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lawskyandhutch

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Academia

Post by lawskyandhutch » Fri Dec 17, 2010 4:54 pm

Which schools are best for helping one to become a law professor?

More specifically, which is best of these 5?: Columbia, Chicago, NYU, Berkeley, Penn.

Do you need to be at a top 6 or 7 school?

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Sentry

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Re: Academia

Post by Sentry » Fri Dec 17, 2010 4:56 pm

Yale is in a class by itself. After that it's HSChi, then the rest of the T14.

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Mustard Blood

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Re: Academia

Post by Mustard Blood » Fri Dec 17, 2010 4:57 pm

You'll find a lot of more information if you search the forum.

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AreJay711

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Re: Academia

Post by AreJay711 » Fri Dec 17, 2010 4:58 pm


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FuManChusco

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Re: Academia

Post by FuManChusco » Fri Dec 17, 2010 5:18 pm

Sentry wrote:Yale is in a class by itself. After that it's HSChi, then the rest of the T14.
+1. although after Chicago, I imagine the chances aren't very good at all.

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lawskyandhutch

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Re: Academia

Post by lawskyandhutch » Fri Dec 17, 2010 6:53 pm

I know Yale and Harvard are amazing. And I assume Stanford is as well. But I was looking at a list of Michigan professor in a booklet they sent me. And it seemed like a large % were from NYU. I don't remember the exact %, but maybe I'll ballpark it at 5%, maybe higher. It seemed to be holding its own against Chicago and Columbia, though it was completely crushed by H and Y and I dunno about S.

spondee

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Re: Academia

Post by spondee » Fri Dec 17, 2010 7:24 pm

The number of academics produced by those 5 schools in any given year is very, very, very small - 1 to 3% of the class.

To be in that 1-3% you must produce strong scholarship. That's the number one, by far. It won't matter which of those 5 school names is on your vita. Go to whichever one you think can help you produce good scholarship.

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AreJay711

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Re: Academia

Post by AreJay711 » Fri Dec 17, 2010 7:27 pm

Yeah, please check that link. It is new law prof. answering questions and this is brought up a few times. I also wonder how small it really is. The number going straight from law school is of course small but probably more once you account for people that practiced and did clerkships first.

lawskyandhutch

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Re: Academia

Post by lawskyandhutch » Fri Dec 17, 2010 7:35 pm

Thanks AreJay, it's a good link.

One reason it's small is that many people probably don't want to go into academia. I imagine the money is fantastically higher in the non-academic, private sector. Some people could actually make 10 to 100 times as much outside academia as they could inside academia.

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mrmangs

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Re: Academia

Post by mrmangs » Fri Dec 17, 2010 7:48 pm

AreJay711 wrote:Yeah, please check that link. It is new law prof. answering questions and this is brought up a few times. I also wonder how small it really is. The number going straight from law school is of course small but probably more once you account for people that practiced and did clerkships first.
Being a law professor is actually an extremely cushy job (once you get tenure). It's as flexible as any professorship in the academy (great hours, vacation time, etc.), yet even at mediocre law schools, professors can make six figures. And if you are a top school and have a stellar record as far as publishing goes, you will be making serious bank. Not as much as BigLaw partner, of course, but relative the lifestyle, it's very nice. Also, if you go to eventually transition to the administrative side (become a dean or whatever), you'll have a pretty huge income potential.

The reason most don't become professors is because they can't hack the research.

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BrownBears09

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Re: Academia

Post by BrownBears09 » Fri Dec 17, 2010 7:49 pm

lawskyandhutch wrote:One reason it's small is that many people probably don't want to go into academia. I imagine the money is fantastically higher in the non-academic, private sector. Some people could actually make 10 to 100 times as much outside academia as they could inside academia.
Meh, it's relative. Academic wage per hour is probably higher than a 160k biglaw associate.

2011Law

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Re: Academia

Post by 2011Law » Fri Dec 17, 2010 7:51 pm

It also depends on whether you care about what rank of school you want to teach at. You see lots of teachers at all ranks graduating from the same school they teach at. I imagine that these people probably graduated at the top 5% of their class.

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Re: Academia

Post by serdog » Fri Dec 17, 2010 7:52 pm

I remember reading that some professors at Cooley get 250K+.

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AreJay711

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Re: Academia

Post by AreJay711 » Fri Dec 17, 2010 7:57 pm

mrmangs wrote: The reason most don't become professors is because they can't hack the research.
You think so? I know not everyone can be happy doing research but in the social sciences it doesn't seem that it is that hard provided you have good ideas. I've helped my undergrad professors with research and litt review but I guess it could be different for law.

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mrmangs

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Re: Academia

Post by mrmangs » Fri Dec 17, 2010 8:05 pm

AreJay711 wrote:
mrmangs wrote: The reason most don't become professors is because they can't hack the research.
You think so? I know not everyone can be happy doing research but in the social sciences it doesn't seem that it is that hard provided you have good ideas. I've helped my undergrad professors with research and litt review but I guess it could be different for law.
TBH, I'm not an expert on legal publishing. I am familiar with other fields though and publishing in top journals can be extremely difficult. I'm guessing the reason most people don't become law professors is because competition is so fierce (limited number of open spots, and then you have to secure tenure afterward) and publishing is going to be very tough unless you have a very good support network (even then, it's probably not easy).

Also, I would imagine the law is full of strivers who would not be happy working at some no-name LS. If they have good enough ideas to publish, they probably have good enough ideas to do pretty well on their LS exams, so they will have other career options where they can nurse their bruised egos upon not getting hired by a T-14 school.

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Re: Academia

Post by notanumber » Fri Dec 17, 2010 8:09 pm

BrownBears09 wrote:
lawskyandhutch wrote:One reason it's small is that many people probably don't want to go into academia. I imagine the money is fantastically higher in the non-academic, private sector. Some people could actually make 10 to 100 times as much outside academia as they could inside academia.
Meh, it's relative. Academic wage per hour is probably higher than a 160k biglaw associate.
I don't know how many hours most assistant professors in law departments work, but I doubt that this is true. Successful young professors in my field work total hours that are only a bit less than what I'm told biglaw associates work. That being said, an assistant prof. has a LOT more control over when they put in that time and what they do during that time. In academia you'll never need to choose between watching your kid play baseball and keeping your job. You'll also never have to do 16 straight hours of doc. review.

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mrmangs

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Re: Academia

Post by mrmangs » Fri Dec 17, 2010 8:11 pm

notanumber wrote:
BrownBears09 wrote:
lawskyandhutch wrote:One reason it's small is that many people probably don't want to go into academia. I imagine the money is fantastically higher in the non-academic, private sector. Some people could actually make 10 to 100 times as much outside academia as they could inside academia.
Meh, it's relative. Academic wage per hour is probably higher than a 160k biglaw associate.
I don't know how many hours most assistant professors in law departments work, but I doubt that this is true. Successful young professors in my field work total hours that are only a bit less than what I'm told biglaw associates work. That being said, an assistant prof. has a LOT more control over when they put in that time and what they do during that time. In academia you'll never need to choose between watching your kid play baseball and keeping your job. You'll also never have to do 16 straight hours of doc. review.
Exactly. One of the big allures of academia is flexibility.

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spondee

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Re: Academia

Post by spondee » Fri Dec 17, 2010 8:18 pm

I think the money-time tradeoff plays out more over the long run.

As you move through BigLaw your hours don't change a lot, but your pay continues to increase.

As you move through academia, your pay doesn't increase at nearly the same rate, but the heavy hours in the beginning pay off with lighter hours down the line: you've already developed and refined lesson plans; you possess expertise within the particular niche your scholarship covers; etc.

lawskyandhutch

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Re: Academia

Post by lawskyandhutch » Sat Dec 18, 2010 5:40 am

What I should've said is that the % of students who become law professors isn't so meaningful, because some large fraction may have no interest in academia.

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Re: Academia

Post by SageD » Sat Dec 18, 2010 6:19 am

Academically-gifted people tend to go to top law schools. Being academically gifted is necessary for being a professor (you'd hope).

There's obviously going to be an enormous amount of self-selection here. Focusing on the numbers all the time will not only mix up causation and correlation, but it will also leave you focusing on external things to the total exclusion of the individual.

I'm not saying the school you go to doesn't matter, and obviously people going to Yale or something have a certain advantage. But if you're a late-blooming scholar who didn't do perfectly during undergrad, but now voraciously reads through legal theory, and you're an original thinker and can't wait to start publishing, then I'm sure there are more than four schools you can go to to pursue your dreams.

That said, I don't imagine landing an academia job is easy for the best of us. It sounds like heaven to me (I love theory), but it's certainly not something I'm going to count on, whether I get into Yale or Cardozo.

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