URMs in Academia Forum

[Danielsan]

I'm interested in possibly becoming a law professor. Is there a demand for URMs in academia?

[pattonthicke]

I was interested in this as well and would like someone with more knowledge to answer this. My unsubstantiated 0L opinion is that for non URMS academia is pretty much impossible and you should not go to law school if this is your only career goal. Sure it can happen (they have to hire someone right?) but you need t-14 to think about it, top 6 to dream it, and HYS to have something resembling a real chance at this. For URMS academia is just almost impossible. Sure there are less URMS in position to do academia but there are still enough that the field is competitive. This is based on the fact, that if you look at the faculty profiles of top 50 schools, the overwhelming majority of URMS still come from schools such as HYS. If you are a URM and want academia the same rules apply to you as they apply to everyone else.

1.Go to t14, preferably HYS
2. make law review
3. Article 3 clerkship
4. Work 2-3 years
5. Get published in t25 journal
6. ?????
7. Profit

(Forgot one last thing, the most important, DO NOT expect anything of this to actually happen)

[shastaca]

the legal academy is ill-served by having 40% of professors coming from just six schools: Yale, Harvard, Chicago, Stanford, Columbia, and Michigan. http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leit ... ching.html

Yale is a lousy place to go to get into law teaching Posted by Brian Leiter on April 17, 2011 at 09:42 AM