oakland A’s went from exploiting the undervaluing of the players with limited athleticism and plate patience to players with other, potentially undervalued skills, forward-looking Moneylaw law schools might see that the market has shifted too far against the “naked” J.D.
March 23, 2009 at 10:15 am
Posted in: Law School (Hiring & Laterals)
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Douglas to be Dean at William & Mary
posted by Nate Oman
President Taylor Reveley of the College of William & Mary announced today that Professor Dave Douglas has been named as the new dean of the law school. Dave is a specialist in constitutional law, race, and legal history. He’s also a great colleague and one of the nicest human beings you are ever likely to meet. I can think of few things more hideous than being the dean of a law school, but congratulations to Dave and good luck!
March 20, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Posted in: Law School (Hiring & Laterals)
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Law Professors Going Home
posted by Darian Ibrahim
I assume that many of us are following the list of lateral faculty moves over at The Faculty Lounge and are eagerly anticipating Larry Solum’s list of entry-level hires. The laterals list includes Mark Janis’s move from Iowa to Indiana. Now I don’t know Professor Janis or his work, but I’m always interested in finding new scholarship to explore. In reviewing Professor Janis’s bio, I noticed something: He graduated from Indiana Law, the place to which he is now returning. Professor Janis is not alone – for example, several years ago my friend Bob Lawless returned to Illinois, from which he holds his JD. And these are just a couple of potentially numerous examples.
Which got me thinking: Do all law professors secretly yearn to return to the schools from which they graduated? There are reasons to think many do. First, while there are surely exceptions, those of us who became professors probably really enjoyed our law school experiences (if not we’d be far away from the hallowed halls). Second, we likely held those professors who taught us in the highest regard, and the chance to become their colleague has an allure that an unfamiliar school might not be able to match. Third, we may have family in the geographic area or just generally prefer it (after all, we chose to go there in the first place). And finally, our home school may have been especially supportive when we were trying to enter academia and since.
Perhaps this inquiry is largely theoretical since most law professors graduated from the very top schools where few wind up. But just for fun, if you graduated from Stanford would you pick it over Harvard if you had the choice? Do you secretly yearn to return home to the school that started this whole experience for you? Due to the sensitive nature of the inquiry, my guess is that the “anon”s will dominate any comments. But I thought it would be fun to ask…
March 8, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Posted in: Law School, Law School (Hiring & Laterals)
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How is Tom Barr Like Shane Battier: Or, Measuring Individuals’ Roles in Group Success
posted by Dave Hoffman
Michael Lewis recently published a Times Magazine story on NBA player Shane Battier. The article is largely an anecdotally driven portrait of Battier, a player who supposedly makes his teammates better and opposing players worse, while engrossing few individual gains. But the Houston Rockets, who employ Battier, recognize his value, because they’ve finally cracked the nut of regressing success in group sports. According to Lewis, the Rockets use a sophisticated plus-minus measure:
One well-known statistic the Rockets’ front office pays attention to is plus-minus, which simply measures what happens to the score when any given player is on the court. In its crude form, plus-minus is hardly perfect: a player who finds himself on the same team with the world’s four best basketball players, and who plays only when they do, will have a plus-minus that looks pretty good, even if it says little about his play. Morey says that he and his staff can adjust for these potential distortions — though he is coy about how they do it — and render plus-minus a useful measure of a player’s effect on a basketball game. A good player might be a plus 3 — that is, his team averages 3 points more per game than its opponent when he is on the floor. In his best season, the superstar point guard Steve Nash was a plus 14.5. At the time of the Lakers game, Battier was a plus 10, which put him in the company of Dwight Howard and Kevin Garnett, both perennial All-Stars. For his career he’s a plus 6. “Plus 6 is enormous,” Morey says. “It’s the difference between 41 wins and 60 wins.”
The problem with the article is that it offers no perspective at all on how the Rockets tweak the statistic to make it useful and a competitive advantage. In that sense, the piece could be thought of as Moneyball III: This Time With No Data and No Human Interest. (Moneyball Had Data; Blind Side had a compelling story; this piece is unripe on both fronts.)
Nevertheless, in some quarters Lewis’s work has again caught the attention of legal innovators. Jim Chen, who has already opined that Deans should use a version of plus-minus to evaluate faculty performance, suggests that Battier is a promising case study: “the single factor that makes a great team player is the mirror image of the single factor that turns even the most productive scholar into a toxic Arschloch: selfishness.” To which an astute commentator responded: “If anything, a stats-driven evaluation process will almost certainly lead to the Battiers of academia being under-rewarded, rather than the reverse. Wouldn’t it be enough to reward those who just seem to distinguish themselves by their selflessness? . . . Note that, even within the NBA — in which it is much easier to do a plus/minus assessment — Battier gets undervalued by most teams, and if he weren’t still riding a six year contract would probably get paid a lot less even by the Rockets.”
March 2, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Posted in: Corporate Finance, Economic Analysis of Law, Empirical Analysis of Law, Law School (Hiring & Laterals), Law School (Rankings), Law School (Scholarship), Law School (Teaching)
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Larry Solum’s Entry Level Hiring Report
posted by Daniel Solove
Over at Legal Theory blog, Larry Solum is gathering data for this year’s entry level hiring report.
February 24, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Posted in: Law School (Hiring & Laterals)
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Law School Faculty Laterals
posted by Daniel Solove
Over at The Faculty Lounge, Dan Filler is listing information about faculty laterals for 2009.
January 17, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Posted in: Law School (Hiring & Laterals)
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An Under-Theorized Component of Law School Hiring
posted by Sarah Waldeck
It’s great to be back at Concurring Opinions, especially as a permanent contributor.
As several recent posts have already noted, the faculty hiring process is underway. My first reminder was last week, when I walked past a conference room and saw the Appointments Committee studying sheets from the FAR. Concurring Opinions has always been a great resource for job-seekers; you can find some of our advice here.
But back to the Appointments Committee. They are going to be busy in the upcoming weeks and some of that busyness will occur at the expense of other projects that are related to scholarship, teaching, or both. But most appointments committees don’t talk much about administrative work, and neither will the candidates they interview. This is true despite the lengthy list of potential administrative tasks: serving on the admissions or library or [you fill in the blank] committee, advising a law journal or the Woman’s Law Forum, directing a speciality institute, pitching in when a skills program needs an enhanced faculty presence, supervising externships, stepping up when an Associate Dean’s office is suddenly vacant. And so on. And so forth. And on. And on. Etc.
I want to make clear before the jump that I am NOT suggesting that talking about administrative work is a means of getting an offer. For that, follow the advice in the link above: appear to be an insightful and thoughtful person who will write and teach well. But you should nonetheless give some thought to administrative tasks, both to figure out where you would prefer to work and what you might want to do after you start there.
September 4, 2008 at 9:00 am
Posted in: Law School (Hiring & Laterals)
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Fellowships for Aspiring Law Professors
posted by Daniel Solove
Over at TaxProf, Paul Caron updates his list of fellowships for aspiring law professors. Well over 30 law schools now offer fellowships.
September 2, 2008 at 10:31 am
Posted in: Law School (Hiring & Laterals)
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AALS FAR Form Database or Elaborate Phishing Scam?
posted by Paul Ohm
Thanks to Dan and company for agreeing to let me blog here again. During my stint, I promise to talk about the law (and in particular, the threat to privacy posed by Internet Service Providers) but let me warm up with some lighter, more navel-gazing fare:
I’m serving for the first time on our Appointments committee this year, which means I get to look at the FAR form database from the other end of the microscope. Rick Garnett asks about the weaknesses of the form itself, but I wanted to comment instead on the awful user interface AALS provides for those of us perusing the forms.
The FAR form database’s user interface recalls the aesthetic of most of the phishing scam websites I have ever seen. It is ugly, which itself is not much of a sin for such a utilitarian site, but it makes me wonder whether AALS is putting care into other aspects of the database, such as privacy and security. It is also very hard to use, and I will venture to guess that schools are missing some candidates they might otherwise want to interview because of the lousy interface. Here are some specific criticisms:
August 19, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Posted in: Law School (Hiring & Laterals)
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When To Turn Down a Tenured Law Professorship Job Offer
posted by Daniel Solove
There’s a very interesting NY Times article about Barack Obama’s time teaching law at University of Chicago Law School. From the article:
Soon after [losing in the primary for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives], the faculty saw an opening and made him its best offer yet: Tenure upon hiring. A handsome salary, more than the $60,000 he was making in the State Senate or the $60,000 he earned teaching part time. A job for Michelle Obama directing the legal clinic.
Your political career is dead, Daniel Fischel, then the dean, said he told Mr. Obama, gently. Mr. Obama turned the offer down. Two years later, he decided to run for the Senate. He canceled his course load and has not taught since.
Another interesting fact:
Mr. Obama arrived at the law school in 1991 thanks to Michael W. McConnell, a conservative scholar who is now a federal appellate judge. As president of The Harvard Law Review, Mr. Obama had impressed Mr. McConnell with editing suggestions on an article; on little more than that, the law school gave him a fellowship, which amounted to an office and a computer, which he used to write his memoir, “Dreams From My Father.”
The article also has posted some of Obama’s class materials.
July 29, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Posted in: Law School, Law School (Hiring & Laterals), Politics
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Shirking v. Intentional Bad Conduct: MoneyLaw and Tenure, Take Two
posted by Dave Hoffman
Dean Jim Chen, over at MoneyLaw’s hall of doom headquarter’s, has responded to my post about tenure and Pat Burrell. (So has Michael Heise, at ELS). Jim gently critiques me for offering an overly simplistic view of MoneyLaw’s posture toward tenure. As he points out, tenure is “academia’s third rail,” and he’s no fool: [o]ne’s ability to accomplish things and to effect genuine change is inversely related to the extent to which one speaks one’s mind.” I take it that his message to me is: be mindful . . . young padawan. Thanks!*
Jim (unlike his commentators and some of ours) doesn’t quibble with the finding that tenure doesn’t itself reduce scholarly output. That was the relatively minor point I was making – tenure doesn’t cause shirking & negligence. Jim’s response is, essentially, well, ok, but it does “eliminate[e] meaningful sanctions against odiously selfish, institutionally destructive faculty members.” It also, by insulating faculty members from market pressures, makes us bad at helping our graduates to understand the actual practice of law.
Although I’d like to disagree, just to provoke a good exchange, I can’t. Jim hits the nail right on the head: tenure’s most pernicious consequence is that it permits some faculty to be reckless or intentionally terrible. Now, tenure doesn’t cause these bad eggs (or “rodents” as Jim calls them). It just makes it hard to get rid of them, making evident the need to do a better job in hiring and screening candidates. As a commentator at MoneyLaw notes, it’s “hard to appreciate how horrible these are or how widespread the phenomenon is.” My guess: 10-30% of many faculties would be fired, de-equitized, or otherwise let go if employed as lawyers. Of that 10-30%, some smaller percentage are “odiously selfish” or “institutionally destructive.” I’ve heard that new Deans are told that if you can count on one hand the number of faculty members who are truly problems, you are lucky. That sounds about right.
Whether that percentage would be smaller given market pressures is the open question. And we have no way of really knowing. If tenure disappeared by fiat, certainly some folks would be let go, and some would turn the corner from recklessness to mere negligent performance. But I still think that the improvement in overall output over the academy as a whole would be trivial.
July 22, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Posted in: Behavioral Law and Economics, Economic Analysis of Law, Law School, Law School (Hiring & Laterals), Law School (Scholarship), Law School (Teaching)
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Public Service: It’s AALS Time (Yes, Already)
posted by Deven Desai
So it’s July. Summertime. I hear the livin’ is easy, fish are jumpin’, and the cotton is high. The different pace of summer allows me to reflect and write. Not exactly easy livin’ but I like it quite a bit. Still, this time of year slips away all too easily. August looms with syllabi to plan and lectures to prepare. For those interested in applying to become a professor the game, I am afraid to say, is on.
That odd rite the AALS Faculty Recruitment Conference (sorry the page is not built for some reason) is really around the corner. Now some may know that the conference itself is in October. But the key for you all is that the Faculty Appointments Register has deadlines next month. August 8 to be precise. These dates matter. Being in that first group is fairly important.
Today is July 7. That means about one month until the FAR information is due. TAKE A LOOK NOW. For trying to squash all you have done into a few small fields AND having a polished resume requires much more time than one might think.
One more tip: create a check list of each bit of information you want to have on the FAR form and no matter what make sure that whatever publications you have are on that FAR. The education, employment, and interests are more familiar so you may not miss those fields (although they should be on your list). The other fields, especially publications, do not always show up on a resume so pay attention for items that schools want but that you may not have encountered before. Again starting now will allow you to have that moment of “Oh God, I have not thought about that area.” From there you can often find you have experience or ask folks about what is appropriate rather than filling in the form with place holders that say little.
As always good luck to all.
July 7, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Posted in: Law School (Hiring & Laterals)
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UPDATE: Law Professor Hiring: Statistics on JD Placement
posted by Daniel Solove
Last month, I posted a few posts with statistics on the success percentage of JD candidates from particular law schools seeking a job in legal academia. I based my percentages on Larry Solum’s law professor hiring report. Larry Solum has recently updated his stats, so I have updated mine.
UPDATED POST: Law Professor Hiring: Statistics on JD Placement
June 23, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Posted in: Law School (Hiring & Laterals)
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Total Law Professor JD Applicant Statistics: 1997-2007
posted by Daniel Solove
I’ve been posting data about law professor applicants (see here and here), and I thought I’d share some more data that I have that AALS provided me with. Here is data about the schools with the most applicants from 1997-2007. During 1997-2007, there were 8675 applicants with JDs from US law schools. This is not the total number of applicants, as the statistic does not include applicants without JDs and from foreign law schools. The average number of applicants with JDs from US law schools from 1997-2007 is 789 per year.
The table below has more information.
| LAW SCHOOL | TOTAL JD APPLICANTS 1997-2007 | AVERAGE JD APPLICANTS PER YEAR | % OF TOTAL JD APPLICANTS FROM US LAW SCHOOLS |
| Harvard | 675 | 61 | 8% |
| Yale | 435 | 40 | 5% |
| Georgetown | 376 | 34 | 4% |
| Columbia | 307 | 28 | 4% |
| Michigan | 271 | 25 | 3% |
| NYU | 262 | 24 | 3% |
| Virginia | 253 | 23 | 3% |
| Berkeley | 228 | 21 | 3% |
| Chicago | 190 | 17 | 2% |
| Stanford | 176 | 16 | 2% |
| Penn | 167 | 15 | 2% |
| Duke | 148 | 13 | 2% |
| Texas | 134 | 12 | 2% |
| Cornell | 122 | 11 | 1% |
| GW | 122 | 11 | 1% |
| Northwestern | 114 | 10 | 1% |
| Boston U | 112 | 10 | 1% |
| American | 109 | 10 | 1% |
| Tulane | 104 | 9 | 1% |
| Florida | 91 | 8 | 1% |
The 20 schools above comprise 4397 of the 8675 applicants from 1997-2007 — about 51% of all the applicants. An additional 164 schools comprise the remaining 49%.
The first 10 schools above comprise 37% of all applicants. The first 4 schools above — Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, and Columbia — comprise 21% of all applicants.
May 28, 2008 at 12:04 am
Posted in: Law School, Law School (Hiring & Laterals)
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