Harvard v. Stanford (academia or bust) Forum

[rpupkin]

Definitely an unlikely tract, but SCOTA clerkship is overselling it. Not every law professor turns walks on water. I don't really know why somebody would go into it solely to be a law professor.

I'm not sure who or what you're responding to, but just to be clear: I'm not saying you need a SCOTUS clerkship to succeed in legal academia. But a SCOTUS clerkship does make it easier to go straight into a tenure-track job post-clerkship. Most other candidates will need to spend at least a year or two (and possibly a lot longer than that) in a fellowship before landing something on the market.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Definitely an unlikely tract, but SCOTA clerkship is overselling it. Not every law professor turns walks on water. I don't really know why somebody would go into it solely to be a law professor.

I don't know, even my piddly T1 had former SCOTUS clerks as profs. No one's saying that means they walk on water, just that they have some pretty stratospheric qualifications. (Keep in mind we're talking about tenured/tenure track profs, not clinical profs or LRW profs or adjuncts.) Also I'm not sure what you not knowing why someone would go into law solely to be a prof has to do with profs' qualifications?

[Jchance]

to land a T100 tenure track position, you probably need (1) two out of the following three: fed clerkship, fellowship/VAP, additional grad degree in your field; and (2) a T100 flagship publication or a publication in a T5-10 speciality journal in your field.

What you listed are just signaling merit badges to show one's potential as a scholar. The experiences (and skills gained) through these activities are really what equip one to be a real scholar. Even if you don't have the typical credentials but you can publish one article in HYS flagship or three articles in top 25 flagship, you are a shoe-in for academia.

[A. Nony Mouse]

I mean, you're right, but it's not like there isn't a mighty strong correlation between publishing in a HYS flagship journal and having those credentials. I'm pretty sure none of those schools practice blind review and reviewers can certainly be influenced by the author's creds. (To the extent anyone is a shoe-in when there's a tiny number of jobs and no guarantee that anywhere will be hiring in your niche in a given year - I think shoe-in is a little optimistic myself.)

[lawlorbust]

I mean, you're right, but it's not like there isn't a mighty strong correlation between publishing in a HYS flagship journal and having those credentials. I'm pretty sure none of those schools practice blind review and reviewers can certainly be influenced by the author's creds. (To the extent anyone is a shoe-in when there's a tiny number of jobs and no guarantee that anywhere will be hiring in your niche in a given year - I think shoe-in is a little optimistic myself.)

YES. This fixation with "grades aren't everything" misses the point.

Wannabe academics with mediocre grades from HYS don't just "get" published back-to-back-to-back in T-14 law reviews to overcome them. It's incredibly competitive to break into legal academia; simply, there's no shortage of really smart people trying. If you're fine with long odds of success, then by all means do law school, but I'd recommend a back-up plan in case things don't work out.

[Dcc617]

to land a T100 tenure track position, you probably need (1) two out of the following three: fed clerkship, fellowship/VAP, additional grad degree in your field; and (2) a T100 flagship publication or a publication in a T5-10 speciality journal in your field.

What you listed are just signaling merit badges to show one's potential as a scholar. The experiences (and skills gained) through these activities are really what equip one to be a real scholar. Even if you don't have the typical credentials but you can publish one article in HYS flagship or three articles in top 25 flagship, you are a shoe-in for academia.

Shoo-in. Sorry to be pedantic, but that's a pet peeve.

[jbagelboy]

to land a T100 tenure track position, you probably need (1) two out of the following three: fed clerkship, fellowship/VAP, additional grad degree in your field; and (2) a T100 flagship publication or a publication in a T5-10 speciality journal in your field.

What you listed are just signaling merit badges to show one's potential as a scholar. The experiences (and skills gained) through these activities are really what equip one to be a real scholar. Even if you don't have the typical credentials but you can publish one article in HYS flagship or three articles in top 25 flagship, you are a shoe-in for academia.

I'm confused. You think someone who gets an article published in a highly cited law journal becomes a "shoo-in" for academia? I'm assuming you are excluding student notes.

While of course publication is critical, I think you guys are over-simplifying matters by correlating publication so strongly with law school performance and credentials. Law school grades can be pretty random and not very informative, whereas publication requires a different set of skills and passions.

[Jchance]

^I excluded student note a page back. Talking about full length 40-70 pages article, not an Essay or online companion's publication. I've done my fair share of browsing my law profs' CV and I've seen many instances where 1 publication at HYS flagship can jump start someone's legal academia career.

While of course publication is critical, I think you guys are over-simplifying matters by correlating publication so strongly with law school performance and credentials. Law school grades can be pretty random and not very informative, whereas publication requires a different set of skills and passions.

I agree with this. I think good publications skills can be correlated with law school performance and grabbing merit badges, but I've seen many exceptions (perhaps late bloomer?).

P.S. I was very specific with the kind of publication for shoo-in academia: one article in HYS flagship or three articles in top 25 flagship. Not just any article in a "highly cited journal."

[A. Nony Mouse]

I definitely agree there are exceptions, and excellent placement combined with a clear research agenda trumps a lot. But it's also clear that the majority of faculty come out of top schools, with top clerkships, so while those things aren't required, they do seem to help. I think grades are perhaps a little more of a wild-card for the reason jbagel gives, that skills in publication are not necessarily the same as the skills required to ace a law school exam, and connections play a role in getting clerkships that could also trump grades. But students at HYS are probably going to have a bit more leeway with grades anyway (even considering that the top judges doubtless know how to evaluate the more ambiguous grading scales).

(Amusingly, the lead articles in the current issues of HLR, YLJ, and SLR are by a double Yale BA/JD who is a PhD candidate at the Goethe University of Frankfurt and clerked on the 4th and DC Circuits, a cum laude JD from Harvard with a PhD from Cambridge who did a postdoc at Stanford, and a summa cum laude NYU grad who clerked on the DC Circuit, respectively. You can argue that cum laude from Harvard isn't top of the heap grades-wise, and there's that random NYU fellow (with a BA from Madison!), but they're still really impressive people all round. I think what happens is that people take "impressive credentials" and TLS-it to mean "top grades required!!!!" since people here aren't always very good at nuance. One is a Climenko at Harvard, one is a prof at U Kentucky Law, and the third is a prof at Northwestern.)

[lawlorbust]

I definitely agree there are exceptions, and excellent placement combined with a clear research agenda trumps a lot. But it's also clear that the majority of faculty come out of top schools, with top clerkships, so while those things aren't required, they do seem to help. I think grades are perhaps a little more of a wild-card for the reason jbagel gives, that skills in publication are not necessarily the same as the skills required to ace a law school exam, and connections play a role in getting clerkships that could also trump grades. But students at HYS are probably going to have a bit more leeway with grades anyway (even considering that the top judges doubtless know how to evaluate the more ambiguous grading scales).

I agree with this. I think good publications skills can be correlated with law school performance and grabbing merit badges, but I've seen many exceptions (perhaps late bloomer?).

If I can sharpen the point: There's some sense in this thread that 1) you don't need to go to a top school or 2) you don't need top grades at a top school to become a legal academic (generous defined, say, tenure-track at a T100) because all that really matters is a superior publication record. I'm fine with that. But what would make you think that you'll be any better at publishing articles than your really impressive, and really deep competition pool?

Maybe you'll luck out on that front. But if it doesn't work out, would you be fine with biting $x00,000 and three years of your life to attend law school?

[Jchance]

The main focus you gotta ask yourself if you want academia: can you show that you have what it takes to consistently publish articles in the top 25 flagship (which is the quintessential definition of a "super athlete" in the pre-tenure market and the legal academy)? If the answer is clearly a yes, then you are in. The rest are really just to pad your credentials: where you attended law school, latin honors, law review, federal clerkship, where you did your fellowship/VAP.

[my prole called life]

School pedigree is flame Elizabeth warren went to Rutgers you either have it in you or not but no school can change that LJL at these fraudlies

[Foghornleghorn]

School pedigree is flame Elizabeth warren went to Rutgers you either have it in you or not but no school can change that LJL at these fraudlies

She also told everyone she was Native American. White bureaucrats pursued her more vigorously than the Last of the Mohicans.

[rpupkin]

School pedigree is flame Elizabeth warren went to Rutgers you either have it in you or not but no school can change that LJL at these fraudlies

Is this an autoadmit bot?

[lawadmin]

http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblaw ... ation.html

Look at the Excel sheet.
"Academia or bust," while not exactly the same is way closer to "SCOTUS Clerk or bust" than any other position.

[eph]

Harvard does a marvelous job of providing support and resources for those interested in pursuing a career in academia. No guarantees of course.

[HonestAdvice]

Definitely an unlikely tract, but SCOTA clerkship is overselling it. Not every law professor turns walks on water. I don't really know why somebody would go into it solely to be a law professor.

I don't know, even my piddly T1 had former SCOTUS clerks as profs. No one's saying that means they walk on water, just that they have some pretty stratospheric qualifications. (Keep in mind we're talking about tenured/tenure track profs, not clinical profs or LRW profs or adjuncts.) Also I'm not sure what you not knowing why someone would go into law solely to be a prof has to do with profs' qualifications?

Every school has incredibly impressive professors - my point was at the suggestion of a SCOTUS clerkship being a necessary condition, not that many law professors are SCOTUS clerks. I would imagine there is probably a lot of overlap between those who get SCOTUS clerkships and those who wind up in academia. Being fascinated and interested in how laws change and develop is something most law professors have, and likely something justices look for when interviewing. My bet would be caring too much about prestige would be a turn off, though I was nowhere near good enough to have any experience with this other than pure speculation.

The going to law school to do academia wasn't about SCOTUS clerkships, but directed at OP going to LS to be a professor in something they might hate.

[rpupkin]

Definitely an unlikely tract, but SCOTA clerkship is overselling it. Not every law professor turns walks on water. I don't really know why somebody would go into it solely to be a law professor.

I don't know, even my piddly T1 had former SCOTUS clerks as profs. No one's saying that means they walk on water, just that they have some pretty stratospheric qualifications. (Keep in mind we're talking about tenured/tenure track profs, not clinical profs or LRW profs or adjuncts.) Also I'm not sure what you not knowing why someone would go into law solely to be a prof has to do with profs' qualifications?

Every school has incredibly impressive professors - my point was at the suggestion of a SCOTUS clerkship being a necessary condition,

No one has suggested that in this thread.

[abl]

^I excluded student note a page back. Talking about full length 40-70 pages article, not an Essay or online companion's publication. I've done my fair share of browsing my law profs' CV and I've seen many instances where 1 publication at HYS flagship can jump start someone's legal academia career.

While of course publication is critical, I think you guys are over-simplifying matters by correlating publication so strongly with law school performance and credentials. Law school grades can be pretty random and not very informative, whereas publication requires a different set of skills and passions.

I agree with this. I think good publications skills can be correlated with law school performance and grabbing merit badges, but I've seen many exceptions (perhaps late bloomer?).

P.S. I was very specific with the kind of publication for shoo-in academia: one article in HYS flagship or three articles in top 25 flagship. Not just any article in a "highly cited journal."

There's less of a focus on place of publication than you'd think. So I don't think a single article in a HYS flagship makes you a shoo-in if the committees aren't particularly impressed by that article (which sometimes happens). On the other hand, a single article that blows everyone's socks off published in, say, Chicago-Kent's law review, could effectively guarantee a candidate a reasonable placement. But this is a minor point, largely because it's nearly impossible to know when you have a Chicago-Kent article of HYS-quality, or vice-versa. I think if you amend what you write to be more about one "T14-quality article" (I think folks acknowledge there's no real difference between articles published in Harvard Law Review and Michigan Law Review), maybe then we're cooking. (And for quantity, I'd say if you have three articles of consistent T50-ish quality, that's probably what you're going for.)

[iamgeorgebush]

^I excluded student note a page back. Talking about full length 40-70 pages article, not an Essay or online companion's publication. I've done my fair share of browsing my law profs' CV and I've seen many instances where 1 publication at HYS flagship can jump start someone's legal academia career.

While of course publication is critical, I think you guys are over-simplifying matters by correlating publication so strongly with law school performance and credentials. Law school grades can be pretty random and not very informative, whereas publication requires a different set of skills and passions.

I agree with this. I think good publications skills can be correlated with law school performance and grabbing merit badges, but I've seen many exceptions (perhaps late bloomer?).

P.S. I was very specific with the kind of publication for shoo-in academia: one article in HYS flagship or three articles in top 25 flagship. Not just any article in a "highly cited journal."

There's less of a focus on place of publication than you'd think. So I don't think a single article in a HYS flagship makes you a shoo-in if the committees aren't particularly impressed by that article (which sometimes happens). On the other hand, a single article that blows everyone's socks off published in, say, Chicago-Kent's law review, could effectively guarantee a candidate a reasonable placement. But this is a minor point, largely because it's nearly impossible to know when you have a Chicago-Kent article of HYS-quality, or vice-versa. I think if you amend what you write to be more about one "T14-quality article" (I think folks acknowledge there's no real difference between articles published in Harvard Law Review and Michigan Law Review), maybe then we're cooking. (And for quantity, I'd say if you have three articles of consistent T50-ish quality, that's probably what you're going for.)

I think abl is right. Most of the posters in this thread have emphasized credentials, but the impression I've gotten from attending various academia-focused workshops and from talking to professors (I'm a current law student) is that the quality of a candidate's scholarship is what matters most. As one prof said, it's the person's ideas that count, not whether the person has impressive qualifications. PhDs, clerkships, and the like can be useful to the extent that they help a candidate develop a skill set that enables them to write high-quality articles (e.g., a quant PhD may help a candidate write good empirical articles; and a clerkship may help a candidate write better in general), but the credential itself is not the thing.

Additionally, we might view publication as merely a credential, albeit perhaps the best kind of credential. As abl noted, a hiring committee will independently evaluate a candidate's publication, which means a candidate with an article published in YLJ could do poorly, while a candidate with an article published in Chicago-Kent could do very well. To give a real-world example, there was a candidate with a publication in one of Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Standford Law Review, or Columbia Law Review (can't remember which) a few years ago who got zero offers, supposedly because the article was garbage and the law review editors who selected it made a big mistake. That candidate likely would have been better off with a high-quality article in Chicago-Kent.

All this is to say that there is no "shoo-in" for academia other than high-quality scholarship whose high quality professors will recognize, and even then, nothing is guaranteed.

At any rate, as far as credentials go, my impression is that there are two de facto requirements: (1) publication; and (2) a fellowship, PhD, or SCOTUS clerkship. I do not think a federal clerkship is at all necessary. Indeed, if you peruse this entry-level hiring report, you'll find that this is largely the case. Of the candidates listed there who secured a tenure-track position without a PhD or expected PhD, 45% did so without a clerkship of any sort. If we limit hiring schools to the USNWR T50, 52% of successful non-PhD candidates had no clerkship. Meanwhile, 86% of the non-PhD candidates who got a T50 tenure-track job had a fellowship. Of the 14% who did not, half had a SCOTUS clerkship. (Data as of 5/8/16.)

[iamgeorgebush]

Also, if we go a little deeper into that data, it becomes even more obvious that clerkships don't really matter. The average hiring-school USNWR ranking for all the candidates in the dataset is 55, while the average hiring-school ranking for candidates without a clerkship is 52. No significant difference.

PhDs, by contrast, do seem to matter. The average hiring-school ranking for PhD-holding/expecting candidates was 23 (degree held) and 25 (degree expected), compared with the 55 average for all candidates. Of course, correlation does not imply causation. Perhaps strong candidates tend to get PhDs for whatever reason (e.g., intellectually curiosity leads to success on the market, and intellectually curious students tend to get PhDs).

ETA: Looking at this study, it appears that clerkships might make a difference after all. But they are still by no means necessary.

[A. Nony Mouse]

PhD programs also actually train you to do research and develop a research agenda, and law schools by and large don't.

[Jchance]

There has been a recent trend (past 5 years or so) of hiring (PhD-trained) empiricists, so you would see a clear favor of PhD+JD candidates currently. There is no guaranty that this trend would continue to hold for the next 5-10 years once a lot of schools are filled with a good chunk of empiricists as law profs. You might see a shift back favoring clerkship and/or fellowship.

As to abl's point, I disagree that there is such thing as a "T-14 quality article". I wouldn't say publishing in Michigan Law Review is the same as Harvard Law Review, as the level of skills and competition is much stiffer at HYS flagship (all of which do blind submission and peer-reviewed). Note that Michigan Law Review has a book review issue, which is how law profs sometime get Michigan Law Review on their CV. But in the end, this is a minor point because most of us do not ever publish in a T-25 flagship anyways to even worry about the "next level" of getting HYS flagship.

[T3TON]

Doesn't the number of people trying to get it also matter? These numbers are kind of old though.
http://concurringopinions.com/archives/ ... iring.html

[my prole called life]

School pedigree is flame Elizabeth warren went to Rutgers you either have it in you or not but no school can change that LJL at these fraudlies

Is this an autoadmit bot?

Definitely tried to channel my inner Boom in that post