Careers in Legal Academia? Forum

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Bodhicaryavatara

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Careers in Legal Academia?

Post by Bodhicaryavatara » Sun Jul 15, 2018 9:41 am

I'm a recent JD grad, currently clerking for a judge (two years). Legal academia, particularly clinical legal teaching, would be my dream job. In terms of clinical teaching, I'm interested in criminal defense, family law, immigration, disability law, international human rights, and veterans law. Would obtaining an L.L.M./Ph.D./S.J.D. in law help towards obtaining such a position? I was an OK but not great student in my JD program, and I know that hiring for academia can be very elitist (I did attend a prestigious LAC for undergrad and will have an Ivy graduate degree, though).

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anon sequitur

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Re: Careers in Legal Academia?

Post by anon sequitur » Sun Jul 15, 2018 10:20 am

Clinical jobs usually go to people with many years of experience in the area of the clinic. Having a connection to the law school seems to help a lot too.

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Re: Careers in Legal Academia?

Post by Anonymous User » Sun Jul 15, 2018 11:29 am

To piggy back this a tad, what does it take to get the standard tenure track position at a law school? What’s the standard resume and pre hiring years of experience for one of these? How important is adjunct experience prior?

Fireworks2016

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Re: Careers in Legal Academia?

Post by Fireworks2016 » Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:24 pm

Anonymous User wrote:To piggy back this a tad, what does it take to get the standard tenure track position at a law school? What’s the standard resume and pre hiring years of experience for one of these? How important is adjunct experience prior?
This is tongue-in-cheek, but probably mostly accurate.

- Did you go to Yale? If not, did you at least go to H?

- Did you do a federal appellate clerkship?

- Did you work in biglaw for 1-2 years after?

- Have you published multiple articles in sexy areas of the law?

If yes to all of these questions, you are an attractive tenure-track candidate in the current landscape of academia.

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Re: Careers in Legal Academia?

Post by Anonymous User » Sun Jul 15, 2018 1:39 pm

Anonymous User wrote:To piggy back this a tad, what does it take to get the standard tenure track position at a law school? What’s the standard resume and pre hiring years of experience for one of these? How important is adjunct experience prior?
Adjunct experience isn't important. Publishing in good law reviews is important. (Publishing in good law reviews tends to be easier when you've gone to a top law school.) Appellate clerkships are common, but an advanced degree like a PhD is probably more helpful in a vacuum (it's just that people who go into academia tend to have top grades and therefore tend to be competitive for appellate clerkships). A few years of practice is probably good but significant practice experience makes you look less "academic" and is not especially helpful.

As for the OP, additional advanced degrees are not at all helpful/relevant for clinical teaching. Having actual practice experience in the clinic's area of law is what's most important (as a practicing lawyer, not as a student). I'm also pretty sure you would have to be admitted to practice in the jurisdiction as you'd be supervising students who'd appear in that jdx as student attorneys. (For non-clinical, as noted, usually top grades/schools are required, although if somehow you managed to publish in top law reviews that might make a difference.)

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Bodhicaryavatara

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Re: Careers in Legal Academia?

Post by Bodhicaryavatara » Sun Jul 15, 2018 2:17 pm

Fireworks2016 wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:To piggy back this a tad, what does it take to get the standard tenure track position at a law school? What’s the standard resume and pre hiring years of experience for one of these? How important is adjunct experience prior?
This is tongue-in-cheek, but probably mostly accurate.

- Did you go to Yale? If not, did you at least go to H?

- Did you do a federal appellate clerkship?

- Did you work in biglaw for 1-2 years after?

- Have you published multiple articles in sexy areas of the law?

If yes to all of these questions, you are an attractive tenure-track candidate in the current landscape of academia.
I thought Stanford had a good track record for academia? Why did you say only YH?

Bodhicaryavatara

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Re: Careers in Legal Academia?

Post by Bodhicaryavatara » Sun Jul 15, 2018 2:23 pm

anon sequitur wrote:Clinical jobs usually go to people with many years of experience in the area of the clinic. Having a connection to the law school seems to help a lot too.
So school prestige/grades/rank is not going to be a major factor like in traditional tenure-track teaching jobs?

sparkytrainer

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Re: Careers in Legal Academia?

Post by sparkytrainer » Sun Jul 15, 2018 3:31 pm

Bodhicaryavatara wrote:
anon sequitur wrote:Clinical jobs usually go to people with many years of experience in the area of the clinic. Having a connection to the law school seems to help a lot too.
So school prestige/grades/rank is not going to be a major factor like in traditional tenure-track teaching jobs?
Of course those things will still matter. Maybe less so in the abstract, but not nearly less like you may think.

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Re: Careers in Legal Academia?

Post by Anonymous User » Sun Jul 15, 2018 3:38 pm

sparkytrainer wrote:
Bodhicaryavatara wrote:
anon sequitur wrote:Clinical jobs usually go to people with many years of experience in the area of the clinic. Having a connection to the law school seems to help a lot too.
So school prestige/grades/rank is not going to be a major factor like in traditional tenure-track teaching jobs?
Of course those things will still matter. Maybe less so in the abstract, but not nearly less like you may think.
I mean, go look at a bunch of schools’ websites and look at who their clinical profs are and where they went. At a lot of schools the clinical profs are local alums. If you’re at a T14, well, of course local alums are from a prestigious school. Practice experience and connections are going to be the most important, but if there are multiple qualified candidates I’m sure school prestige and grades help. (And I would imagine it’s probably easier to get a position running a tax clinic compared to a criminal
defense clinic because I think there are simply fewer tax attorneys out there.)

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Fireworks2016

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Re: Careers in Legal Academia?

Post by Fireworks2016 » Sun Jul 15, 2018 4:13 pm

Bodhicaryavatara wrote:
Fireworks2016 wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:To piggy back this a tad, what does it take to get the standard tenure track position at a law school? What’s the standard resume and pre hiring years of experience for one of these? How important is adjunct experience prior?
This is tongue-in-cheek, but probably mostly accurate.

- Did you go to Yale? If not, did you at least go to H?

- Did you do a federal appellate clerkship?

- Did you work in biglaw for 1-2 years after?

- Have you published multiple articles in sexy areas of the law?

If yes to all of these questions, you are an attractive tenure-track candidate in the current landscape of academia.
I thought Stanford had a good track record for academia? Why did you say only YH?
I just see it less often -- not meant to be a knock on S tho

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Re: Careers in Legal Academia?

Post by Anonymous User » Sun Jul 15, 2018 5:26 pm

Fireworks2016 wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:To piggy back this a tad, what does it take to get the standard tenure track position at a law school? What’s the standard resume and pre hiring years of experience for one of these? How important is adjunct experience prior?
This is tongue-in-cheek, but probably mostly accurate.

- Did you go to Yale? If not, did you at least go to H?

- Did you do a federal appellate clerkship?

- Did you work in biglaw for 1-2 years after?

- Have you published multiple articles in sexy areas of the law?

If yes to all of these questions, you are an attractive tenure-track candidate in the current landscape of academia.
What if you check those boxes, except went to a strong t30 and are looking to teach in that region? What’s the sweet spot in terms of post grad years to apply? Dies having done a couple years as an ada help (specializing a bit in crim law, evidence, etc)?

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Re: Careers in Legal Academia?

Post by Anonymous User » Sun Jul 15, 2018 6:12 pm

I really don't think what you practice in matters much, except to the extent it enables you to write articles that will get placed in top journals. And frankly I think a lot of the corporate fields are more in demand because academia tends to be less of a draw for people who go into corporate (people often go into corporate because they don't like research/writing). It's a lot harder for schools to find people to teach tax, ERISA, antitrust, etc than evidence, crim, con law and the more "fun" topics.

Connections to a region are great for adjuncting and very occasionally adjuncting can get you in the door. Generally though to get an academic job you have to be willing to go anywhere, wherever the job is.

Seriously, if people are interested in getting an academic job, go to a bunch of law schools' websites and look up all their faculty who got hired in the last 5 years or so. Look for the commonalities. Make sure to distinguish doctrinal t-t profs from clinical or legal writing or adjuncts. Look at their publications and when they were published in relation to their hire. That will tell you a lot about how it works. (Different schools will vary - some schools do hire their alums quite a bit, plenty don't - but it gives an idea.)

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anon sequitur

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Re: Careers in Legal Academia?

Post by anon sequitur » Sun Jul 15, 2018 9:47 pm

Keep in mind when thinking about clinical positions, these are generally part-time and pay very little, not enough to live off of by any stretch, even at top schools. It's generally something people do either because they really like teaching or because it's looks good to clients to be able to say they literally teach classes on their area of expertise. Some schools have full-time clinical positions, I've seen them advertised, but it seems much more common for law schools just to have one of their successful local grads teach one or two classes per year.

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RedPurpleBlue

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Re: Careers in Legal Academia?

Post by RedPurpleBlue » Mon Jul 16, 2018 12:07 am

It's worth noting that Georgetown has seen some success lately with minting clinical professors. With 3-5 years of experience, you can apply to do an LLM there (for free) where you get paid a stipend (I want to say $50-60k) and teach clinical courses for two years. Recently, I've seen several of those candidates get hired (though I can't recall if they were TT or not).

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Re: Careers in Legal Academia?

Post by Anonymous User » Mon Jul 16, 2018 6:46 am

anon sequitur wrote:Keep in mind when thinking about clinical positions, these are generally part-time and pay very little, not enough to live off of by any stretch, even at top schools. It's generally something people do either because they really like teaching or because it's looks good to clients to be able to say they literally teach classes on their area of expertise. Some schools have full-time clinical positions, I've seen them advertised, but it seems much more common for law schools just to have one of their successful local grads teach one or two classes per year.
At my lower T1, most clinic profs were actually full time - I think the only one that wasn’t was the appellate clinic dude. Though the above is a very good caveat generally.

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Re: Careers in Legal Academia?

Post by IPProf » Mon Jul 16, 2018 10:49 am

If you're curious about TT numbers, posts with this tag are your best bet:
http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblaw ... ng-report/

The May 21st post has the most recent/relevant analyses.

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