Top Law Schools

For those who have been on the market... I get that it's hard. But I've been offered one of the top fellowships, and I really want to take it. Are you guys seeing Climenko/Bigelow/NYU/Columbia/Georgetown, etc. fellows who go onto the market with a couple of high quality published articles strike out? Or have a couple of offers but only at extremely undesirable places? I'm very flexible, but even I have my limits. I really want to do this, but giving up the biglaw job is scary (even though it's not what I want to be doing forever).

I would talk to as many faculty as you can who've been involved with hiring professors in the last couple of years (and/or professors who've been hired in the last couple of years). I think they may have a better sense of how the meat market's been going than most people here. You could also talk to the fellowship offer/adminstrator and ask them for placement statistics for previous fellows - the programs have generally been around long enough to generate a track record (I think some of these programs even describe placement on their websites, e.g., Climenko does - http://www.law.harvard.edu/academics/de ... llows.html). If a program *won't* give you placement numbers, that's generally a bad sign. (Make sure you find out how many fellows in a given year got jobs, where, and how many total fellows there were that year.)

FWIW, someone with one of the top fellowships and a couple high quality published articles is in about as good a position as you can get, I would think. I think just from the numbers/level of competition, yes, it is possible to strike out - and my sense is that the competition is getting tougher ITE - but it's more likely that you might end up in a visiting position (or two) and ultimately be able to move to something permanent that you liked. Nothing is guaranteed, including staying in a biglaw position, but if you want academia, that's a good position to be in, and you have to deal with the uncertainty. (Though I get that it's scary! In your shoes, though, I'd take the fellowship in a heartbeat.)

(Caveat: I haven't been on the market myself - I just used to be an academic and so I follow discussion about the market out of curiosity. So obviously take this with a grain of salt.)