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Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Hiring in the Fourth Tier
Entry-level candidates are in the process of doing callbacks and fielding job offers right about now. This time of the year produces plenty of useful advice and discussion concerning the faculty hiring process and what hiring committees are and should be looking for. Despite all of the discussion, there has been one topic that I think has largely been overlooked.
Specifically, most of the observations and suggestions regarding the hiring process tend to assume that hiring institutions are interchangeable. There is rarely any suggestion that the realities confronting Generic Top 75 Law School and Generic Fourth-Tier Law School are any different, either in terms of hiring goals or obstacles to hiring. Maybe I'm more sensitive to this failure due to the fact that my school happens to fall into the latter category. And maybe there really aren't any major differences in terms of what law schools should be looking for in their new hires and how they go about the hiring process. The fact that the hyper-competitive job market has resulted in Generic Fourth-Tier Law School having a bunch of junior faculty members with pretty darned impressive credentials might support that theory. I also realize that every hiring committee -- no matter the school's ranking -- likes a candidate who made good grades at a Top 3 (5?) (15?) law school, was on law review, did a federal clerkship, and had some good practice experience (and another degree would be nice too).
That said, I can't help but believe that maybe Generic Fourth-Tier Law School really should place a higher value on certain job applicant qualities than does Generic Top 75 Law School given the different institutional realities.
As an obvious example, an applicant's teaching potential should be an important consideration anywhere. But it seems to me that it should be especially important at Generic Fourth-Tier Law School where the number of students who can be expected to teach themselves the law and the skill of thinking like a lawyer by themselves if necessary is likely to be lower than at Generic Top 75 Law School. Am I right? If lower-ranked schools should be looking for something special in the hiring process, do they actually do it? If so, what are they looking for and how do they go about finding it? Should candidates emphasize some qualities over others depending upon whether they are interviewing at Generic Fourth-Tier Law School or Generic Top 75 Law School that week? (And my gut tells me the answer to that question is "no.") Obviously, I'm not asking anyone to divulge trade secrets here, but I figured I'd better ask the questions before Jim Chen and his MoneyLaw barons beat me to it.
Posted by Alex Long on December 5, 2006 at 07:26 AM in Life of Law Schools | Permalink
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Comments
Jay,
I used to direct an academic support program at a third-tier school and currently teach at a fourth-tier school, so there is no way I would ever insult the intellectual capacity or the diligence of the students I have worked with. One of my points is simply that, if thrown to the wolves by their professors and forced to learn the material by themselves, more students at a fourth-tier school will, on average, struggle to master the material than will students at a first-tier school. Not “all” or “most” or even “many.” Just “more.” I think that assumption is pretty common among people who do academic support for a living, many of whom are at third- and fourth-tier schools. Based on my experience, the greater potential for difficulty has much less to do with intellectual capacity or diligence than it does pre-law school training or time commitments during law school. With regard to your second point, while I’m not prepared to fully endorse the view that fourth-tier schools shouldn’t hire Tier 1 faculty, I think we are probably coming from a similar starting point. I don’t think graduation from an elite law school is much (if any) kind of an indicator of future success as a classroom teacher. I’m not prepared to say training at such school is, by itself, a hindrance to teaching at a fourth-tier school. But I don’t necessarily see it as being that much of a help either.
Posted by: Alex Long | Dec 23, 2006 3:17:54 PM
"As an obvious example, an applicant's teaching potential should be an important consideration anywhere. But it seems to me that it should be especially important at Generic Fourth-Tier Law School where the number of students who can be expected to teach themselves the law and the skill of thinking like a lawyer by themselves if necessary is likely to be lower than at Generic Top 75 Law School."
That's an insult to 4th tier students. You're presuming 4th tier students lack the intellectual capacity of Top 75 students to study independently. There's no way law school professors magically bestow the gift of legal analysis to 4th tier students in three years. The diligent learn on their own just as Top 75 students.
This elitist mentality is why 4th tier schools shouldn't hire Tier 1 faculty unless they are extraordinary teachers that use effective teaching methods. All law students deserve effective teaching. Tier or ranking is irrelevant.
Posted by: Jay | Dec 22, 2006 9:26:28 PM
Unless you're in a top 5-10 school, other schools will outrank your school, so almost everybody has this sort of problem. But yeah, the further down the semi-arbitrary rankings you go, the more this problem can rear it's head. With the caveat that Alex is absolutely right that the folks getting hired by even "fourth tier" schools have terrific credentials these days, here are some ideas:
1. Free yourself from the idiotic idea that only folks who graduated from a top-5 school should be in legal academia. Graduates from second-tier schools can be excellent academics.
2. Hire for particular fields as opposed to looking for "best atheletes." Need somebody to teach crim law? Hire somebody who has done a lot of crim law (practice and/or writing), don't try to get the generic editor-in-chief of top 10 law review/Circuit Court clerk to fill the slot.
3. Of the pool of folks with the traditional credentials, look for people with ties to your city/region of the country.
4. Look for people with either essentially no practice experience (because, say, they got a PhD) or lots of practice experience (which legal academia seems to consider a minus at some point).
5. The moneyball point: with 1-4, look for some demonstrated success teaching or publishing or both.
6. I think teaching potential should be important at all law schools and that hiring people who don't care about trying to be good teachers is a mistake at any level. But, as I said back when I was blogging, I think teaching potential is harder to spot than publishing potential.
Posted by: Joseph Slater | Dec 5, 2006 11:30:08 AM
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