PrawfsBlawg

VAPs and Fellowships 2024-2025

A spreadsheet for candidates to track information about VAPs or similar fellowships (for example, the Climenko and Bigelow) for the 2024-2025 hiring cycle is now available. In the spreadsheet, you can enter information regarding screeners, callbacks, offers, and so forth. You can also write more general comments.

The tabs on the spreadsheet marked "Comments" and "Q&A" will, I hope, serve as substitutes for the comment thread on Prawfs, as the commenting function on Typepad is in serious technical trouble. If people have questions about the process, please post them on the Q&A tab, and everyone -- including current professors and fellows -- please chime in and answer!

Anyone can edit the spreadsheet; I will not be generally editing it or monitoring it.

Here is last year's thread and last year's spreadsheet.

Hiring Committee Topics of Interest 2024-2025

As of September 2, 2024, there are 134 unique schools represented in the hiring committees sheet. (If your committee is not represented on the spreadsheet, please fill out the Google form or send me an email!) Many, though not all, of these schools expressed interest in particular subject or subjects for hiring. Of course, that a school expresses interest in a particular area does not mean that the school will hire in that area. And schools may hire in areas that they do not list. Nonetheless, to see in what areas schools expressed interest, I classified all the topics listed to general classifications, and then counted the numbers of times each general classification was mentioned (graph below; see a spreadsheet with the full list and count; you could do this one-by-one in the filtering tool if you wanted to for some reason).

A few notes about how I approached this.

• Every subject mentioned was classified to a general topic; you can see the full list of classifications, which are the same as those I use for the tool to sort and filter the spreadsheet. For example, "Business Organizations," "Corporations," and "Business/Commercial Law" are all "Business Law."
• A given topic can be classified in up to three areas. Thus "Business/Commercial Law" is classified not only as "Business Law" but also as "Commercial Law," and this would show up as two separate data points on the graph.
• If a single school mentioned 10 topics in non-overlapping areas, that would show up as 10 different data points on the graph.
• If a single school mentioned five Business Law topics, that shows up as "Business Law" just one time.
• If a school said they were interested in all areas, or did not state an area in which they were interested, that was classified as "Multiple/Undetermined." Some schools said "all" and also listed specific areas; that listing would be counted as one for "Multiple/Undetermined" and also one for each of the other topics mentioned.

The graph shows only areas where more than five schools expressed interest. "Other" captures all of the topics where five or fewer schools expressed an interest. In "Other," there was no subject in which five schools expressed interest. Four schools expressed interest in each of Civil Rights, Dispute Resolution, Finance/Accounting, and Real Estate Law. Three schools expressed interest in each of Compliance, Law and Inequality, Sports Law, and Statutes and Regulations. Two schools expressed interest in each of Academic Success, Appellate Advocacy, Comparative Law, Election Law, Entertainment Law, Experiential Learning, Privacy Law, Private Law, and Remedies. One school expressed interest in each of Animal Law, Elder Law, Gender, Law and Economics, Law and Philosophy, Law and Religion, Legal History, Library, Maritime Law, Public Law, Trial Practice, and Youth Law.

 

Number of FAR Forms in First Distribution Over Time - 2024

The first distribution of the FAR AALS forms came out this week. Here are the number of FAR forms in the first distribution for each year since 2009.

2009: 637; 2010: 662; 2011: 592; 2012: 588; 2013: 592; 2014: 492; 2015: 410; 2016: 382; 2017: 403; 2018: 344; 2019: 334; 2020: 297; 2021: 328; 2022: 272; 2023: 348; 2024: 352.

(All information obtained from various blog posts, blog comments, Tweets, and Facebook postings over the years and not independently verified. If you have more accurate information, please contact me and I will update accordingly.)

Law School Hiring Spreadsheet and Clearinghouse for Questions, 2024-2025

A spreadsheet for tracking law school hiring interviews and offers for the 2024-2025 hiring cycle is now available. In the spreadsheet, you can enter information regarding screeners, callbacks, offers, and so forth. You can also write more general comments.

The tab on the spreadsheet marked "Q&A" will, I hope, serve as a substitute for the comment thread on Prawfs, as the commenting function on Typepad is in serious technical trouble. If people have questions about the teaching market or process, please post them on that tab, and everyone -- including current professors -- please chime in and answer!

Anyone can edit the spreadsheet; I will not be generally editing it or monitoring it. 

You may want to take a look at the many questions and answers in the threads from 2014-2015, 2015-2016, 2016-2017, 2017-2018, 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021, 2021-2022, 2022-2023, 2023-2024. In general, there's quite a cache of materials relevant to the law job market under the archive categories Getting a Job on the Law Teaching Market and Entry Level Hiring Report.

Survey of Law Fellowships and VAPs

The following is a guest post from Nikita Aggarwal:

Fellowships and VAPs have become an important credential for entry-level positions in the U.S. legal academy. Jobseekers face a high level of informational opacity and asymmetry about the quality of fellowships and VAPs, i.e., the extent to which these programs help candidates prepare for, and succeed in, the entry-level job market. To help alleviate these informational constraints and improve the functioning of the fellowship and VAP market, I am carrying out a survey of former fellows and VAPs. To ensure the currency of the data, the survey is limited to those who completed fellowships in the last two academic years only (AY 2022-23 or AY 2023-24). If you completed a law fellowship or VAP program in the last  two years (AY 2022-23 or AY 2023-24), please consider filling out the Google form available at this link. Your responses will be aggregated, anonymized, and published in a searchable database, along with publicly available information about fellowship and VAP programs. Your name and email address will be collected to confirm your identity and mitigate fraudulent responses. But all personal identifiers, including your name and email address, will be removed before publication.  

Please feel free to email me with any queries or to share additional information: [email protected].

Updated 8/15/24 to add sentence regarding currency of the data.

Law School Entry-Level Hiring Posting Schedule 2024-2025

The usual posts will occur this year regarding entry-level law school hiring.

The post collecting information about Hiring Committees is up.

On August 22, 2024, AALS will release the first distribution of FAR forms to schools. If/when anyone publicly posts the number of FAR forms, I will post Number of FAR Forms in First Distribution Over Time (last year's FAR Forms Over Time post).

Also on August 22, I will post Law School Hiring Spreadsheet and Clearinghouse for Questions, 2023-2024 (last year's Hiring Spreadsheet and Clearinghouse Post).

Around September 5, I will post the VAPs and Fellowship Open Thread (last year's VAPs and Fellowship Open Thread).

Maya Moritz on Entry-Level Hiring

Maya Moritz has an extremely informative analysis of hires in the law professor market, with a focus on JD/PhDs.

Hiring Plans and Hiring Committees 2024-2025

Link to a tool to search and filter the information on the below spreadsheet by subject area sought, location, and lateral/entry level.

---

I am collecting information about (1) whether a particular school plans to hire in 2024-2025, and (2) if so, information about the school's hiring committee and hiring interests. Due to some technical difficulties with comments, I'm having to move to a different approach this year for collecting the information.

Please fill out a Google form or email me to provide information about your school's hiring committee and hiring interests for 2024-2025 (scroll down for the list of specific information I'm hoping to collect). Any responses to the Google form can be viewed by anyone.

I will aggregate cleaned, standardized information submitted through the form, emailed to me, or gathered from other sources (such as public hiring ads, posts on the web, social media, etc.) in a downloadable, sortable spreadsheet. You cannot edit this spreadsheet directly. To provide this information, fill out the Google form or email me.

Use a web tool available on the Lawsky Projects website to filter the information in the spreadsheet by subject area, location, and lateral/entry level. All that the tool on the Lawsky Projects website does is sort and filter what is in the spreadsheet; it is therefore only as useful as the spreadsheet is complete.

Here is the specific information I'm hoping to collect. You can submit this information through the Google form or by emailing me:

First:

(a) your school;

 

(b) whether your school is pursuing entry-level hiring in 2024-2025;

 

(c) whether your school is pursuing lateral hiring in 2024-2025.

If your school does plan on pursuing hiring in 2024-2025:

(d) the chair of your hiring committee (please note if you have different chairs for entry level and lateral candidates--I hope that this information will be useful for both entry level and lateral candidates);

 

(e) other members of your hiring committee (again, please note if there is a distinction between entry level and lateral committees); and

 

(f) any particular subject areas in which your school is looking to hire.

Additionally, if you would like to share the following information, candidates might find it helpful to know:

(g) whether you are open to direct applications/individualized expressions of interest (affirmatively want to receive them, affirmatively don't want to receive them, or don't care one way or the other); 

 

(h) your committee's preferred way to be contacted; 

 

(i) the website, if any, that candidates should use to obtain information about the position or to apply; and

 

(j) the number of available faculty positions at your school.

The form also provides a space to provide additional information, such as pasting in a hiring ad.

Again, comments are not reliably working, so to submit this information, please use the Google Form or email me directly.

New SEALS Faculty Recruitment Platforms

Posted on behalf of SEALS:

The Southeastern Association of Law Schools is excited to offer a new set of free services to the law teaching community, including and especially prospective members who are interested in joining legal academia.  For it to be effective, we must get the word out and encourage candidates to register and schools to use it.  Please help us by circulating this information widely to your VAPs, alumni, and search committee members.

The SEALS faculty recruitment platform is now live with two new hiring portals.

• The Faculty Hiring Portal allows faculty candidates to indicate their interest in finding an academic job and permits faculty hiring committees to search for candidates who meet the school’s hiring needs.
• Meanwhile, the Visiting Faculty Portal allows current law school faculty to indicate their interest in visiting opportunities on a look-see, podium, or overload basis. Meanwhile, schools interested in hiring are able to create institutional accounts (a single law school account provides access to both portals) and view candidate materials.
• Finally, the Job Postings site is a bulletin for schools to advertise their various hiring interests and position details.

We welcome your questions and suggestions for the SEALS Faculty Recruitment Committee, which can be directed to committee chair Linda Jellum at [email protected].

VAPs and Fellowships 2023-2024

On this thread, comments can be shared regarding news of appointments to VAPs or similar fellowships (for example, the Climenko and Bigelow).  Here is last year's thread.

You can also add comments to the spreadsheet.

Law School Hiring Spreadsheet and Clearinghouse for Questions, 2023-2024

I. The Spreadsheet

In the spreadsheet, you can enter information regarding whether you have received

(a) a first round interview at a school (including the subject areas the school mentioned, if any, as being of particular interest, and whether the interview offer was accepted);

(b)  a callback from a law school and/or accepted it; or

(c) an offer from a law school and/or accepted it; feel free to also leave details about the offer, including teaching load, research leave, etc. A school listed as "offer accepted" may have made more than one offer and may still have some slots open.

Law professors may also choose to provide information that is relevant to the entry-level market.  

Anyone can edit the spreadsheet; I will not be editing it or otherwise monitoring it. It is available here:

II. The Comment Thread

In this comment thread to this post, you can ask questions about the law teaching market, and professors or others can weigh in.

Both questions and answers can be anonymous, but I will delete pure nastiness, irrelevance, and misinformation. If you see something that you know to be wrong, please feel free to let me know via email, sarah*dot*lawsky*at*law*dot*northwestern*dot*edu.

You may want to take a look at the many questions and answers in the threads from 2014-2015, 2015-2016, 2016-2017, 2017-2018, 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021, 2021-2022, 2022-2023. In general, there's quite a cache of materials relevant to the law job market under the archive categories Getting a Job on the Law Teaching Market and Entry Level Hiring Report.

Number of FAR Forms in First Distribution Over Time - 2023

The first distribution of the FAR AALS forms came out this week. Here are the number of FAR forms in the first distribution for each year since 2009.

2009: 637; 2010: 662; 2011: 592; 2012: 588; 2013: 592; 2014: 492; 2015: 410; 2016: 382; 2017: 403; 2018: 344; 2019: 334; 2020: 297; 2021: 328; 2022: 272; 2023: 348.

(All information obtained from various blog posts, blog comments, Tweets, and Facebook postings over the years and not independently verified. If you have more accurate information, please post it in the comments and I will update accordingly.)

Law School Entry-Level Hiring Posting Schedule 2023-2024

The usual posts will occur this year regarding entry-level law school hiring.

The post collecting information about Hiring Committees is up.

On August 21, the first distribution of FAR forms will be released to schools. If/when anyone publicly posts the number of FAR forms, I will post Number of FAR Forms in First Distribution Over Time (last year's FAR Forms Over Time post).

Around August 28, I will post Law School Hiring Spreadsheet and Clearinghouse for Questions, 2023-2024 (last year's Hiring Spreadsheet and Clearinghouse Post).

Around September 5, I will post the VAPs and Fellowship Open Thread (last year's VAPs and Fellowship Open Thread).

Hiring Plans and Hiring Committees 2023-2024

Update 8/13/23: I have built a tool that allows you to filter the information in the below spreadsheet by subject area, location, and lateral/entry level. You can access that tool here:

https://www.lawskyprojects.org/hiring

 

I am collecting information about (1) whether a particular school plans to hire in 2023-2024, and (2) if so, information about the school's hiring committee and hiring interests.

Please share in the comments the following information related to the 2023-2024 law school faculty hiring season. (A spreadsheet is below. You cannot edit the spreadsheet directly.)

First:

 

(a) your school;

 

(b) whether your school is pursuing entry-level hiring in 2023-2024 (this could be yes, no, maybe, or something else);

 

(c) whether your school is pursuing lateral hiring in 2023-2024 (this could be yes, no, maybe, or something else).

 

If your school does plan on pursuing hiring in 2023-2024:

 

(d) the chair of your hiring committee (please note if you have different chairs for entry level and lateral candidates--I hope that this information will be useful for both entry level and lateral candidates);

 

(e) other members of your hiring committee (again, please note if there is a distinction between entry level and lateral committees); and

 

(f) any particular subject areas in which your school is looking to hire.

Additionally, if you would like to share the following information, candidates might find it helpful to know:

(g) whether you are open to direct applications/individualized expressions of interest (affirmatively want to receive them, affirmatively don't want to receive them, or don't care one way or the other); 

 

(h) your committee's preferred way to be contacted (email, snail-mail, or phone); 

 

(i) the website, if any, that candidates should use to obtain information about the position or to apply; and

 

(j) the number of available faculty positions at your school.

I will gather all this information in a downloadable, sortable spreadsheet. (Click on that link to access the spreadsheet and download it; you can also scroll through the embedded version below.)

Hiring Announcement - Wisconsin - Fall 2023 Start

The University of Wisconsin is looking for a full-time faculty member, to start Fall 2023, to teach criminal law and criminal procedure. More information, including how to apply, here:

https://jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/assistant-professor-of-law-criminal-law-madison-wisconsin-united-states

(As a side comment, I generally do not post permanent faculty hiring announcements; I ask that people put them in the comments of the hiring committees post. However, the hiring committees post for last year is sufficiently old that I assume nobody is looking at it for information; the new hiring committees post won't be up for a little while; and it is May 2023, and this listing is for Fall 2023, which perhaps represents something interesting about decentralization in the hiring market.)

Hastie Fellowship Call for Applications - 2023

From the University of Wisconsin Law School:

The University of Wisconsin Law School invites applications for the William H. Hastie Fellowship.

For over 40 years, the Hastie Fellowship has provided a path to law teaching for candidates poised to contribute to diversity and inclusion in the legal academy. Hastie Fellows have succeeded at securing tenure-track positions at law schools throughout the country, including Columbia, UCLA, Indiana, Colorado, ASU, Texas A&M, Ohio State, UNC, Washington & Lee, UC Irvine, and USC. The Fellowship reflects a commitment to diversity and inclusion in the legal profession and especially encourages applications from candidates of color and other underrepresented communities in the legal academy.

For additional information on the program and its history, see https://www.law.wisc.edu/hastie/.

Program Overview

The term and internal sequence of the Hastie Fellowship Program are designed to accommodate the needs for intensive research and writing, participation in the hiring process of law schools, and gaining teaching experience.

Hastie Fellows will be appointed for a term of two years. During the term of the appointment, Fellows are required to be in residence in Madison with a commitment to participating fully in the life of the Law School.

The first year of the program is devoted primarily to scholarship. By the fall of the second year, Fellows should be sufficiently advanced in their research to apply to the legal teaching market. In addition to supporting Fellows on the teaching market, the second year of the program focuses on teaching experience and publication of the Fellow’s research.

Compensation and Support

The Hastie Fellowship provides compensation of $75,000 per year along with a research support fund of $4000 per year; Fellows receive mentoring and support to devote the majority of their time to their research and writing. The Fellowship also provides mentoring and practice opportunities for interviewing on the law teaching market.

Application

To ensure full consideration, applications for Fall 2023 should be completed by March 1, 2023. Applicants should send the following items as PDF attachments to [email protected]: (1) personal statement; (2) resume or curriculum vitae; (3) research proposal; (4) two or three letters of references (emailed by referrers); and (5) official electronic PDF transcripts sent directly from all higher education institutions attended. For additional details, see https://www.law.wisc.edu/hastie/apply/.

Please reach out with any questions to the Graduate Programs Office at [email protected] or to BJ Ard, the current chair of the Hastie Fellowship Committee, at [email protected].

Tulane Forrester Fellowship and VAP Positions - 2023

From Tulane Law School:

 

Tulane Law School invites applications for its Forrester Fellowship and Visiting Assistant Professor positions, both of which are designed for promising scholars who plan to apply for tenure-track law school positions. Both positions are full-time faculty in the law school and are encouraged to participate in all aspects of the intellectual life of the school. The law school provides significant support and mentorship, a professional travel budget, and opportunities to present works-in-progress in faculty workshops.

 

Tulane’s Forrester Fellows teach legal writing in the first-year curriculum to first-year law students in a program coordinated by the Director of Legal Writing. Fellows are appointed to a one-year term with the possibility of a single one-year renewal. Applicants must have a JD from an ABA-accredited law school, outstanding academic credentials, and significant law-related practice and/or clerkship experience. If you have any questions about this position, please contact Erin Donelon at [email protected].

 

Tulane’s visiting assistant professor position is supported by the Murphy Institute at Tulane (http://murphy.tulane.edu/home/), an interdisciplinary unit specializing in political economy and ethics that draws faculty from the university’s departments of economics, philosophy, history, and political science. The position is designed for scholars focusing on regulation of economic activity very broadly construed (including, for example, research with a methodological or analytical focus relevant to scholars of regulation).  If you have any questions about this position, please contact Adam Feibelman at [email protected]. 

 

Candidates for either position should apply through Interfolio, at apply.interfolio.com/119886.

 

Tulane is an equal opportunity employer and candidates who will enhance the diversity of the law faculty are especially invited to apply.

Leiter Lateral Moves with Tenure 2012-2022 - Analysis

This report looks at Brian Leiter's information about tenured lateral law professor moves between 2012 and 2022, inclusive. (Links to each of the specific posts used are below.)

Number of Moves and Movers

Between 2012 and 2022, Leiter reported 883 moves. This report focuses on the 759 moves that were not moves to or from an administrative position, such as Dean or President.

While there were 759 such moves, there were only 671 individual law professors who made moves ("movers"), as a number of faculty moved more than once between 2012 and 2022.

1 move: 592 faculty members. 2 moves: 70 faculty members. 3 moves: 9 faculty members.

Schools From Which People Moved

Of these 759 moves, faculty moved from 194 different schools; thus nearly every law school was the source of at least one move (there are only about 200 law schools).

More than 10 and less than or equal to 15: American University; Duke University; George Washington University; University of California, Los Angeles; University of Colorado, Boulder.

More than 15 and less than or equal to 20: University of California, Berkeley; University of California, Irvine.

There were 16 moves from the University of California, Berkeley, to another school, and 16 moves from the University of California, Irvine, to another school. These two schools together were thus the source of about 4% of the total moves reported, though they are less than 1% of the total law schools.

Hiring Schools

These 759 hires were at 160 different schools--again, almost all law schools.

The schools with the most tenured lateral hires in this time period overall were University of Virginia, 28 hires; Georgetown University, 21 hires; University of California, Los Angeles, 21 hires; University of California, Berkeley, 20 hires; University of California, Irvine, 19 hires.

Looking year by year, the biggest single hiring years for a given school were University of Michigan, in 2022, with 12 hires; University of Virginia, in 2020, with 9 hires; University of Virginia, in 2021, with 8 hires; Texas A&M University, in 2015, with 7 hires. (These were the only instances of more than five reported hires by a school in any single year.)

24 of the hires came from foreign institutions to U.S. law schools, and 16 of the hires went from U.S. law schools to foreign institutions.

10 of the hires came from schools that were not a law school, and 11 of the hires went to schools that were not a law school.

695 hires came from a U.S. law school and went to a U.S. law school.

Relative Rankings

U.S. law schools have historically been ranked by U.S. News. For each of the 695 moves from a U.S. law school to a U.S. law school, I compare the U.S. News rank of the two schools. For this purpose, I use the historical ranking of each law school--what's likely the most recent ranking the mover would have had access to at the time of their decision. For example, if the move was reported in 2011-2012, and the person came from School X, I use the U.S. News ranking of School X that was published in 2011 (what U.S. News calls the 2012 ranking).

That said, rankings at a close-up level can be quite misleading. It is moderately more informational to group the moves, so that only a move "up" or "down" more than five ranks (number picked essentially arbitrarily) counts as an upward or downward move, and anything else is considered to be a move to a school of roughly the same rank. Thus, for example, a move in 2012 from the University of Chicago to NYU is considered a move with "No Big Rank Difference" (the schools happened to be ranked one apart that year).

About 63% of the moves were to a higher-ranked law school using this approach, and about 15% were to a school of roughly the same rank.

Up > 5: 443 moves. Down > 5: 125 moves. No Big Rank Difference: 106 moves. Cannot Compare: 21 moves.

Even grouping the moves this way can be misleading. For example, many of the moves that were "down" more than five U.S. News rankings were actually "up" in scholarly ranking, based on the Sisk citation count study. 34 of the moves "down" more than five U.S. News spots were between schools where both schools are in the top 50 for scholarly impact, and of those 34, 11, nearly a third, were moves to schools currently ranked higher in scholarly impact.

Returning to the U.S. News rankings, of the 674 moves where comparison of numerical ranks is possible, and looking only at moves up more than 5 in the rankings, the average move up was 38, and the median move up was 31. The largest move up was 145, and there were 15 moves where the person "jumped" more than 100 ranks.

No comparison is possible where one of the schools is unranked. Of the 21 moves where no comparison is possible, 9, or 42% of the moves where no comparison is possible, involved moves to or from UC Irvine in years before UC Irvine was ranked (because it was a new law school, it was not ranked until 2016).

Of the 759 reported lateral hires, 165, or 21%, were at schools ranked 10 or better at the time of the hire. Such schools represent, obviously, only about 5% of U.S. law schools.

Leiter Reports

2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012

Thank you to Brian Leiter for collecting this information each year and for helpful suggestions about how to approach this analysis.

VAPs and Fellowships 2022-2023

On this thread, comments can be shared regarding news of appointments to VAPs or similar fellowships (for example, the Climenko and Bigelow).  Here is last year's thread.

You may also add information to the spreadsheet.

UVA - Karsh Center for Law and Democracy Fellow 2023-2024

From the University of Virginia School of Law:

The University of Virginia School of Law seeks a Research Assistant Professor of Law to serve as the Karsh Center for Law and Democracy Fellow (“Karsh Fellow”). This non-tenure-track Academic General Faculty position will start near the beginning of the 2023-24 academic year and have a fixed-term appointment of two years. The position offers compensation of $70,000 plus benefits.

The Karsh Center is a nonpartisan legal institute at the Law School. The Center’s mission is to promote understanding and appreciation of the principles and practices necessary for a well- functioning, pluralistic democracy. These include civil discourse and democratic dialogue, civic engagement and citizenship, ethics and integrity in public office, and respect for the rule of law. The Center supports these essential features of our democratic life through rigorous and cutting-edge legal and interdisciplinary scholarship, curricular offerings, and academic programs such as conferences and workshops. The Center’s aim is to advance the values of law and democracy within the academy and in public discourse.

The Karsh Fellow will conduct research and refine their scholarly portfolio with the goal of obtaining a tenure-line faculty position at a law school. The Karsh Fellow will be mentored by Law School faculty, be able to attend and participate in faculty workshops, and have the opportunity to teach a course. The Karsh Fellow will also have the opportunity to network with other democracy-related programs and scholars at the University of Virginia. 

The Karsh Fellow will work under the direction of and closely with the Karsh Center’s faculty directors, Professor Bertrall Ross and Professor Micah Schwartzman. While the Fellow will dedicate significant time to pursuing their proposed research projects, the Fellow will also provide administrative support to the Center, and assist with programming, maintain the Center’s website and related publications, and manage the Center’s budget. The Fellow may also be called on to help design and implement new Center initiatives.

Qualifications:

Candidates must have a J.D. degree from an ABA accredited law school or foreign equivalent degree. Experience in legal practice or a judicial clerkship strongly preferred. Candidates must have strong potential for success on the legal academic market, as evidenced by an outstanding academic record, a clear research agenda, and recommendations from legal scholars. Strong interpersonal skills, including the ability to communicate effectively and professionally in writing and orally, and strong managerial and organizational skills are also required.

To apply, visit https://uva.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/UVAJobs, search for Requisition R0040373, complete an application online, and upload a cover letter, curriculum vitae, academic agenda, and contact information for three references.

The Other "Other Legal Academy" - Scholarship

My friend Jeremy Telman (Oklahoma City University, left) has a series of three posts at ContractsProf Blog on his experience as a teacher and scholar in what he refers to as the "Other Legal Academy" or OLA.  His thesis is that there are at least two legal academies, one elite ("The Legal Academy") and one consisting of unranked law schools (the OLA) and they "meet fleetingly." (Full disclosure: Jeremy's post on scholarship has a picture without link to his edited volume Hans Kelsen in America - Selective Affinities and the Mysteries of Academic Influence (Springer, 2016).  I contributed a chapter.)

The posts deal, respectively, with hiring, scholarship, and teaching.  They are provocative, overly modest about Jeremy's own accomplishments, and fodder for my own promised reflections toward the end of a career in what Jeremy might think of as part of the OLA.

This sentence triggered my initial and visceral response to his distinction between The Legal Academy and the OLA:

But unless you are one of the few who can make the leap from the Other Legal Academy to The Legal Academy, do not expect that your scholarship will have an impact or even be read beyond a small circle.

I asked Jeremy how many OCU faculty had moved laterally since 2007 (when I started teaching), because my experience at Suffolk was that a substantial number of my colleagues who got tenure at Suffolk moved on to schools up the food chain - for example, Jessica Silbey to Northeastern and then to Boston University, Hilary Allen to American, Frank Rudy Cooper and Leah Chan Grinvald to UNLV (the latter as dean).  His answer was very few.  I have had colleagues whose scholarly work I know is widely read and influential, including David Yamada on workplace issues (such as bullying), Michael Rustad on tort law, John Infranca on housing communities, Marc Rodwin on health care, and most recently, Sarah Burstein on design patent law.  (There are others as well.)  

Yet for reasons best explained by the US News ranking algorithm, Suffolk currently sits in the #122 bracket along with Albany, Mercer, Baltimore, and Dayton, just behind the #118 group (Chapman, Hofstra, Tulsa, West Virginia) and just ahead of the #127 group (Cleveland State and St. Thomas (MN)).  Indeed, the impact of that algorithm (LSAT scores and bar passage rates) combined with past decisions on class size have caused Suffolk to flirt with over the last ten years, but never succumb to, the unranked list at the bottom where you find OCU and others.

There's no question that it's different being at Suffolk is different than being at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, or even BU. Nevertheless, and despite my unusual path to a faculty and perhaps even to tenure, I never felt like I was on the outside of The Legal Academy looking in as a scholar.  Below the break, I'll reflect on that. (And perhaps touch on Jeremy's reactions to hiring and teaching in later posts.)

1.  In 2004, I was the general counsel of a chemical company in Indianapolis.  For reasons too lengthy and, perhaps, sensitive, I had time on my hands and contacted the then-dean at the IU-Indianapolis law school (now McKinney) about teaching a course on entrepreneurship and venture capital as an adjunct.  I was shocked to find him recruiting me as a potential director of the school's nascent center on entrepreneurship and technology.  Even then, I could see that being a center director but merely as an adjunct faculty member was a losing proposition.  I said, "I'd have to be on the faculty."  He said, "That would be almost impossible; you've never published any scholarly work."  I had no idea what that meant, having been a lawyer in the real world for 25 years at that point.  I went home, and looked into what legal scholarship was.  I consulted a couple of law school classmates who were on "elite" faculties.  I had an idea for an article arising out of one of our board members' concern about being named as the Audit Committee Financial Expert under Sarbanes-Oxley.  I called the dean.  "Okay, fine, if I need a publication, I will write and publish one." I started writing it on Memorial Day, 2004 and finished it by July 4, 2004.  

I cannot now recall if I used ExpressO.  I have a vague recollection either of making hard copies and mailing them, or emailing them separately, in a fit of self-delusion, to law reviews at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, Michigan, and for some reason I don't now recall, Wayne State.  Within a week or two, an editor at Wayne State emailed me to say that it had accepted the piece, and I went bouncing up and down around the house like I had just won the U.S. Open.  

One of those law school classmates (Douglas Baird) said to me, "You need to post it on SSRN."  I replied, "What is SSRN?"  I posted it.  Later, Avery Katz (who had summer clerked at my law firm in Detroit and knew my wife from when they were kids) sent me a note to the effect that Larry Solum had posted the article on his "influential blog." To which I believe I responded, "who is Larry Solum and what is a blog?" (NB: while there are portions of that piece I still like, I cringe every time I look at it or think about its puerile naïveté, notwithstanding the fact that it has been downloaded more than 1,000 times on SSRN, no doubt as a result of its truly bizarre and suggestively interdisciplinary title.)

At some point, one of the faculty members at IU-Indianapolis sent me a video file of a talk Ron Krotoszynski (now at Alabama) gave on how to play the law review placement game. The upshot of all this was my reaction to the process: "Damn, this is fun."  So, over the next six months or so, I wrote and placed two more pieces, one in the DePaul Law Review and one in the Temple Law Review.  (Those two pieces involved an email exchange I initiated with Richard Posner, who, to my complete shock, graciously responded, but that story will have to wait for another post.)

My point is that, while my initial forays weren't the elites, they weren't chopped liver either, and I felt like I had entered the mainstream of legal scholarship, whatever it was, even before I had a full time academic position.  

2.   A theme of Jeremy's post is his despair over the quality and the fate of his own scholarship: "very few people care about what I write as a scholar...." "I sent my babies off into the world and watched as they were neither nurtured nor savaged but left to waste away until totgeschwiegen.  Now I am resigned...." "I do regret that I don't think I will ever know if my scholarship is any good...."  First, I think his despair about being unread is unwarranted.  I speak from experience when I say that, if you decide to spend a lot of time writing about the work of Hans Kelsen, you are already speaking to a relatively limited audience.  Nevertheless, I went to his SSRN page expecting to see a mere dribble of downloads.  Instead I found thirty-four papers, twenty of which had in excess of 100 downloads, twelve in excess of 200, four in excess of 300, and one just about to reach 500.  [I have a question in at SSRN about the percentage of posted papers that achieve those benchmarks, so I won't guess, but I know I would be happy with that kind of reception for my own work!]

But, second, is it any good?  That is such an interesting and complex question, particularly in academia, because the criteria are not solely objective.  Another well-known blogger is currently posting the h-index of law professors.  The h-index measures a professor's productivity (at least on Google Scholar) as well as the citation impact - your h-index is the highest number h of your papers that have been cited h times.  As of right now, Cass Sunstein (there's a shocker) leads the pack with 172.  Understand what that means.  He has written 172 pieces that have been cited at least 172 times.   My h-index is 12.  I believe the highest h-index at Suffolk is Michael Rustad's 34.  Marc Rodwin's is 29. David Yamada's is 18.  John Infranca's is also 12 (and he's been at it not nearly as long as I) and Sarah Burstein's is 8, but they are both youngsters.  Google also uses something called the i10 index, which is simply the number of your pieces that have been cited ten times.  Cass Sunstein's is 692.  For that, there are simply no words.  My i10 index is 19, which I've justified with the notion that I've been writing academic articles since 2004, making it eighteen years, that I consider one significant piece a year to be on par for a productive law professor, and thus I have at least one ten-citation piece for every year I've been doing this.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

But, of course, we all know that you can write good stuff without having astronomical h-index numbers.  The subject matter makes a big difference.  And you can be widely cited as an example of getting something totally wrong!  

The far more fascinating subject (to me, at least) is the subjective assessment of scholarly legal work as "good," particularly in light of disciplinary boundaries.  Before I was a law professor, I was the chief legal officer for a couple big organizations, which meant that, in making my own decisions in hard cases, I often had to rely on the judgments of experts in fields I knew little about, and whose views either conflicted or were inconsistent with each other.  I have written about that.  Louis Menand and Michele Lamont have each written about the benefits and costs of disciplinary boundaries in academia.  Menand described interdisciplinary anxiety as being "about the formalism and methodological fetishism of the disciplines and about the danger of sliding into an aimless subjectivism or eclecticism." Lamont studied how judgments got made for interdisciplinary grant approvals, concluding that there is no canon for judging interdisciplinary work, and it "struggles with the concurrent polarities of “expert and generalist criteria (what one respondent [in Lamont’s study] defines as ‘virtuosity and significance’).” Indeed, Lamont wrote: "given the emergent quality of the standards of evaluation for interdisciplinary genres, panelists readily fall back on existing disciplinary standards to determine what should and should not be funded."

Which brings me back to my experience.  In his post on hiring in The Other Legal Academy, Jeremy quotes Orin Kerr: "To have a realistic chance, a candidate usually needs either a VAP/fellowship or a PhD. — and everyone knows it."  (Jeremy's point is that may be true for Orin's Legal Academy, but not for Jeremy's.) Credentials are simply easier heuristics for expertise and what is good.  Historically, law professors, even those doing "law and ..." have been autodidacts with JDs, the prime example being Cass Sunstein himself, whose degrees (and their dates) look a lot like mine!  (Obviously, that is where the comparison rightly ends; see above h- and i10 indices.)  What I found from 2004 to 2007, while I was considering that odd late-career jump to academia, was that the world of legal academic split into two categories, one in which my lack of credential was the basis for ignoring me (or at least not returning emails), and a larger one that invited me into the conversations about which I was interested.  That has been no different at Suffolk.

3.  In 2007, we moved to Cambridge and were fortunate enough to buy a house next door to, and connected by a gate with, a wonderful family one of whom was and is a pretty renowned Harvard evolutionary biologist.  We have spent many a Saturday or Sunday late afternoon, going through the gate and sharing a bottle of good or not-so-good wine, comparing notes about research, peer-review and getting published, teaching, faculty dynamics, and our shared interest in ultimate questions (telos being a particular interest of mine, and telos or "purpose" being a fascinating aspect of adaptation).  Honestly, despite the gap in the relevant prestige of our institutions (and our respective careers), the worlds seem remarkably similar.

4.  In short (and this has been anything but), I think Jeremy has overstated the case by focusing on law schools at the extremes of the rankings.  I don't know whether Orin is right about the required credentials to be hired in today's market - it looks to me that the market favors applicants for the first time in years - but I suspect there is still a substantial job market where  you still have a good chance of being hired as a JD-autodidact.  A wise mentor back in 2005 or so told me that I was going to have a hard time getting hired because I wrote to please (or teach) myself rather than inserting myself into existing and ongoing debates.  That was simply a realistic assessment of credentialism back then and it's probably still true.

I agree with Jeremy completely about this: if you can get it, it's a great job, paying significantly more than entry level positions in most other disciplines. More importantly, as the explosion of journals has demonstrated over the last twenty-five or thirty years, unlike philosophy or history professors, the overwhelming majority of our students have no interest whatsoever in following in our academic footsteps, and unwittingly subsidize our ability to write about whatever we damn please and usually publish it somewhere.  Carpe diem.

Iowa Law VAP and Fellowship - 2023-2024

From the University of Iowa College of Law:

The University of Iowa College of Law seeks applicants for the Hubbell Visiting Assistant Professor and the Iowa Law Faculty Fellowship. 

The Iowa Faculty Fellowship aims to further the College of Law’s and the University of Iowa’s longstanding goals of increasing diversity in the legal profession and recruiting and retaining a more diverse campus community of faculty, staff, and students. The Hubbell VAP will teach in the environmental law curriculum and will be encouraged to pursue independent research. Both programs provide research and teaching opportunities, faculty mentoring, and career development for promising legal scholars and teachers aiming to launch new careers in legal academia.

Review of applications will begin immediately and will continue until the positions are filled. For more information, please contact Chris Odinet, chair of the Faculty Appointments Committee, at [email protected]. Applications for the Iowa Faculty Fellowship can be submitted here and the Hubbell VAP here.

Law School Hiring Spreadsheet and Clearinghouse for Questions, 2022-2023

I. The Spreadsheet

In the spreadsheet, you can enter information regarding whether you have received

(a) a first round interview at a school (including the subject areas the school mentioned, if any, as being of particular interest, and whether the interview offer was accepted);

(b)  a callback from a law school and/or accepted it; or

(c) an offer from a law school and/or accepted it; feel free to also leave details about the offer, including teaching load, research leave, etc. A school listed as "offer accepted" may have made more than one offer and may still have some slots open.

Law professors may also choose to provide information that is relevant to the entry-level market.  

Anyone can edit the spreadsheet; I will not be editing it or otherwise monitoring it. It is available here:

II. The Comment Thread

In this comment thread to this post, you can ask questions about the law teaching market, and professors or others can weigh in.

Both questions and answers can be anonymous, but I will delete pure nastiness, irrelevance, and misinformation. If you see something that you know to be wrong, please feel free to let me know via email, sarah*dot*lawsky*at*law*dot*northwestern*dot*edu.

You may want to take a look at the many questions and answers in the threads from 2014-2015, 2015-2016, 2016-2017, 2017-2018, 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021, 2021-2022. In general, there's quite a cache of materials relevant to the law job market under the archive categories Getting a Job on the Law Teaching Market and Entry Level Hiring Report.

 

Number of FAR Forms in First Distribution Over Time - 2022

The first distribution of the FAR AALS forms came out this week. Here are the number of FAR forms in the first distribution for each year since 2009.

2009: 637; 2010: 662; 2011: 592; 2012: 588; 2013: 592; 2014: 492; 2015: 410; 2016: 382; 2017: 403; 2018: 344; 2019: 334; 2020: 297; 2021: 328; 2022: 272.

(All information obtained from various blog posts, blog comments, Tweets, and Facebook postings over the years and not independently verified. If you have more accurate information, please post it in the comments and I will update accordingly.)

Law School Entry-Level Hiring Posting Schedule 2022-2023

The usual posts will occur this year regarding entry-level law school hiring.

On August 18, the first distribution of FAR forms will be released to schools. If/when anyone publicly posts the number of FAR forms, I will post Number of FAR Forms in First Distribution Over Time (last year's FAR Forms Over Time post).

Around August 25, I will post Law School Hiring Spreadsheet and Clearinghouse for Questions, 2022-2023 (last year's Hiring Spreadsheet and Clearinghouse Post).

Around October 24, I will post the VAPs and Fellowship Open Thread (last year's VAPs and Fellowship Open Thread).

Hiring Plans and Hiring Committees 2022-2023

I am collecting information about (1) whether a particular school plans to hire in 2022-2023, and (2) if so, information about the school's hiring committee and hiring interests.

Please share in the comments the following information related to the 2022-2023 law school faculty hiring season. (A spreadsheet is below. You cannot edit the spreadsheet directly.)

First:

 

(a) your school;

 

(b) whether your school is pursuing entry-level hiring in 2022-2023 (this could be yes, no, maybe, or something else);

 

(c) whether your school is pursuing lateral hiring in 2022-2023 (this could be yes, no, maybe, or something else).

 

If your school does plan on pursuing hiring in 2022-2023:

 

(d) the chair of your hiring committee (please note if you have different chairs for entry level and lateral candidates--we hope that this information will be useful for both entry level and lateral candidates);

 

(e) other members of your hiring committee (again, please note if there is a distinction between entry level and lateral committees); and

 

(f) any particular subject areas in which your school is looking to hire.

Additionally, if you would like to share the following information, candidates might find it helpful to know:

(g) your committee's feeling about packets/individualized expressions of interest (affirmatively want to receive them, affirmatively don't want to receive them, or don't care one way or the other); 

 

(h) your committee's preferred way to be contacted (email, snail-mail, or phone); 

 

(i) the website, if any, that candidates should use to obtain information about the position or to apply; and

 

(j) the number of available faculty positions at your school.

I will gather all this information in a downloadable, sortable spreadsheet. (Click on that link to access the spreadsheet and download it; you can also scroll through the embedded version below.)

Edited 7/19/22 to remove question (k), "whether you are interested in hiring entry-level candidates, lateral candidates, or both," because the question was already asked above in (b) and (c). If someone can figure out why this question is not a duplicate, please let me know and I will put it back.

Tulane Forrester Fellowship - 2022

From Tulane Law School:

Tulane Law School invites applications for a Forrester Fellowship. Forrester Fellowships are designed for promising scholars who plan to apply for tenure-track law school positions. The Fellows are full-time faculty in the law school and are encouraged to participate in all aspects of the intellectual life of the school. The law school provides significant support, both formal and informal, including faculty mentors, a professional travel budget, and opportunities to present works-in-progress in various settings.

Tulane’s Forrester Fellows teach legal writing in the first-year curriculum to two sections of first-year law students in a program coordinated by the Director of Legal Writing. Fellows are appointed to a one-year term with the possibility of a single one-year renewal. Applicants must have a JD from an ABA-accredited law school, outstanding academic credentials, and significant law-related practice and/or clerkship experience. Candidates should apply through Interfolio at http://apply.interfolio.com/104393

If you have any questions, please contact Erin Donelon at [email protected]. The law school aims to fill this position by April of 2022. Tulane is an equal opportunity employer and encourages women and members of minority communities to apply.

Teaching Positions - Northwestern MSL Program

The Northwestern Pritzker School of Law invites applications for three full-time faculty positions in its Master of Science in Law program, with an expected start date of July 1, 2022.  Candidates will be considered for appointment on the law school’s lecturer track (Lecturer or Senior Lecturer); these positions are not tenure eligible.

The Master of Science in Law (MSL) is an innovative legal master's degree offered by the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.  This program is geared specifically towards STEM professionals who are interested in topics at the intersection of law, regulation, business, and policy.  The residential full-time program began in 2014; the online part-time format was added in 2017.  The MSL program has a diverse student body, with both domestic and international students, and students of different ages, levels of work experience, backgrounds, race and ethnicity, and career goals.  There are currently over 200 students enrolled and the program has over 400 alumni.  Graduates of the MSL work in a variety of industries, including consulting, finance, pharma, biotech, engineering, healthcare, and law (including intellectual property, legal operations, and others); some go on to further study in medicine, business, law, and other fields.

The duties of the positions include teaching a full-time load of courses each year within both formats (residential and online) of the MSL program; there may also be the opportunity to teach in the JD program.  Administrative responsibilities of the positions include advising and recruiting students.  We seek applicants with a record of or potential for excellence in teaching, an aptitude for mentoring students regarding academic and career goals, and the ability to work collaboratively with others.

Preferred qualifications include a JD and 3-5 years of experience teaching or working in a field relevant to the MSL curriculum, such as a legal, business, entrepreneurship, or regulatory setting.  In addition, we seek applicants who have experience with or interest in working with international students and global issues.

For more information, and to submit an application, including a CV and a cover letter explaining interest in the position through Northwestern’s online application system, go to this link: https://facultyrecruiting.northwestern.edu/apply/MTQ2Mg==.  Applicants are encouraged to apply by April 8, 2022.

Iowa Law Faculty Fellowship - 2022-2023

From the University of Iowa College of Law:

The University of Iowa College of Law seeks applicants for the Iowa Law Faculty Fellowship.  This program provides research and teaching opportunities, faculty mentoring, and career development for promising legal scholars and teachers aiming to launch new careers in legal academia.  The program also aims to further the College of Law’s and the University of Iowa’s longstanding goals of increasing diversity in the legal profession and recruiting and retaining a more diverse campus community of faculty, staff, and students.  (For information on the College’s DEI commitments and activities, see Diversity, Equity & Inclusion | College of Law - The University of Iowa (uiowa.edu). For information on the University’s DEI commitments and activities, see Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion | The University of Iowa (uiowa.edu).) 

Iowa Law is well known for its strong focus on law teaching, exceptionally comprehensive law library, and collaborative atmosphere.  The University of Iowa itself is a major public research university located in Iowa City, a quintessential college town brimming with writers, students, and scholars.   

The Iowa Law Faculty Fellowship is a successor to the Faculty Fellows program, which provided aspiring legal academics with an opportunity to develop their scholarship and teaching, and ultimately seek long-term academic positions. Iowa Law Faculty Fellows concentrate on those aspects of academic life that are most likely to be helpful in preparing for a faculty career in legal education.  Typically, faculty fellows teach one course during the academic year, with the remainder of the fellow’s time devoted to research and development of one or more major works of scholarship.  The Iowa Law Faculty Fellowship does not have a specific subject matter focus, but prioritizes applicants who seek to conduct interdisciplinary research that connects with other fields of study at the University of Iowa.  The fellow works closely with a faculty mentor and advisory team of faculty members.  Faculty fellows participate in the life of the College, but have limited service assignments so they can concentrate on teaching and scholarship.  Fellows are expected to contribute to diversity, equity, and inclusion goals at the College and University.   

Initial Faculty Fellowship appointments are for one year and can be renewed once.  Fellows will be appointed at the rank of Visiting Assistant Professor of Law.  Most Faculty Fellows will serve for two years and participate in the law hiring market during the second year of the fellowship.  The salary for the 2022-2023 academic year will be competitive with well-regarded law fellowship and VAP programs.  In addition, Faculty Fellows will be provided with research support including research funds, travel funds, and the opportunity to hire law student research assistants.  Fellows will be expected to be in full-time residence at Iowa Law during the academic year.

To apply for the Iowa Law Faculty Fellowship program, an applicant should submit the following through Jobs@Iowa, at jobs.uiowa.edu (refer to requisition #74372):

• Cover letter, including a description of the applicant’s (1) research plan to be carried out during the fellowship and (2) plans for contributing to diversity, equity and inclusion goals at the College and University during the fellowship.
• C.V.
• Graduate, and professional transcripts (including law school transcripts)
• Academic writing sample
• Three letters of reference providing support for the applicant’s potential as a legal scholar and teacher

Required qualifications:

• J.D. or equivalent, or a Ph.D. from a relevant field of study. 
• Strong potential for legal teaching
• Strong potential for legal scholarship
• Strong potential for making contributions to the College’s and University’s diversity, equity, and inclusion goals
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills

Desired qualifications:

• Demonstrated ability to conduct interdisciplinary research
• Alignment between the proposed research plan and collegiate and university resources and opportunities.

Review of applications will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled.  For fullest consideration, submit applications before February 25, 2022.  For more information, please contact Todd Pettys, chair of the Faculty Appointments Committee, at [email protected].

The University of Iowa is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply and will receive consideration for employment free from discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color, national origin, age, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, religion, associational preference, status as a qualified individual with a disability, or status as a protected veteran. The University also affirms its commitment to providing equal opportunities and equal access to University facilities. Women and Minorities are encouraged to apply for all employment vacancies. For additional information on nondiscrimination policies, contact the Office of Institutional Equity, 319/335-0705, The University of Iowa, 202 Jessup Hall, Iowa City, Iowa, 52242-1316.  Persons with disabilities may contact University Human Resources/Faculty and Staff Disability Services, (319) 335-2660 or [email protected], to inquire or discuss accommodation needs.  Prospective employees may review the University Campus Security Policy and the latest annual crime statistics by contacting the Department of Public Safety at 319/335-5022.

Drexel University VAP Positions

From Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law:

The Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law invites applications for a two Visiting Assistant Professor positions.   One position is dedicated to a faculty member who will teach and research in the area of tax.  The other position is open, with a preference for someone who does research that touches on legal implications of new technology and/or someone open to teaching Torts.  Each position will last two years and VAP’s are expected to fully participate in the intellectual life of the law school.

We seek candidates who hold (at minimum) a JD or appropriate equivalent degree.  We are particularly interested in candidates embarking on an academic career.  The Kline School of Law is committed to recruiting, developing, retaining, and rewarding faculty members who bring scholarly interests and life experiences that contribute to the diversity and success of our students, our University, and our communities.

Drexel University, founded in 1891, is an R1 comprehensive research institution.  Drexel established its law school in 2006, and it has rapidly developed a reputation for innovative scholarship across disciplines, a diverse portfolio of academic programs, and a focus on civic engagement.  The Kline School of Law is home to the Center for Law and Transformational Technology and the Center for Law, Policy and Social Action.   The law school has a vibrant scholarly culture, including an active workshop series.  Kline Law has moved up steadily in the rankings and is now ranked #81 by U.S. News.

Applications for this position should include a CV and cover letter.

Review of applications will begin immediately, and prompt application is encouraged.  Questions should be directed to Professor Bret Asbury. 

Apply online via Drexel’s HR portal: https://careers.drexel.edu/en-us/job/497570/visiting-assistant-professor-kline-school-of-law.

VAPs and Fellowships 2021-2022

On this thread, comments can be shared regarding news of appointments to VAPs or similar fellowships (for example, the Climenko and Bigelow).  Here is last year's thread.

You may also add information to the spreadsheet.

Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Faculty Hiring

Northwestern Pritzker School of Law invites applications for tenured or tenure-track faculty positions with an expected start date of September 1, 2022. This is part of a multi-year strategic hiring plan, and we will consider entry-level, junior, and senior lateral candidates.

Northwestern seeks applicants with distinguished academic credentials and a record of or potential for high scholarly achievement and excellence in teaching. Specialties of particular interest include: tax, anti-discrimination law, international law (joint search with the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs), health law (joint search with the Feinberg School of Medicine), and business law. Northwestern welcomes applications from candidates who would contribute to the diversity of our faculty and community. Positions are full-time appointments with tenure or on a tenure-track.

Candidates must have a J.D., Ph.D., or equivalent degree, a distinguished academic record, and demonstrated potential to produce outstanding scholarship. Northwestern Pritzker School of Law will consider the entry level candidates in the AALS Faculty Appointments Register, as well as through application directly to our law school. Candidates applying directly should submit a cover letter, C.V., and draft work-in-progress through our online application system: https://facultyrecruiting.northwestern.edu/apply/MTE3Mw. Specific inquiries should be addressed to the chair of the Appointments Committee, Zach Clopton, zclopton at law dot northwestern dot edu.

Northwestern University is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action Employer of all protected classes, including veterans and individuals with disabilities. Women, racial and ethnic minorities, individuals with disabilities, and veterans are encouraged to apply. Click for information on EEO is the Law.

Law School Hiring Spreadsheet and Clearinghouse for Questions, 2021-2022

I. The Spreadsheet

In the spreadsheet, you can enter information regarding whether you have received

(a) a first round interview at a school (including the subject areas the school mentioned, if any, as being of particular interest, and whether the interview offer was accepted);

(b)  a callback from a law school and/or accepted it; or

(c) an offer from a law school and/or accepted it; feel free to also leave details about the offer, including teaching load, research leave, etc. A school listed as "offer accepted" may have made more than one offer and may still have some slots open.

Law professors may also choose to provide information that is relevant to the entry-level market.  

Anyone can edit the spreadsheet; I will not be editing it or otherwise monitoring it. It is available here:

II. The Comment Thread

In this comment thread to this post, you can ask questions about the law teaching market, and professors or others can weigh in.

Both questions and answers can be anonymous, but I will delete pure nastiness, irrelevance, and misinformation. If you see something that you know to be wrong, please feel free to let me know via email, sarah*dot*lawsky*at*law*dot*northwestern*dot*edu.

You may want to take a look at the many questions and answers in the threads from 2014-2015, 2015-2016, 2016-2017, 2017-2018, 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021. In general, there's quite a cache of materials relevant to the law job market under the archive categories Getting a Job on the Law Teaching Market and Entry Level Hiring Report.

Number of FAR Forms in First Distribution Over Time - 2021

The first distribution of the FAR AALS forms came out this week. Here are the number of FAR forms in the first distribution for each year since 2009.

2009: 637; 2010: 662; 2011: 592; 2012: 588; 2013: 592; 2014: 492; 2015: 410; 2016: 382; 2017: 403; 2018: 344; 2019: 334; 2020: 297; 2021: 328

(All information obtained from various blog posts, blog comments, Tweets, and Facebook postings over the years and not independently verified. If you have more accurate information, please post it in the comments and I will update accordingly.)

First posted August 18, 2021.

Law School Entry-Level Hiring Posting Schedule 2021-2022

The usual posts will occur this year regarding entry-level law school hiring.

On August 18, the first distribution of FAR forms will be released to schools. If/when anyone publicly posts the number of FAR forms, I will post Number of FAR Forms in First Distribution Over Time (last year's FAR Forms Over Time post).

Around August 25, I will post Law School Hiring Spreadsheet and Clearinghouse for Questions, 2021-2022 (last year's Hiring Spreadsheet and Clearinghouse Post).

Around October 24, I will post the VAPs and Fellowship Open Thread (last year's VAPs and Fellowship Open Thread).

Hiring Plans and Hiring Committees 2021-2022

I am collecting information about (1) whether a particular school plans to hire in 2021-2022, and (2) if so, information about the school's hiring committee and hiring interests.

Please share in the comments the following information related to the 2021-2022 law school faculty hiring season. (A spreadsheet is below. You cannot edit the spreadsheet directly.)

First:

 

(a) your school;

 

(b) whether your school is pursuing entry-level hiring in 2021-2022 (this could be yes, no, maybe, or something else);

 

(c) whether your school is pursuing lateral hiring in 2021-2022 (this could be yes, no, maybe, or something else).

 

If your school does plan on pursuing hiring in 2021-2022:

 

(d) the chair of your hiring committee (please note if you have different chairs for entry level and lateral candidates--we hope that this information will be useful for both entry level and lateral candidates);

 

(e) other members of your hiring committee (again, please note if there is a distinction between entry level and lateral committees); and

 

(f) any particular subject areas in which your school is looking to hire.

Additionally, if you would like to share the following information, candidates might find it helpful to know:

(g) your committee's feeling about packets/individualized expressions of interest (affirmatively want to receive them, affirmatively don't want to receive them, or don't care one way or the other); 

 

(h) your committee's preferred way to be contacted (email, snail-mail, or phone); 

 

(i) the website, if any, that candidates should use to obtain information about the position or to apply;

 

(j) the number of available faculty positions at your school; and

 

(k) whether you are interested in hiring entry-level candidates, lateral candidates, or both.

I will gather all this information in a downloadable, sortable spreadsheet. (Click on that link to access the spreadsheet and download it; you can also scroll through the embedded version below.)

Update, 8/11/2021: My understanding is that there is a complete collection of this information that is generated privately by one or more individual law schools. (I don't have access to this complete collection of information.) The purpose of this post and the accompanying spreadsheet is to allow the information to be accessible to anyone, regardless of where they happened to go to law school or do their fellowship.

Faculty Hiring Announcement - Gonzaga

From Gonzaga University School of Law:

GONZAGA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW in Spokane, WA seeks applicants for up to three entry-level full-time tenure-track positions as Assistant Professor beginning in the Fall 2022. Our curricular needs include a variety of first-year, required, and elective courses, including Civil Procedure, Complex Litigation, and E-Discovery; Constitutional Law, Employment Discrimination, Federal Courts, Health Law, and Indian Law; Contracts, Antitrust, and other Business Law courses with an emphasis on Corporate Social Responsibility; and academic support or bar preparation courses taught in conjunction with doctrinal courses.

Gonzaga Law embraces a unified faculty model, in which all faculty members are supported as scholars in all subject matter areas and have the opportunity to teach experiential, clinical, academic support, or bar preparation courses if desired. Candidates must demonstrate the ability to be an outstanding teacher, a commitment to service, and excellent scholarly potential, particularly in alignment with Gonzaga Law’s two academic Centers – the Center for Civil & Human Rights and the Center for Law, Ethics & Commerce. For Gonzaga University School of Law’s mission and diversity statements, please visit https://www.gonzaga.edu/school-of-law/about/mission-vision

To apply or view the complete position description, please visit our website at www.gonzaga.edu/jobs. To apply, please visit our website at www.gonzaga.edu/jobs. Applicants must complete an online application and electronically submit the following: (1) a cover letter, (2) a curriculum vitae, (3) a statement that includes evidence of teaching effectiveness and experience creating and maintaining an inclusive learning environment, and (4) a list of three references. Candidates may, at their option, also upload a research agenda and statement of teaching philosophy.  Additionally, finalists will be asked to provide names and contact information for three professional references to provide confidential letters of recommendation.  Inquiries about the position may be directed to the Chair of the Faculty Recruitment Committee, Professor Agnieszka McPeak, at [email protected]; however, the applicant must apply directly to Gonzaga University, Office of Human Resources. The position closes on September 1, 2021 at midnight, PST. However, for priority consideration, please apply by July 22, 2021 at midnight, PST. For assistance with your online application, please contact Human Resources at 509-313-5996.Fac

Tulane VAP 2021-2022 - Murphy Institute

From Tulane Law School:

Tulane Law School is currently accepting applications for a two-year position of visiting assistant professor.  The position is being supported by the Murphy Institute at Tulane (http://murphy.tulane.edu/home/), an interdisciplinary unit specializing in political economy and ethics that draws faculty from the university’s departments of economics, philosophy, history, and political science. The position is designed for scholars focusing on regulation of economic activity very broadly construed (including, for example, research with a methodological or analytical focus relevant to scholars of regulation).  It is also designed for individuals who plan to apply for tenure-track law school positions during the second year of the professorship.  The law school will provide significant informal support for such. Tulane is an equal opportunity employer and candidates who will enhance the diversity of the law faculty are especially invited to apply.  The position will start fall 2021; the precise start date is flexible.

Candidates should apply through Interfolio, at http://apply.interfolio.com/84001, providing a CV identifying at least three references, post-graduate transcripts, electronic copies of any scholarship completed or in-progress, and a letter explaining your teaching interests and your research agenda. If you have any questions, please contact Adam Feibelman at [email protected].

Westerfield Fellowship - Loyola New Orleans College of Law - 2021

From Loyola University New Orleans:

Loyola University New Orleans is looking to hire one Westerfield Fellow. Start date: August 2021. Classes will be held on campus in New Orleans.

This position is designed for individuals pursuing a career in law teaching and seeking to gain law teaching experience, while being afforded time to devote to scholarship.  Applicants should have strong academic credentials and excellent written and oral communication skills.  The Fellow will be responsible for teaching two sections of legal research & writing to first-year law students in a three-credit-hour course each semester.  The Fellow will have a faculty mentor in addition to the other professors teaching in the program.  One-year contracts may be renewed.  The typical fellowship tenure is two years. Salary is competitive with fellowships of a similar nature.  Westerfield Fellows have successfully obtained tenure-track positions at ABA accredited law schools.

If you are interested in applying, please send your curriculum vitae and cover letter to [email protected]. Inquiries may be sent to the Chair of the Appointments Committee, Professor Bobby Harges at [email protected].  Review of applications will continue until the position is filled. We especially welcome applications from candidates who will add to the diversity of our educational community and who have demonstrated expertise in working with a diverse population.

Link to full ad:

Faculty Employment Opportunities | Finance + Administration | Loyola University New Orleans (loyno.edu)

Levin Center at Wayne Law - Congressional Oversight Fellowship - 2021-2022

Scholars interested in congressional oversight research may apply for a new fellowship program established by the Levin Center at Wayne Law.  Applications will be accepted until the position is filled.

 

In its inaugural year, the Levin Center Fellowship offers $22,000 as supplemental support to allow a twelve-month, non-resident scholar – including a post-doctoral student or early career professor – to research and produce a scholarly paper related to conducting an overview of congressional oversight databases, defining and measuring effective oversight by Congress, and exploring how to score effective oversight efforts by individual members of Congress, congressional committees, or Congress as a whole.  There are no teaching obligations.

 

The Fellowship provides an outstanding opportunity for collaboration with the Levin Center team, a group of professionals based in Detroit, Michigan and Washington, D.C. with significant oversight expertise and experience conducting oversight-related activities.

 

Fellowship funding is provided by the Sunwater Institute, a nonprofit think tank dedicated to exploring fundamental ideas that advance liberty, knowledge, opportunity, and power for individuals and society. Any scoring system designed by a Levin Center Fellow could become a feature of the Sunwater platform under development to evaluate congressional performance.

 

A selection committee established by the Levin Center will review applications beginning immediately, with a goal of finalizing the selection decision by April 30, 2021.  The Fellow’s final paper must be submitted within twelve months of appointment.

 

Those interested can apply at this link.

Drake Law School - Visiting Position Fall 2021/2021-2022

Drake University Law School invites applications for a temporary appointment as Fall semester or full year Visiting Assistant/Associate/Professor of Law for academic year 2012-22.  Course assignments will include Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure - Investigation in Fall Semester 2021; Evidence/Crim Pro in Spring for full academic year visit. Currently, the Law School plans for these classes to be offered in an in-person format rather than remotely, subject to health and safety considerations, and candidates should be willing and available to teach in either format. Drake is an equal opportunity employer dedicated to workforce diversity. We strongly encourage women, people of color, and others who would enrich the diversity of our academic community to apply. For more information on the law school and its programs, see www.drake.edu/law. Interested candidates should submit a letter of interest, CV, and a list of at least three references via email to Associate Dean Andrew W. Jurs, [email protected]. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, with a priority deadline of March 31, 2021. 

VAP - Michigan State University College of Law

Michigan State University College of Law invites applications for a full-time, fixed-term Lecturer.  The position will be for one year with an option to renew for a second year.  The Law College’s curricular needs include health care law, torts law, trusts and estates, and tax law. The Law College seeks applicants with a commitment to excellence in teaching and scholarly achievement.

Successful candidates will teach two classes, one in each of the fall and spring.  The Lecturer will have ample time to pursue their own scholarship.  The Law College will provide access to library and legal resources and mentorship for teaching and scholarly work, including opportunities to present at faculty workshops and outside fora.

For more information on the position and the link to apply, please visit  https://careers.msu.edu/en-us/job/504138/lecturerfixed-term

Review of applications will begin on March 5, 2021.

Job Posting - Program Director - Karsh Center for Law and Democracy

The University of Virginia School of Law seeks a Program Director for the Karsh Center for Law and Democracy. The expectation is that the Program Director will pursue a career in the legal academy as a law professor. More information is available through the UVA website as well as the Inside Higher Ed posting.

This position has a fixed-term appointment of two years. The position is classified as Professional Research Staff (“Postdoctoral Research Associate”) and offers compensation of $60,000 plus benefits.

The Karsh Center is a nonpartisan legal institute at the Law School. The Karsh Center’s mission is to promote understanding and appreciation of the principles and practices necessary for a well- functioning, pluralistic democracy. These include civil discourse and democratic dialogue, civic engagement and citizenship, ethics and integrity in public office, and respect for the rule of law. The Center supports these essential features of our democratic life through rigorous and cutting-edge legal and interdisciplinary scholarship. Its aim is to advance the values of law and democracy within the academy and in public discourse.

As the key administrator for the Center, the Program Director will work closely with the Center’s faculty director to develop the Center’s strategic plan and implement its goals. The Program Director will lead development and implementation of the Center’s programming, such as guest lectures, research collaborations, conferences, seminars, and workshops. The Program Director will provide support for visiting scholars and fellows. The Program Director will also interact with other democracy-related programs at the University of Virginia.

The expectation is that the Program Director will pursue a career in the legal academy as a law professor. The Program Director will be expected to produce legal scholarship and participate in the academic life of the law school.

Tulane Forrester Fellowship 2021-2022

From Tulane Law School:

Tulane Law School invites applications for a Forrester Fellowship. Forrester Fellowships are designed for promising scholars who plan to apply for tenure-track law school positions. The Fellows are full-time faculty in the law school and are encouraged to participate in all aspects of the intellectual life of the school. The law school provides significant support, both formal and informal, including faculty mentors, a professional travel budget, and opportunities to present works-in-progress in various settings.

Tulane’s Forrester Fellows teach legal writing in the first-year curriculum in a program coordinated by the Director of Legal Writing. Fellows are appointed to a one-year term with the possibility of a single one-year renewal. Applicants must have a JD from an ABA-accredited law school, outstanding academic credentials, and significant law-related practice and/or clerkship experience. Candidates should apply through Interfolio at http://apply.interfolio.com/82676. If you have any questions, please contact Erin Donelon at [email protected].

The law school aims to fill this position by March 2021. Tulane is an equal opportunity employer and encourages women and members of minority communities to apply.

An Entry-Level Candidate's Plea

I received the following anonymous email from "AALS Candidate." I'm not generally in the habit of posting anonymous emails to the blog, but this seemed of general interest to those on the job market and also like something that might generate a useful discussion, including thoughts from people who are directly involved in fellowship programs and hiring and who have a sense of, for example, whether fellows are actually not getting jobs this cycle (though of course it's also very early to know that).

I'm an entry-level candidate on the AALS market this year, and it's miserable. I have a strong CV. Not SCOTUS clerk + PhD strong, but in any other year I'd have at least a dozen screening interviews. So far, I've had 1 screening interview. I may get a few more since some schools are delayed, but I'm not very optimistic.

Here is why I'm writing. I've spent years planning out in excruciating detail exactly how and when I would go on the market because I have a personal situation that precludes me from going on the market more than once. I don't want to elaborate because I want to remain anonymous, but trust me. I have one (real) shot. And many years ago, I picked 2020. So, it's especially painful for this year to be the year. For candidates like myself, a member of an often-marginalized group of candidates, going on the market is usually inequitable. Even in a decent year, the stars might not align for us. But especially this year, pandemic-related hiring freezes are likely to shut a lot of quality, marginalized candidates out of the academy permanently.

My ask: if anyone reading this has any sway at your school, please push for your school to fund a new VAP or fellowship. It doesn't need to pay much; we're desperate. I read a scary comment recently that struck me as prescient: most existing VAPs and fellowships won't lose many from their ranks this cycle and schools may extend time-limited positions for an extra year, leaving new candidates on the market shut out entirely unless schools create *new* opportunities for us. Please do what you can to give us an equitable chance to succeed. Thank you.

VAPs and Fellowships: Open Thread, 2020-2021

On this thread, comments can be shared regarding news of appointments to VAPs or similar fellowships (for example, the Climenko and Bigelow).  Here is last year's thread.

You may also add information to the spreadsheet.

Law School Hiring Spreadsheet and Clearinghouse for Questions, 2020-2021

I. The Spreadsheet

In the spreadsheet, you can enter information regarding whether you have received

(a) a first round interview at a school (including the subject areas the school mentioned, if any, as being of particular interest, and whether the interview offer was accepted);

(b)  a callback from a law school and/or accepted it; or

(c) an offer from a law school and/or accepted it; feel free to also leave details about the offer, including teaching load, research leave, etc. A school listed as "offer accepted" may have made more than one offer and may still have some slots open.

Law professors may also choose to provide information that is relevant to the entry-level market.  

Anyone can edit the spreadsheet; I will not be editing it or otherwise monitoring it. It is available here:

II. The Comment Thread

In this comment thread to this post, you can ask questions about the law teaching market, and professors or others can weigh in.

Both questions and answers can be anonymous, but I will delete pure nastiness, irrelevance, and misinformation. If you see something that you know to be wrong, please feel free to let me know via email, sarah*dot*lawsky*at*law*dot*northwestern*dot*edu.

You may want to take a look at the many questions and answers in the threads from 2014-2015, 2015-2016, 2016-2017, 2017-2018, 2018-2019, and 2019-2020. In general, there's quite a cache of materials relevant to the law job market under the archive categories Getting a Job on the Law Teaching Market and Entry Level Hiring Report.

Number of FAR Forms in First Distribution Over Time - 2020

The first distribution of the FAR AALS forms came out this week. Here are the number of FAR forms in the first distribution for each year since 2009.

Year	Forms
2009	637
2010	662
2011	592
2012	588
2013	592
2014	492
2015	410
2016	382
2017	403
2018	344
2019	334
2020	297

(All information obtained from various blog posts, blog comments, Tweets, and Facebook postings over the years and not independently verified. If you have more accurate information, please post it in the comments and I will update accordingly.)

First posted August 20, 2020.

Hiring Plans and Hiring Committees 2020-2021

I am collecting information about (1) whether a particular school plans to hire in 2020-2021, and (2) if so, information about the school's hiring committee and hiring interests.

Please share in the comments the following information related to the 2020-2021 law school faculty hiring season. (A spreadsheet is below. You cannot edit the spreadsheet directly.)

First:

 

(a) your school;

 

(b) whether your school is pursuing entry-level hiring in 2020-2021 (this could be yes, no, maybe, or something else);

 

(c) whether your school is pursuing lateral hiring in 2020-2021 (this could be yes, no, maybe, or something else).

 

If your school does plan on pursuing hiring in 2020-2021:

 

(d) the chair of your hiring committee (please note if you have different chairs for entry level and lateral candidates--we hope that this information will be useful for both entry level and lateral candidates);

 

(e) other members of your hiring committee (again, please note if there is a distinction between entry level and lateral committees); and

 

(f) any particular subject areas in which your school is looking to hire.

Additionally, if you would like to share the following information, candidates might find it helpful to know:

(g) your committee's feeling about packets/individualized expressions of interest (affirmatively want to receive them, affirmatively don't want to receive them, or don't care one way or the other); 

 

(h) your committee's preferred way to be contacted (email, snail-mail, or phone); 

 

(i) the website, if any, that candidates should use to obtain information about the position or to apply;

 

(j) the number of available faculty positions at your school; and

 

(k) whether you are interested in hiring entry-level candidates, lateral candidates, or both.

I will gather all this information in a downloadable, sortable spreadsheet. (Click on that link to access the spreadsheet and download it; you can also scroll through the embedded version below.)

If you would like to reach me for some reason (e.g., you would prefer not to post your committee information in the comments but would rather email me directly), my email address is sarah dot lawsky (at) law dot northwestern dot edu.

Remember, you cannot edit the spreadsheet directly. The only way to add something to the spreadsheet is to put the information in the comments or email me directly, and I will edit the spreadsheet.

Loyola Chicago Hiring Announcements

From Loyola Chicago, two job listings.

 

Director of Regulatory Compliance (three-year, non-tenure track, renewable contract position)

The Director of Regulatory Compliance Studies will oversee all compliance initiatives conducted for both online and campus students.  JD degree and legal practice experience required.  This position requires a legal expert in the field of corporate, health care/life sciences, or privacy compliance. Successful candidates must have significant experience practicing law in the compliance field and possess wide industry knowledge.  Candidates must be familiar with and have relationships with organizations and individuals within the compliance industry.  

 

Director of Regulatory Compliance: https://www.careers.luc.edu/postings/13854

 

 

The MLP Maywood Post Graduate Fellow (two year faculty fellow position)

The fellow will work with Loyola University Chicago School of Law's Health Justice Project to develop a new medical-legal partnership (MLP) in Maywood, Illinois in collaboration with Loyola University Medical Center and Loyola University’s Stritch School of Medicine.  The ideal applicant has legal practice experience in an MLP or other public interest law setting, has experience collaborating across professions, is an excellent public speaker and writer, is licensed in Illinois (or bar eligible) and has experience in one or more of the following areas of law: public benefits, disability, housing, advance care planning, guardianship, or family law. 

 

 Maywood Faculty Fellow:  https://www.careers.luc.edu/postings/14033