Academia Jobs by Field? Forum

[ph14]

What fields are underserved/will be underserved and offer the best relative employment prospects as a law professor? Which are overcrowded? If someone was interested in academia and was open to any field, what would you recommend pursuing?

[imchuckbass58]

What fields are underserved/will be underserved and offer the best relative employment prospects as a law professor? Which are overcrowded? If someone was interested in academia and was open to any field, what would you recommend pursuing?

Generally speaking, corporate/business concentrations are underserved, relatively speaking. Constitutional and criminal are very overcrowded (particularly constitutional).

[ph14]

What fields are underserved/will be underserved and offer the best relative employment prospects as a law professor? Which are overcrowded? If someone was interested in academia and was open to any field, what would you recommend pursuing?

Generally speaking, corporate/business concentrations are underserved, relatively speaking. Constitutional and criminal are very overcrowded (particularly constitutional).

Any idea which, all else being equal, would allow someone to break into the (relatively) easiest? For someone with no specialized experience or Ph.D or anything.

[Anonymous User]

What fields are underserved/will be underserved and offer the best relative employment prospects as a law professor? Which are overcrowded? If someone was interested in academia and was open to any field, what would you recommend pursuing?

Generally speaking, corporate/business concentrations are underserved, relatively speaking. Constitutional and criminal are very overcrowded (particularly constitutional).

Any idea which, all else being equal, would allow someone to break into the (relatively) easiest? For someone with no specialized experience or Ph.D or anything.

Going to YHC, getting prestigious clerkship (ideally dct -> coa -> scotus) and publishing really high quality articles (and a lot of them).

[ph14]

What fields are underserved/will be underserved and offer the best relative employment prospects as a law professor? Which are overcrowded? If someone was interested in academia and was open to any field, what would you recommend pursuing?

Generally speaking, corporate/business concentrations are underserved, relatively speaking. Constitutional and criminal are very overcrowded (particularly constitutional).

Any idea which, all else being equal, would allow someone to break into the (relatively) easiest? For someone with no specialized experience or Ph.D or anything.

Going to YHC, getting prestigious clerkship (ideally dct -> coa -> scotus) and publishing really high quality articles (and a lot of them).

Thanks, I was more asking about fields of scholarship though.

[snailio]

What fields are underserved/will be underserved and offer the best relative employment prospects as a law professor? Which are overcrowded? If someone was interested in academia and was open to any field, what would you recommend pursuing?

Tax ftw

[ph14]

What fields are underserved/will be underserved and offer the best relative employment prospects as a law professor? Which are overcrowded? If someone was interested in academia and was open to any field, what would you recommend pursuing?

Tax ftw

Do you need an economic/accounting/business background though?

[snailio]

You could cross register for a few classes over at HBS or MIT for some back round classes, this man would be good to go talk to.


http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/dire ... .html?id=6


or


http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/dire ... tml?id=722


They could point you in the right direction better than I.


imchuckbass58 is also correct

[Anonymous User]

Going to YHC

...nice C trolling.

[kahechsof]

Going to YHC

...nice C trolling.

cornell?

[JamMasterJ]

Going to YHC

...nice C trolling.

It's not trolling. Chicago is more academia-focused than Stanford

[Renzo]

Why don't you dabble in the law, and see what areas of scholarship you might have a knack for? If I tell you the answer is healthcare law, but you don't have any real original thoughts or ideas about healthcare law, how is that helpful to you?

[ph14]

Why don't you dabble in the law, and see what areas of scholarship you might have a knack for? If I tell you the answer is healthcare law, but you don't have any real original thoughts or ideas about healthcare law, how is that helpful to you?

Well, I could take classes in that area.

[Renzo]

Why don't you dabble in the law, and see what areas of scholarship you might have a knack for? If I tell you the answer is healthcare law, but you don't have any real original thoughts or ideas about healthcare law, how is that helpful to you?

Well, I could take classes in that area.

If you want to be an academic, you are going to have to publish. And to do that, you are going to have to have some insight and novel thought about an area of law. Most people can't just force that kind of interest about a subject, so my advice is take classes that interest you. You'll be more engaged in the material, and that will lead more readily to deep thoughts on the subject, and that will lead to professorship far quicker than trying to guess which field of law has the least number of potential future academics thinking deep thought about it.

[ph14]

Why don't you dabble in the law, and see what areas of scholarship you might have a knack for? If I tell you the answer is healthcare law, but you don't have any real original thoughts or ideas about healthcare law, how is that helpful to you?

Well, I could take classes in that area.

If you want to be an academic, you are going to have to publish. And to do that, you are going to have to have some insight and novel thought about an area of law. Most people can't just force that kind of interest about a subject, so my advice is take classes that interest you. You'll be more engaged in the material, and that will lead more readily to deep thoughts on the subject, and that will lead to professorship far quicker than trying to guess which field of law has the least number of potential future academics thinking deep thought about it.

I don't have any particular interests, and i'm open to taking anything.

[Renzo]

I don't have any particular interests, and i'm open to taking anything.

Start reading, see if you can develop some. No one wants to read or publish an article written by, nor take a class with, someone who doesn't care about the subject matter.

--LinkRemoved--

--LinkRemoved--

http://www.law.nyu.edu/journals/lawrevi ... /index.htm

http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/

[IAFG]

This thread is weird and making me uncomfortable.

[Richie Tenenbaum]

Related thread that might be of interest: http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 3&t=170108

[bdubs]

This thread is weird and making me uncomfortable.

+1

[masochist]

I don't have any particular interests, and i'm open to taking anything.

This isn't how academia works. Your specialty arises from your interests. People don't pick their specialty and then develop interests that seem consistent.

You wouldn't want to pick your specialty based solely on market conditions since it will become the thing you think about more than any other topic for the rest of your life.

[Richie Tenenbaum]

I don't have any particular interests, and i'm open to taking anything.

This isn't how academia works. Your specialty arises from your interests. People don't pick their specialty and then develop interests that seem consistent.

You wouldn't want to pick your specialty based solely on market conditions since it will become the thing you think about more than any other topic for the rest of your life.

It can make a difference at the margins. Say a person is pretty interested in topics in tax as well as jurisprudence. It's probably a wiser decision for that person to switch his main focus to tax (especially if he has a background in neither) since it's pretty likely that tax will always be one of the fields were the competition is thinner.

That said, there's nothing wrong with having multiple interests. But if you are trying to sell yourself as a tax guy without any tax scholarship, that makes things more difficult.

[masochist]

I don't have any particular interests, and i'm open to taking anything.

This isn't how academia works. Your specialty arises from your interests. People don't pick their specialty and then develop interests that seem consistent.

You wouldn't want to pick your specialty based solely on market conditions since it will become the thing you think about more than any other topic for the rest of your life.

It can make a difference at the margins. Say a person is pretty interested in topics in tax as well as jurisprudence. It's probably a wiser decision for that person to switch his main focus to tax (especially if he has a background in neither) since it's pretty likely that tax will always be one of the fields were the competition is thinner.

That said, there's nothing wrong with having multiple interests. But if you are trying to sell yourself as a tax guy without any tax scholarship, that makes things more difficult.

I'd agree that it might help break a tie between two specialties that interested you. I just think the interests have to come before the consideration of the market.

Also, increasingly, law schools are looking for people with a Ph.D. Although it might seem like it would suck to go straight from a law program into a Ph.D. program, it actually wouldn't be a terrible plan for someone who was young, not particularly widely published, and not sure about his or her interests. Loans and interest are deferred, you'd get a stipend, and you'd get five years to publish before having to find a tenure-track job. This might actually be a faster route into academia than clerkships.

IMO, the overall quality of your scholarship has a greater effect upon job security/availability than the specialty. If you have one of the best CVs in con law in the nation, but a school is looking for a tax guy ... they'll hire you and bring in a visiting prof to teach tax. The needs of students and teaching demands are, at best, afterthoughts in faculty hiring.

[spondee]

I'd agree that it might help break a tie between two specialties that interested you. I just think the interests have to come before the consideration of the market.

Also, increasingly, law schools are looking for people with a Ph.D. Although it might seem like it would suck to go straight from a law program into a Ph.D. program, it actually wouldn't be a terrible plan for someone who was young, not particularly widely published, and not sure about his or her interests. Loans and interest are deferred, you'd get a stipend, and you'd get five years to publish before having to find a tenure-track job. This might actually be a faster route into academia than clerkships.

IMO, the overall quality of your scholarship has a greater effect upon job security/availability than the specialty. If you have one of the best CVs in con law in the nation, but a school is looking for a tax guy ... they'll hire you and bring in a visiting prof to teach tax. The needs of students and teaching demands are, at best, afterthoughts in faculty hiring.

Only subsidized loans, which cap out at $19,500 of total law school debt. Most loans accrue interest while in school, including unsubsidized Stafford and GradPLUS loans. For a student who took out lots of loans for law school, a PhD could become very expensive.

[FlightoftheEarls]

Going to YHC

...nice C trolling.

It's not trolling. Chicago is more academia-focused than Stanford

Not really.

Despite TLS's non-stop claims of Chicago's superiority for academia - and, I would imagine, matriculation of students who attend hoping to enter academia based on this belief - Stanford has generally performed better than Chicago in the per capita number of students placed for at least the past near-decade (the only period where I have reliable data). Stanford has actually almost doubled Chicago's placement rate during the previous four years - a span of time during which Brian Leiter conveniently stopped compiling yearly academia placement rankings.

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... a#p4188514

[Anonymous User]

It's not trolling. Chicago is more academia-focused than Stanford

Maybe. I'm not convinced. But even if that's the case, that doesn't mean that you'd be better off at Chicago than Stanford. Cornell's more NYC biglaw focused than Yale, but you'd be way better off at Yale than Cornell if your goal was NYC biglaw.

Think about what's important for academia:
(1) your publications;
(2) your resume (e.g., clerkship, law review, etc);
(3) whether you have a dual degree;
(4) your connections.

-------

(1): Your publications are going to be the number one most important part of your academia candidacy, and the primary impact your school will have on that is who your mentors are and how helpful they are. I could see SY and C being better than H in this category given their size (easier to get to know lots of profs), but I can't think of any reason, cultural or otherwise, why there'd be a substantial difference between S and C.

(2): Clerkships matter, albeit much, much less than they used to. This is where S is going to come up big compared to C. SLR is marginally more prestigious than CLR, and your chances of a (prestigious) clerkship are going to be significantly better at S. Like, twice as good.

(3): This is another big win for S: Chicago makes getting a dual degree pretty difficult while S goes out of its way to make it as easy as possible. I'm not sure there's a better law school in the country for "ease of getting a dual degree."

(4): See #1--I can't imagine that this is anything but a wash between S and C.