Planning and Promoting Your Scholarly Career

Next week is the annual conference of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools, or SEALS, which will be held in lovely Palm Beach, Florida. I will be appearing on two panels.  Sunday's panel is: 

ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION: PLANNING YOUR SCHOLARLY CAREER 

This panel will examine “scholarly paths,” and includes a variety of perspectives on that topic. Should faculty pursue a consistent scholarly path over the course of their careers, or might their paths diverge over time. 

Moderator: Professor Michele Butts, John Marshall Law School (Atlanta). Speakers: Professor Barbara Cox, California Western School of Law; Professor Cynthia Ward, College of William & Mary, Marshall-Wythe School of Law; Professor Ellen Podgor, Stetson University College of Law; Professor Paul Horwitz, University of Alabama School of Law.

Tuesday's panel is:

Maximum Exposure: The Art of Making a Name for Oneself

This panel will explore ways in which junior scholars can make their presence known in the academic community.  Panelists will address questions such as: When and to whom should I send reprints?  How do I network at large conferences?  Should I focus on attending smaller conferences?  How do I get invited to present at other institutions?  How can I use technology to market my scholarship?  Do I need a mentor and, if so, how do I find one?  Should I cold contact or introduce myself to established scholars in my field?  How do I get involved with a topical scholarly thinking group?  How can my Associate Dean of Faculty Development or Scholarship help me?
 

Moderator: Professor Wesley Oliver, Widener University School of Law.

Speakers: Professor Jennifer Collins, Wake Forest University School of Law; Professor Erica Hashimoto, University of Georgia School of Law; Professor Paul Horwitz, University of Alabama School of Law; Professor Orin Kerr, George Washington University Law School.

I suppose I could keep my advice short: Plan to take advantage of conferences in Palm Beach.  And promote your appearances on Prawfsblawg.  I actually have a few more thoughts than that about both topics.  But I am eager to hear from our readers.  What advice would you give a junior scholar about planning a scholarly career?  Should you be a fox or a hedgehog?  How should your early pieces differ, if at all, from your later pieces?  How do you get started?  (Since most junior profs now come in with published pieces, this is probably no longer as big a problem, but my sense is some people's pre-teaching publications are derived from practice or law school, and that some new profs still have difficulty getting things off the ground.)  And how should you promote your scholarly career?  Do blogs help?  Reprints?  How do you network?  And -- something I'm especially interested in, because this part of my career has probably lagged a little behind the other aspects of my work -- how do you start getting invited to conferences and to workshop?  (Happily, this seems to be picking up, but yes, I'm always looking for invites, especially to workshop.)  

Comments are very welcome.  The more I hear from our readers, the more I'll know either what good answers are out there or what good questions are still unanswered for many junior profs.  See you at the lanai.  I'll be the dude with the skull T-shirt, the frozen and salted margarita, and the copy of Charles Taylor's A Secular Age.