Strategies for "Moving Up" in Legal Academia

An assistant professor of law (not a UT grad) writes:

Your advice about the entry-level hiring process helped me at that stage of my career, and now I am interested in your advice in positioning oneself for a lateral move.  (In my case, from a fourth-tier school to -- with luck -- a second-tier one.)  I am finishing my first year in teaching and hope to move after my second or third.

The basics are sufficiently clear.  I should publish, do as well as possible in the classroom, and be a good colleague.  What is unclear for me is the publicity aspect.  Is the AALS market the way to go, again?  Or is it better to try to get one's name out to others in the profession in a less systematic way?  Are faculty workshops a good way to audition for a full-scale interview?

I've opened comments, and invite law faculty (no anonymous postings) to offer advice.  I will try to weigh in when I have a chance, but I'm sure others have lots of good insight in to this issue.

UPDATE:  A colleague elsewhere writes:  "Interesting that no one has responded to your very interesting post -- I suppose that anyone who is trying to move up doesn't want to seem over-eager or desparate, while those looking for laterals don't want to have every gunner flooding their inbox with e-mails.  I'll bet you would get tons of responses if you allowed anonymous comments."  Since then, Professor Brown has kindly posted an informative response, but I will, per my colleague's suggestion, permit anonymous postings here.  I will, however, delete or edit anonymous postings more vigorously if they aren't on point.  I'm also moving this to the front.

Comments

[darryl brown]

I think it is not just a sign of disinterest or lack of time that this query has so far received no responses. Beyond publishing well and prominently, the means that one can control for moving laterally and upwards are few. My own sense is this: one can use the formal AALS process for a move from the third or fourth tier to the second or third (esp. if you are only 4-5 years or so into teaching), but it's likely to be effective only with a notable publication or two that wasn't on one's entry-level form. Lateral moves into the top 25 or so just don't happen via the AALS process. They happen either by a hiring committee discovering on their own one's well-regarded publications or, much more likely, through personal connections that are backed by publications, so that one's advocates at a hiring school can make a case for you based on scholarship (it's often helpful if they can add "she's a great teacher too"). There's not much one can do about that process except seek to establish connections in hopes one will lead to something. One does that the usual way: conference attendance, sending drafts and reprints to colleagues in the field, keeping track of classmates or your law school profs. I've done some moving, and my experience is this: I used the AALS process after a couple years (and a couple of well placed publications) at 4th-tier school and got a couple offers from somewhat better-ranked places. But I moved to W&L as a result of people there spotting my early publications and calling me on their own initiative. (They'd interviewed me and passed on me when I was at the entry level, but remembered me from that meeting, not entirely unfavorably.) I got a visit at UVA (I believe) based on a combination of people in my field (whom I didn't know beforehand) reading and liking my work and having acquaintances who advocated for me based on that. There's a lot of luck in such developments, in my view. I see a lot of people with great publications who don't generate the interest that seemingly equivalently accomplished people do.

[Achieved Lateralization]

I moved from a 4th tier to a 1st tier pretenure, and have since moved to another 1st tier. Both moves have been driven in large part through support of people I met at conferences who later joined their schools' appointments committees. Plus writing, of course. Not that I'm Darryl Brown or anything like that.

I know of several people who have moved pretenure by going through the AALS process again, but I think it is marginally less awkward to send out resumes and cover letters.

[Top20LawProf]

Interesting question, Brian.

In my experience, most top 30 law schools start looking for laterals in a particular area by asking a) the top people in that field and b) the school's current faculty who teach in that area if they know of any up-and-coming professors or underplaced stars at lower-ranked schools who might be interested in a move up. It's mostly word-of-mouth-- as in, "who is good out there that we should take a look at?"

If you want to move up, the first trick is to make it on to someone's mental list of up-and-coming or underplaced stars. To do that, the best way is to impress people in your field with your scholarly work. To do *that*, I think the key steps usually are to write a lot of very good stuff; to send out reprints to all the big people in your field so they can see what you're doing; and to give talks as often as you can outside of your school so you can meet people elsewhere and establish a relationship with others in your field (if people meet you and like you, they are much more likley to want to help you).

Beyond that, I think you probably just want to wait until others notice your scholarly work and come to you. My sense is that it usually doesn't work to actively seek out a lateral position by contacting schools and expressing interest in them.

That's my experience, anyway -- I'd be interested to find out if others agree or disagree.

[justme]

I've chaired hiring committees at top 20 schools. All of the above advice is good. I would strongly advise against using the AALS process, however, because your own hiring committee will see your form, and you will look like you are pushing to leave in a too-public manner. I agree with Top20LawProf that sending a letter to a hiring committee is usually of little utility: there are lots of these letters, it is very unlikely that the hiring chair will know your work, and because of time constraints it is even less likely she will read the reprints. Networking is about all you can do: send reprints to people in your field, go to conferences, keep in touch with law school friends who are already in teaching, keep in touch with mentors and ask them candidly if they think you are positioned to move up yet (and if so whether they would highlight your name to schools of interest to you), and so on. As for scholarship: it is much better to write rather frequently and well than to write very frequently and less well. Especially if you do not have colleagues at your school who can and will provide critical feedback, a junior person should seek out others who can do that. A few very strong articles are much more helpful to your career than a bunch of things that are all over the place. Stay away from short essays, symposium comments, short book reviews, etc., that drain time and add nothing of importance to your CV. For starters, ask some top people in your field to identify a few articles they most admire, and have them explain why they admire them. Read the articles carefully to see the cast of mind exhibited in them.

[Top20LawProf]

One quick thought on what "justme" says:

"Stay away from short essays, symposium comments, short book reviews, etc., that drain time and add nothing of importance to your CV."

I have mixed views on this. As a member of my school's lateral appointments comittee, I like to see that a candidate is engaged, open, and prolific enough to add some interesting short pieces and symposium essays to the usual complement of full-length "real" articles. It's essential that shorter and symposium pieces not take the place of full-length "real" articles; I absolutely agree that they should be avoided if they drain too much time. But a few symposium contributions tells me that the person is being invited to conferences and has enough energy and intellectual firepower that they're not maxed out by a few full-length pieces.

[Staying Put (for Now)]

I'm a recently tenured professor at a 2nd tier school with a publication record that does not leap off the page but is very solid for a person in my field at my level. I've also won teaching awards. I've made several lateral inquiries, including some to lower-ranked schools, and gotten absolutely no interest. My sense of the lateral market is this: Higher ranked schools are more likely to look for laterals than lower ranked schools. I believe this is largely because of inertia. Many lower ranked schools are just not that interested in bringing in experienced people. Laterals can be threatening to unproductive older faculty and they cost more than entry-level hires. Higher ranking schools are looking to get better and want to identify the best "free-agent" talent they can bring in. But they typically are interested only in people who will look impressive in a brochure of new hires. So I suspect that top-10 journal placements are an absolute requirement unless the school has a specific need that it must fill (and I suspect this is true even if one has a connection).

This all seems very perverse to me and I hope to do something about it if and when I serve on my own appointments committee. If, as it appears, a school's academic reputation number in US News is largely impervious to faculty moves, then why wouldn't we try to construct the best faculty we can? (I mean the best in reality rather than on paper; and incidentally, I think it is fairly easy to look around a law faculty and assess who is a really good law professor and who isn't.) And if that were the goal, wouldn't it make more sense to look for people with a proven record of quality scholarship, teaching, and service rather than looking for the most glittering entry-level resume?

[CS]

I'm one of the folks who reads Brian's blog from the philosophy side, and I'm not familiar with the practice of sending reprints to other people unsolicited. Is that common among law profs? What do you say in the cover letter? "You don't know me, but I know your work, and thought you'd find this interesting"? When you do receive unsolicited reprints, how often do you actually read them?

[Top20LawProf]

I don't know if this is on-point enough to avoid deletion, but in response to CS -- yes, it is common (and even expected) to send out unsolicited reprints of law review articles.

The standard reprint cover letter says something like, "Dear Professor X, I thought you might be interested in a copy of my most recent article, which argues X, Y, and Z. I hope you may find it relevant to your work. I would be delighted to hear any comments you have." Etc.

Sending out unsolicited reprints is important because there are hundreds of law journals, and most law journals are not specific to any particular subject matter. That makes it hard to follow developments in your field, and makes reprints in your field welcome. I receive reprints pretty regularly, and always at least note the topic and the author. In most cases I read the intro, which may be 4-5 pages; if the article looks particularly good, I'll read the whole article.

[An interested party]

Can I ask a related question? How does one go about seeking a cross-subject lateral?

For example, I'm hired at Podunk Law School to teach Water Law. I really wanted to teach Torts (and I still do), but I put Water Law on the AALS form as a "course that I would teach if I absolutely had to," and then my only offer came from Podunk, for their Water Law slot. And now I'm the Water Law guy here, and it looks like I will be for the foreseeable future. But I'm writing on torts, and have some decent if not spectacular publications.

Can/should I put out feelers indicating that my real interest is torts? How? How will this be received? Will I be expected to come in to any lateral position as a Water Law guy, and then try to work out a change with the dean? What do I do when my teaching field is completely divorced from my field of academic interest?

[david]

The following may take you away from your main topic (in which case please do delete this comment), but I thought that in response to Top20LawProf, Ann Althouse's perspective on reprint-sending might be of interest. I'm pasting the following from her blog.

"I always use LEXIS to find law review articles when I'm doing legal scholarship. Nevertheless, I receive many reprints of law review articles in the mail. Reprint-sending is such a wasteful and now totally unnecessary practice. Could we all please just stop? Think of the trees! Think of the mail truck exhaust! Lawprofs: if there were a national "do not send reprints" list, would you not put your name on it?"

[Achieved Lateralization]

In addition to or instead of sending out reprints, one could post drafts and placed articles on SSRN.

One word in Darryl's post deserves emphasis: Sending _drafts_ (not just reprints) to people at other schools can be helpful. Admittedly, it is presumptuous to send an unsolicited draft to a colleague at another school. However, if the cover letter is polite, and the piece is reacting to their scholarship or otherwise related to their work, they might engage it. And if you are at a 4th tier school, you have to do something to get noticed. No one is really _offended_ when their views and judgment are sought out.

[telling it like it is]

This is all good advice, but perhaps not frank enough. Lateral moves into top 20 schools occur through a "star" system. A star at a top school (the higher the better) must designate you as a "star in the making" and promote you at every opportunity. To be a star in the making you must be unusually impressive (though many are at this level), and adept at cultivating relationships with stars (or more precisely with stars willing to extend themsevles to promote younger people). This is easiest to accomplish as a law student working closely with a star professor. If your first job placement is too low (3 tier and below) to be palatable, a star in the making might first be required to make an intermediate move up the chain in the hierarchy, if only to look better on the hiring brochure. Once one top school has confirmed you as a star in the making, by extending you an offer, you are made.

You must produce top quality scholarship--which is not the same as top law review placements (but that's another story)--to have a shot in this system, but that is not enough to be designated a star in the making. Top law schools unduly pride themselves on being meritocracies. The prevailing system uses merit considerations to narrow the eligible pool. Among those many worthy and accomplished folks left swimming, however, it is unusual for anyone other than a star in the making to be plucked out. At that final stage it is mostly about connections.

Second tier schools (by definition not in the star game) which are striving to improve are much more meritocratic. They are happy to take from among those many excellent scholars and teachers left swimming in the pool who lack star in the making status. But they may not know about you, so don't be shy: PLEASE WRITE TO OUR APPOINTMENTS COMMITTEE!

If you are not already a candidate for star in the making status and want to move to the first tier, the best you can do is keep working hard and produce at a level so spectacular that you can get around this system. But don't count on it. Meanwhile, life as a law professor is still good no matter where you are.

[Tony]

The post by "telling it like it is" actually prompts a question I was going to ask anyway. As s/he notes, "life as a law professor is still good no matter where you are." Why, then, the great drive to move to a 1st tier school?

In something like Philosophy I can understand it, as a position at a "lower" school will mean very low pay and a very high teaching load, making it almost impossible to do the research that attracted you to the subject in the first place. But what exactly is the drawback of a lower-ranked law school?

This is not meant to be sniping but is a sincere question, as a friend is thinking of going into law teaching, and is wondering whether he'd be better off taking a position at a lowly-ranked school in a place he wanted to live, or should sacrifice location for quality of school (for the reasons a philosophy professor would). Hopefully this isn't too far off topic, but I am curious, and I'm sure my friend would appreciate the advice before the decision has to be made (assuming it does).

[Professor Kate]

Tony,

Teaching at a higher-ranked law school generally means better students, somewhat lighter teaching loads, somewhat more money, and considerably higher visibility and therefore influence in your field.

[Brian Leiter]

This in reply to Tony: the main differences between lower-tier and higher-tier law schools are in the quality of the students, sometimes the quality of one's colleagues, and often the resources available, which affect research and travel support, teaching loads, and salaries. It is still the case that the difference between lower-ranked and higher-ranked law schools is not as great as the differences along some of these dimensions (especially resources) between, say, Princeton Philosophy and St. Cloud State Philosophy, but there are still differences that may matter. (For example: while the teaching load at Princeton is typically three courses per year, there are literally hundreds of philosophy departments in the U.S. where the teaching load is four courses per semester, or eight per year. By contrast, I believe it is the case that no accredited law school in the U.S. has a teaching load heavier than two courses per term (four per year), and many--and not just the top schools--require only three courses per year.)

[Achieved Lateralization]

In response to Brian's last, I am pretty sure that some 4th tier schools have a "6 classes, 4 preps" load, so in one semester someone might teach contracts in the day, in the evening AND teach another course.

I'd also like to see some real data on the prevalence of the 3 course package outside the 1st Tier private schools. Is Texas at 3, for example? (Some schools reputed to be 3s are really 3s for some, or "10-11 credits")

[Brian Leiter]

That's interesting if true about teaching loads at "4th tier" schools; at least some schools denominated "4th tier" by US News do not have teaching loads that heavy.

Here are some schools that either are 1st tier but not private, or aren't 1st tier, that have 3 course loads (9-11 teaching hours): Michigan and Virginia (though these two are de facto private, to be sure), Texas, Rutgers-Camden, San Diego. There are no doubt others, these I know about.

[Michael Froomkin]

We at Miami plan to hire more laterals in the near future. We have an attractive tropical location in a city that is a microcosm of the future, an attractive teaching load (10 credits/year), and (I think) an interesting faculty. I'm not on the lateral committee, so this is a little second-hand, but I get the feeling that the committee is finding the job somewhat tough sailing as it's very hard to sort people in our areas of greatest need ... they are 'greatest need' precisely because we *don't* have anyone in the area who really knows the up and coming or mid-rank players in the field. We'd also be open to 'targets of opportunity' but is does seem hard to get information about who might be interested in a move.

So I guess the non-commercial part of this comment is that people shouldn't be shy -- if they have a friend here, and especially if they teach in areas where we don't already have someone in the field, they should drop unsubtle hints to their friend. Or call the chair of our laterals committee (committee chairs are about to rotate, so I'd wait a couple of months then enquirer of the Dean's office who got the job).

PS. Brian, for your next mini-symposium, I propose you discuss the issues of hiring couples, especially on the entry-level market. Having lived through that myself, and now seeing it from the hiring end, I think it has its own share of interesting complexities.

[Profgary]

Many law profs would like a better school but settle for a better location.
My own school is quite pleasant but desperately lacking in resources that would facilitate more conference attendance and scholarly productivity - research assistanceships, travel funds, release time, etc. Still, we are Top 50 somehow. We almost never hire laterals because they are too expensive compared to entry level hires. Our chairs get filled internally based on seniority, and we have chair holders whose names do not even register on WestLaw, but that keeps the politics calmer.

[A 4th tier prof]

I can confirm that the dean just asked me (middle of last month) to take a 3-course package for the upcoming semester. (Yes, the school is accredited). I think I'm going to be able to negotiate it down to two courses, however.

[Anonymous]

One of the things that's always struck me as odd about the difficulties associated with moving from the 4th tier to the 1st is that the entry-level hiring process is just not that good at separating candidates. I haven't been at this very long at all and I know of at least four instances in which a candidate has gone through the hiring process in Year 1 and either received no offers or has received only an offer from a 4th tier school (which he or she then declined). After going through the process in Year 2, all four landed jobs at top tier (indeed, top 25 in three instances) schools. Perhaps I'm missing something, but it seems the only thing that differentiates them from their counterparts who took the job in the fourth tier and are trying to move up(assuming equivalent publications in the interim) is that they don't come wearing a scarlet 4 on their chests.

This leads me to wonder why the top schools bother with entry-level hiring at all. Why not focus on picking up those who are three or four years in, when there's a much better indication of how productive any given candidate will be?

[anon]

This last comment seems consistent with my perception that many top schools are still hiring based on “scholarship potential” rather than actual scholarly productivity. It isn’t hard to find professors at top schools who had sterling credentials (top of class at top 5 school, top appellate clerkships, etc.) who haven’t written anything of note but who still get tenure.

[HasAScarlet4]

Two points regarding the "Scarlet 4" phenomenon referenced earlier:

(1) I am perfectly willing to believe that this phenomenon is probably pretty common at top 25 law schools. But how common is it at, say, a school at the bottom of the second tier? A school near the top of the third tier?

(2) I completely agree with the comments concerning entry-level hiring practices of top 25 schools. Legal academia is a buyer's market, but there certainly seems to be a real crap-shoot quality to succesful buying and selling with respect to the entry-level market. One would think that would cause at least some top schools to re-evaluate their entry-level hiring strategies. Has it?

[Anonymous]

BL-

Any chance of moving this back up to the top, or of starting a separate discussion concerning why the top 25 or so hire entry-levels at all?