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Thursday, March 16, 2017

Entry Level Hiring: The 2017 Report - Call for Information

Time once again for the entry level hiring report.

I will gather the following information for tenure-track, clinical, or legal writing full-time entry-level hires: 

Basic Information: Name, Hiring School, JD Institution, JD Year of Graduation

Other Degrees: Type of Degree,  Degree Granting Institution, Degree Subject

Fellowship, VAP, or Visiting Professorship: Institution and Type (e.g., VAP, name of fellowship, etc.)

Clerkship: Court (e.g., 9th Circuit, Texas Supreme Court, etc.)

Areas of Speciality (up to four) (if you are a clinical or LRW hire, please list this as your first Area of Specialty)

Type of Position: Tenure Track or Non-Tenure Track (if you are clinical or LRW and also tenure-track, please indicate this)

The information will be aggregated on this spreadsheet (which is reproduced below and which you can view and download by clicking on this link); scroll across to see all of the information we will be aggregating.

Please leave the information in the comments, and, to protect those on the job market, please sign the comment with your real name. (Ideally, the reporting person would be either the hired individual or someone from the hiring committee at the hiring school.) If you would like to email information instead of posting it, please send it to Sarah Lawsky at sarah *dot* lawsky *at* law *dot* northwestern *dot* edu. Remember: you can't edit the spreadsheet yourself. To get your information into the spreadsheet, you must either post in the comments or email me.

I will also gather the names of schools that are doing no entry-level hiring this year (that's the second tab on the spreadsheet), so if you know for sure that your school is not doing entry-level hiring, please post that in the comments or email me.

If you see any errors, or if I have incorporated your information into the spreadsheet but you are not yet ready to make it public, please don't hesitate to email me, and I will take care of the problem as soon as I can.

Clarifications:

The list does not include people who were full-time non-tenure track clinicians who are now moving to a tenure track job at a different school, as these don't seem like true entry-level hires to me. This is the situation where a person is at a school that does not provide tenure to clinicians, and then moves to a school that does provide tenure to clinicians.

The list does include people who had a non-professor job in a law school and then moved to a professor job that was tenure track. Thus a person may have worked at a law school for many years, but still be considered an entry level hire. To indicate this situation, I will put their previous job at a law school in the "fellowship" category, and note "non-TT to TT" in the "Notes" category. This is not to indicate that this isn't an entry-level hire, but rather to give information about the nature of the item listed as a fellowship. (I.e., not a temporary position, as fellowships usually are.)

Other links:

This report follows in the tradition of Larry Solum's excellent work over many years.

2016 initial post, 2016 spreadsheet, 2016 report (with graphs). 

2015 initial post, 2015 spreadsheet, 2015 report (with graphs).

2014 initial post, 2014 spreadsheet, 2014 report (with graphs).

2013 initial post, 2013 spreadsheet, 2013 report (with graphs).

2012 initial post, 2012 spreadsheet, 2012 report (with graphs).

2011 initial post, 2011 spreadsheet, 2011 report (with graphs).

All PrawfsBlawg entry level hiring report tagged posts.

Originally posted 3/16/17.

 

Posted by Sarah Lawsky on March 16, 2017 at 12:30 PM in Entry Level Hiring Report | Permalink

Comments

People have reported 69 tenure-track new hires on this blog. Last year, there were 83. According to Leiter's blog, there were 12 untenured lateral hires this year, and last year year, there were 7.

Posted by: Big Mouth for Good Data | May 31, 2017 3:26:19 PM

FWIW, I still know of one TT hire who's not listed, for reasons regarding current employer. It is possible there are others.

Posted by: anon | May 31, 2017 2:59:11 PM

I'm not sure I understand the point of reporting non-tenure track hires. I hope those folks will be sifted out prior to any meaningful number crunching.

Posted by: LawProf | May 31, 2017 2:19:41 PM

If I read this spreadsheet correctly, with one exception every tenure-track hire this year is either coming out of a fellowship or has an advanced degree. Wow.

Posted by: anonprof06 | May 22, 2017 1:02:24 PM

George Mason

Jennifer Mascott

JD: George Washington; Other Degrees: none; Clerkships: Brett Kavanaugh, DC Circuit; Clarence Thomas, SCOTUS Fellowship 1: Olin-Searle, 2015-17, Georgetown and GW; Aread of interest: Administrative law. Type of position: non-tenure track.

Posted by: David Bernstein | May 19, 2017 5:47:49 PM

People need to get a grip.

I honestly don't understand why you wouldn't share this news with your place of employment a couple months before leaving, especially if you want to maintain a decent relationship with the people at the firm. But, that's your choice.

If you've shared your hiring news with me (or anyone) and have not informed them that your hiring is some big secret, then you should work on your ability to keep your mouth shut. You want to keep it a secret for personal/monetary reasons. Fine keep it a secret. But, there's no sense in people assuming that everyone who has not shared their hiring news with this blog has a reason to hide this information. If you know about the hiring and the person has not told you that you that they are hiding this information, they probably haven't gotten around to emailing Sarah, don't know about this posting, or don't care. I just happen to be self aware enough to know that I'm not that special, and if they've shared the news with me, they've probably shared it with others.

Posted by: Big Mouth for Good Data | May 15, 2017 10:02:31 AM

Big Mouth for Good Data: if you do this to people who are in practice, you may be complicating their lives immensely and depriving them and their families of thousands of dollars. Robust data collection doesn't depend on that. It can wait a few months.

Posted by: anon | May 13, 2017 2:07:30 PM

A question: Why don't any of the folks asking someone to contact Brian Leiter just . . . you know . . . contact Brian Leiter?

You can send emails too, you know.

Posted by: Marcus Neff | May 11, 2017 5:05:44 PM

You all are better than me. If you've mentioned it on Facebook or otherwise told me about your appointment, I'm sharing it with Sarah. If I don''t know you well enough to know that you're affirmatively trying to keep this appointment private, you shouldn't be sharing this information with me. If I know, it's by definition no longer private information. I care more about good data than keeping non-secrets. Oops.

Posted by: Big Mouth for Good Data | May 11, 2017 4:52:10 PM

I know at least two not listed, and suspect more. Might be helpful to get Leiter to post seeking info, per suggestion above.

Posted by: an | May 11, 2017 3:13:58 PM

I know of at least one hire not listed on the spreadsheet. I won't speculate as to why, as I have no idea. But I doubt s/he is the only one.

Posted by: anon | May 11, 2017 12:31:37 PM

George Mason has said that they won't know their new hire until later this month (a claim I find shocking), but other than that, yes, this looks complete given my knowledge of this year's cycle (I was a hiring chair).

Posted by: LawProf | May 10, 2017 10:04:30 PM

May 10, 2017 4:26:47 PM,
If I were to posit a guess. I would say this list is nearly complete. My basis for the guess is that all four candidates we interviewed this year are listed there.

Interested in other people's thoughts, if others would chime in.

Posted by: AnnProf1 | May 10, 2017 6:34:06 PM

do people have a sense of whether this list is missing a lot of new hires? the list is usually closed by now, and so far it looks like candidates fared a lot worse this year as compared to last year.

Posted by: anon | May 10, 2017 4:26:47 PM

I count 12 untenured laterals at Leiter's blog. Compared to 7 the year before. Seems to be a substantial increase, and reporting may not be completed for this year.

Posted by: data | May 5, 2017 11:41:33 AM

In re: junior lateral hires, Leiter's lateral hiring post lists 11 such moves at present: http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2017/05/lateral-hires-with-tenure-or-on-tenure-track-2016-17.html

If this is a trend, should it be, going forward, the "tenure-track" hiring report?

Posted by: juniorprof | May 5, 2017 8:39:34 AM

could someone ask Brian Leiter to post an information gathering post? He seems to have done so consistently, and he did not do so this year. See last year's http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2016/03/prawfs-entry-level-hiring-thread-is-now-open.html. given his readership base, my suspicion is that this underreported hires significantly.

Posted by: anon | May 5, 2017 12:23:54 AM

I think schools are opting to do more junior lateral hires now. There's lots of great people who end up having to go to lower ranked schools, and they are now ripe for the picking. Plus, with a junior lateral, you have much more assurances of what you're getting as they have a greater record of service, scholarship and teaching. We went after junior laterals exclusively this year.

Posted by: LawProf | May 4, 2017 10:13:32 AM

I'm sure nobody here thinks that people should risk their livelihood or their partner's over the next few months for transparency here, but I also doubt this is a uniquely large problem this year. It's a factor every year. Same with some hires/schools being too happy and tired to care about reporting. It's always something that will skew the data available here.

There are a LOT fewer entries this year than last. Right now, if I'm counting right, that's 54 entry level tenure track hires compared to 83 in the final report last year. Occam's razor suggests that this year was just a bloodbath at the entry level even relative to last year. Even if we get ten more reports in the next few days, and five appointments aren't being reported for various reasons, that's STILL more than 10 fewer hires than last year (which was itself a tough year). This is rather surprising, as it seemed like things were improving over the past two years, looking at LSAT takers and entry level hires, and I do think that someone reported that the hiring bulletin was longer this year than last. But perhaps other factors were at play. The Whittier case and the ongoing Infilaw situation suggest that law schools as a whole are far from out of the woods in the post-recession age, so perhaps schools are being cautious.

To our earlier conversation, maybe another sign of schools being cautious in hiring is the lack of con law hires. Could be that schools are more serious about hiring in specific fields than before, so consensus on an interesting, well-qualified candidate (which is often easier con law than other fields) isn't enough anymore. This could be a reason why more searches are coming up unsuccessful, with no hires at all rather than a hire of an otherwise-ideal candidate from a different field.

Posted by: anon | May 4, 2017 9:36:54 AM

The NIU business hire is Carliss Chatman.

Posted by: Reporter | May 3, 2017 11:09:22 PM

Can someone reach out to Northern Illinois -- I saw a candidate identify herself on Facebook as having accepted an offer there in business for next year.

Posted by: LawProf | May 3, 2017 1:17:25 PM

George Mason won't be done with its entry-level hiring season until its faculty meeting later this month.

Posted by: David Bernstein | May 1, 2017 3:04:42 PM

Two more at Texas A&M University School of Law

Brian Larson
• JD: William Mitchell College of Law, May 2000
• Other Degrees: Doctor of Philosophy, Rhetoric and Scientific and Technical Communication. Minor: Cognitive Science. University of Minnesota. May 2015
• Other Degrees: Bachelor of Arts University of Wisconsin—Madison, Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies. August 1992.
Specialty Area: Legal Research & Writing; Technical Communication
Type of Position: Tenure Track LRW

Jeff Slattery
• JD: University of California, Hastings College of the Law, San Francisco, 1999
• Other Degrees: B.A. (Rhetoric) with honors and highest distinction, University of California, Berkeley, 1996
Specialty Area: Clinical Education; Intellectual Property; Entertainment Law
Type of Position: Non-Tenure Track Clinic

You already have all of the information for our other entry-level hires: Amber Baylor and Guillermo Garcia

Posted by: Gabriel Eckstein | Apr 28, 2017 4:47:13 PM

anon at 12:23 - sorry, but you're oversimplifying. Junior has it right. Many in practice are rightly wary of drawing attention to their impending departure, which could complicate matters at work in a serious way. The risk of losing a month or more of income and family health insurance is likely chilling some people from posting about it. The fact that some schools have begun publicizing their hires is irrelevant.

If someone's position starts in early or mid-August (like mine), they may not wish to make it public until mid to late July. People's livelihoods are more important than anyone's desire (including my own) to get a full picture of the cycle.

Posted by: chill out, anons | Apr 25, 2017 2:10:51 PM

anon at 12:23 - because they need insurance from the law firm and don't want to be pushed out early (this happens); because they're in the middle of a deal or trial and would prefer not to have this talk at the moment with the partner in charge; or maybe it's because they have a spouse who needs to keep his or her job for a while. My spouse and I are keeping my TT position a secret at the moment because of my spouse's employment situation.

Posted by: Junior | Apr 25, 2017 1:10:50 PM

If many teaching gigs start in June and July, and you work in in a law firm job, I am struggling to to see how revealing your your appointment in May, late April, hurts you.

So l, my initial statement to share appointments still stands. Seriously, I seriously doubt anyone is out keeping it a secretary this point. Schools have already begun advertising their new hires.

Posted by: anon | Apr 25, 2017 12:23:10 AM

If many teaching gigs start in June and July, and you work in in a law firm job, I am struggling to to see how revealing your your appointment in May, late April, hurts you.

So l, my initial statement to share appointments still stands. Seriously, I seriously doubt anyone is out keeping it a secretary this point. Schools have already begun advertising their new hires.

Posted by: anon | Apr 25, 2017 12:23:08 AM

I know of several unreported hires as well, but keep in mind that people have reasons for not broadcasting their news in April. By way of example, some of the folks I'm thinking of are in practice and may not wish to make their departures public for another few months.

Posted by: chill out, anons | Apr 24, 2017 10:44:31 AM

I think many PhD holders also have some legal experience, which wasn't always the case.

If you know of hires, I think you should email them to Sarah. It's not confidential information at this point, especially as many schools are getting ready to send out press releases to announce these new hires anyway.

Posted by: Anon | Apr 24, 2017 8:40:36 AM

anon 622 - I'm sure there are also more PhD-holders than ever before striking out, too. Conventional wisdom as of about a decade ago when current candidates were first developing an interest in academia was to get a PhD and all of your wildest dreams will come true.

I know of two non-reported hires here, and I'm sure there are tons more. As a recent hire who took advantage of past iterations of this spreadsheet, I hope that more of the current batch will contribute.

Posted by: anon | Apr 24, 2017 8:02:35 AM

Don't most JDs applying to law school positions have doctrinal analysis training but little to no experience?

As a side note, I'm guessing Whittier is not looking to fill any slots this year.

Posted by: anon | Apr 21, 2017 10:00:29 PM

The number of entering candidates with Ph.D.s has gone up significantly this year. That's a substantial change from a decade ago. Once upon a time Ph.D.s were viewed with some skepticism because few of them had experience and were grounded in methodologies other than doctrinal analysis. Is that mind-frame now be passe?

Posted by: anon | Apr 21, 2017 6:22:08 PM

if you know of other offers, then share them with sarah. i doubt people are intentionally withholding the info. i suspect that once some people have an offer, they are less inclined to obsessively check what's happening on this site.

Posted by: anon | Apr 21, 2017 1:54:46 PM

if you know of other offers, then share them with sarah. i doubt people are intentionally withholding the info. i suspect that once some people have an offer, they are less inclined to obsessively check what's happening on this site.

Posted by: anon | Apr 21, 2017 1:54:46 PM

I am aware of at least 5 accepted offers not reported here, not sure why people are being cagey at this point. I also know that there are a number of schools that had open slots- as many as three- but did not make any offers this year because they didn't see anything that met their qualifications in the pool. It is tempting to look for trends here but remember this is a complicated process with a lot of moving parts.

Posted by: another anon | Apr 21, 2017 1:20:14 PM

This is a ridiculously small number of hires. I wonder how these numbers relate to the election. There were a lot of top-notch people leaving government after November 8. Perhaps law schools were more focused on scooping up federal refugees as laterals, and had no attention left over for the entry level candidates. Any thoughts on whether entry level hiring will improve in 2018 and beyond?

Posted by: Angsting Anon | Apr 21, 2017 12:39:12 PM

@anona_candidate - Agreed.

@grapevine - There is an intense irony in this poor job market. Obviously, many strong candidates end up without jobs. Yet the same time, a smallish group of candidates end up with multiple offers, of which they can only take one. So, some schools can end up with unsuccessful searches when the music stops despite this being a "buyer's market" for candidates. I've never been on a hiring committee. How does this happen?

Posted by: anon | Apr 9, 2017 10:15:54 PM

Heard through the grapevine that ASU made 4 or 5 tenure track offers, none accepted. Don't know details.

Posted by: grapevine | Apr 9, 2017 1:43:09 PM

To anon | Apr 3, 2017 8:04:37 AM: I see it more as a post-AALS report. The meat market is becoming increasingly international, and there were at least half-a-dozen countries represented there this year. I think it is useful to track hiring globally.

Posted by: Anona_candidate | Apr 9, 2017 12:08:52 PM

I just want to add that the areas of interest listed in the chart don't necessarily correspond to the areas in which the applicant will be teaching.

Posted by: Anon | Apr 4, 2017 4:38:35 PM

Was CUHK even at AALS? I know UHK was representing in a very strong way, but CUHK?

Congrats to the strong hires at George Mason!

But ... the spreadsheet is not very filled in after three weeks ... how poor was hiring this year?

Posted by: AnonProf | Apr 3, 2017 6:45:53 PM

At my school, as with others, private law searches often turn up public law candidates "willing to teach" a private class class.

Posted by: 1984 World Series Champion | Apr 3, 2017 4:45:17 PM

anon says it best: "[T]he past few years, even in this economy, there was a bunch of con law hiring. Perhaps that's because it's easier to get faculty consensus around a sexy public law topic that everyone feels qualified to judge the quality of scholarship."

The relative ease of getting hired for tax, corporate, etc. was always overstated. True, *stated* demand is high (i.e., many schools claim to be desperate to hire tax, corporate, etc. profs), and there are fewer candidates. But revealed demand is far weaker: law schools are dominated by public law faculty and want to hire more public law faculty.

Posted by: anoninfinity | Apr 3, 2017 4:30:17 PM

anon | Apr 3, 2017 11:02:52 AM,
Sorry for my screwy typo, which absolutely confused my post. I actually have the opposite memory from you: I think very few people are hired into entry level Con Law positions. I meant to write: "that was the most difficult subject to be hired to teach at the entry level", not the opposite, which is how my omission of the word "difficult" resulted in the misunderstanding. I don't really have a value judgement on this. It is my perception that through the years it's become more and more difficult for public law intellectuals to get a job than for corporate and tax intellectuals. It has been that way since I entered the profession some twenty years ago, and in the last ten years or so Con Law entry level openings have become even more scarce.

Posted by: AnnProf1 | Apr 3, 2017 11:57:34 AM

@AnnProf - As you mentioned, the past few years, even in this economy, there was a bunch of con law hiring. Perhaps that's because it's easier to get faculty consensus around a sexy public law topic that everyone feels qualified to judge the quality of scholarship. But was there a need for that much con law hiring? Probably not. Perhaps fiscal responsibility (and retirements) spread like wildfire this year among hiring committees. Perhaps the (overblown) reputation of con law as a death field over the past few years among the PhD-seeking and postdoc community has encouraged strong candidates that might have otherwise focused in con law to focus elsewhere. Regardless, there's hardly a danger that con law won't get taught by someone qualified to teach it on the faculty of any given school, whereas tax, health law, commercial law, corporate law, and other specialty fields where law students might actually get jobs...there is a real need there.

I'm sure there are a billion con law hires that just haven't come up here yet, but if this is a trend, it's probably a good thing.

Posted by: anon | Apr 3, 2017 11:02:52 AM

What's with all the non US jobs in the spreadsheet? I thought this was about U.S. law teaching jobs?

Posted by: anon | Apr 3, 2017 8:04:37 AM

Well, it's not like there's been many hires reported yet.

Posted by: LawProf | Apr 2, 2017 11:19:33 PM

Interesting that thus far there isn't one person reporting being hired to teach Constitutional Law as a primary or secondary subject. For those on faculties or candidates who haven't yet reported, is that a subject for which entry levels were not at all (or barely at all) hired this year or is it just by happenstance that those who were hired to teach Con Law have not yet been reported on this blog?

In years past, that was the most subject to be hired to teach at the entry level, but it seems there were always a couple or a few people who were hired with that course in their contractual packages.

Posted by: AnnProf | Apr 2, 2017 6:17:06 PM

We're close to an offer for Lou Whitaker here, but nothing to report yet.

Posted by: 1984 World Series Champion | Mar 29, 2017 6:17:43 PM

But can he still hit a 100 mph fastball?

Posted by: Go Tigers | Mar 29, 2017 6:09:19 PM

Prof. Trammell was also an Associate in Law at Columbia.

Posted by: MW | Mar 29, 2017 3:34:45 PM

Alan Trammell, University of Virginia, J.D. 2006
Hiring School: Arkansas - Fayetteville
M.St., Oxford, German
M.Sc., London School of Economics, Comparative Politics
VAP at Brooklyn Law School
Clerkship 1: U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. Circuit
Clerkship 2: International Criminal Tribunal
Civil Procedure, Federal Courts, Conflict of Laws

Posted by: Steve Clowney | Mar 28, 2017 1:32:39 PM

Caroline Cecot, Hiring School: George Mason. JD and PHD, Law and Economics, Vanderbilt 2014. Clerkship 1, District Court Tennessee. Clerkship 2, Second Circuit. Fellowship: Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. Field: Environmental Law.
Note: Caroline was hired in the 2015-2016 cycle, but deferred joining the faculty for a year.

Posted by: David Bernstein | Mar 25, 2017 12:22:01 PM

Megan Stevenson, Hiring School: George Mason, no JD, PHD Berkeley 2016, Quattrone Fellowship Penn. Field: La and Economics.

Posted by: David Bernstein | Mar 22, 2017 10:22:51 AM

Paolo Sauguoto, Hiring School: George Mason, JD University of Genoa, 2008, LLM Yale 2012, PH.D. Genoa 2013 in Private, Business and International Law, Fellowship 1: NYU, Fellowship 2: London School of Economics

Posted by: David Bernstein | Mar 21, 2017 3:04:10 PM

Correction above:

TT offer at Chinese University of Hong Kong

Posted by: Congrats to all the new hires! | Mar 16, 2017 2:41:10 PM

Rehan Abeyratne (Harvard Law School, 2010)

-TT offer at Chinese University of Kong
-Fellowship/VAP: Scholar in Residence, Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, NYU School of Law
-Areas of Speciality: Comparative Constitutional Law, Human Rights

Posted by: Congrats to all the new hires! | Mar 16, 2017 2:40:21 PM

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