Prof. Smith,
Informative as usual. I really enjoying reading this series of posts.

Thanks, Eric.

Professor,

I greatly enjoyed your informative series. Might you elaborate on your views regarding general (as opposed to subject-specific) LLM's? As a graduate from a second tier law school with aspirations of an academic position, I have been repeatedly "warned" that without an LLM from a top school my chances at securing an interview are slim.

Thanks again for the enjoyable posts.

Professor Smith,

Thank you for these valuable posts. On clerkships, I know that Federal Appellate clerkships are highly valued in hiring, but what about Federal District and state supreme court clerkships? Do they count for anything close to the Federal Appellate variety, or are they marginal at best? Thank you again.

Paul, Good question about LLMs. I want to note again that the views in these posts are my own, informed by participating in many appointments committee meetings. Others will surely differ.

Now, with regard to general LLMs, for me the issue is whether that experience will contribute substantially to your preparation as a legal scholar. Most general LLM programs last for one year (two semesters) and include mostly the same courses taken by JDs (though they typically include one course specially tailored for the LLM students). In addition, LLM programs usually require a supervised writing assignment. This requirement is often fulfilled with a law school seminar. In short, an LLM is not much different than one year of regular law school.

The fact that this year is spent at big-name school rather than second-tier school may have some value to the aspiring legal scholar -- and here I am thinking of the value of observing and interacting with highly accomplished scholars -- but my sense is that most LLM students are segregated from the main flow of the school, having missed the socialization that occurs during the first year. This segregation affects an LLM's relations with JD students, who have formed lasting social groups during the first year or law school or in other non-LLM activities, such as law review or moot court. The segregation also affects an LLM's relationships with professors, who develop bonds with JD students over multiple semesters over varied activities.

All of that said, the LLM experience may be valuable in allowing the candidate to deepen her knowledge of a particular area of law. In addition, that year may provide an opportunity to develop and advance a research agenda. So the LLM can be valuable, but that value will manifest itself in the candidate's presentation and writings, not in the reputational value of the big-name school.

Dear State Clerk,

This is another good question. The short answer is that I value federal district court clerkships and state supreme court clerkships highly. But let's think more deeply about this.

The perception is that federal appellate court clerkships are the most difficult to obtain, so we should value them highest, but I don't put much stock in this line of thinking. If someone clerks for a federal appellate court judge, I might infer that the person has good grades or attended a good law school (or both). But why do I need to make that inference about the person when I can look directly at the law school they attended and evaluate their performance there? For me, the value of a clerkship is the experience, and I am trying to assess that.

With regard to that question, appellate court clerkships (both state and federal) are the most like law school in that the work consists of researching and writing about narrowly defined legal issues. Much of the "noise" of the case has been filtered out at this stage, so the exercise has a more academic feel. Having that experience under the tutelage of an experienced judge is a great learning experience, and more than anything else, the perceived quality of judges is what distinguishes federal and state court clerkships in the minds of most professors I know.

On the other hand, clerking in a trial court allows a person to see the rough and tumble of actual litigation. This is especially valuable for candidates who hope to teach procedure, evidence, complex litigation, etc.

The bottom line is that clerkships of any kind can be valuable, and I would never classify them as "marginal."

I found your description of criteria for hiring faculty to be quite troubling.

It seems to me that you are making a grave error when you say "I am wary of candidates with a marginal law school record and a PhD. When you are seeking a person who has the 'next great idea,' you are looking for a spark, not just perseverence." Isn't getting good grades in law shool far more an indication of "perseverence" than it is of having a "spark"? People without ANY spark can study their way to good grades. And, haven't the ideas with the most "spark" often come from people who skipped class and got poor grades (Einstein and Nash come to mind)? In fact, I would expect people with the most intellectual spark to be bored senseless by 90% of what is taught in law school--and perhaps then move on to something more interesting, such as a PhD program. If you are using law school grades to discount the intellectual potential of someone who went on to get a PhD, you are surely using the wrong measure. How about you try reading the candidate's dissertation instead?

Somehow, if you are looking at a candidate's law school grades, I am fairly sure you aren't really looking for "spark" at all. Maybe you like good grades because you got good grades in law school and thus assume they are a measure of worth. Perhaps "perseverence" is what you really admire, but you only claim to admire "spark" because it sounds good. Whatever the reason, I think you are woefully off track to look at law school grades. Interestingly, I recently had a conversation with a poli sci professor at Stanford who fomerly taught at Harvard. He said that in all his years on search committees, he had never once looked at a candidate's transcript. He felt it told him nothing about the a candidates potential as a professor.

And one other point. You claim that it is important that a candidate be ready and willing to teach high volume courses, yet you also say that teaching experience doesn't matter. If your attitude is common, then I now understand why so many law professors are pathetic teachers. Look, a law school professor's first job is to TEACH. That is what the students are paying for. If you don't care whether a candidate has shown an ability to teach, then you obviously don't care whether the students have the best opportunity to learn.

In sum, it seems you will be happy with a candidate who was a law school nerd and who has diddled her way through a couple of years as a scrivener in the bowels of a big firm (and who has shown no capacity whatsoever to actually teach)--as long as she is a racial minority--but you will reject an experienced and acomplished teacher who has great ideas (but who didn't persevere in the paper chase)--particularly if he is a white male. What a pile of nonsese. Please inform all potential students at your school that this is how you select your faculty--so they can go elsewhere to find teachers who may actually inspire them.

Dear Law Teacher,

You make some valid and interesting points, though its a bit hard to wade through your anger to find them. You must be right that people with a "spark" will not necessarily excel in law school, but that leaves us with a bit of problem: how do we find them? Before we begin constructing the search, we have to realize a couple of things:

1. Our best candidate may have a JD only or may have a JD and a PhD.

2. We will not be able to locate our best candidate based on a paper review alone.

So how do we proceed? We wade through 1,000 forms in search of 30 people who look interesting enough to interview and hope that we find five from that bunch who still seem interesting after we speak to them. No, we do not assume that excellence in law school is enough, though experience has taught that mediocrity in law school is not highly correlated with success in legal academe. So we use law school success as one sifting factor, and that gets us down to several hundred applicants.

Then we look at other pieces of evidence including written work. No, we do not read all 150 PhD dissertations in search of the next Einstein or Nash. I am a fast reader, but not that fast.

We also don't assume that someone who has never taught can't learn to be an excellent teacher. If we are interested in a candidate, we put them in front of a crowd and watch them teach us about their ideas. They may be unpolished, but we attempt to assess aspects of their personality that would allow them to excel in the classroom. Why would you assume that prior experience should count for so much, when that might exclude the "Einstein of teaching" who has not yet had the opportunity to teach? If we hired only experienced teachers, we wouldn't go into the new entry market at all.

The bottom line is that you have taken my review of the AALS forms and assumed that it comprises the entire evaluation process. That was unfair and misguided.

First, I apologize if I sounded angry. I'm not. But, as a professor, I just find it a little disturbing that you judge teaching potential based on law school performance. The two seem only tangentially related. Not only have I seen lots of professors who waste sudents tuition by being and teachers, but also have seen students who excell at taking exams, but who would be horrible teachers. I don't believe teaching skils can really be learned. Either a person has talent, or they don't.

You claim that "experience has taught that mediocrity in law school is not highly correlated with success in legal academe." What experiences have taught this? Have you hired a bunch of mediocre law school students as faculty members? Did they all fail? How big was your sample? Was the rate of failure statistically significant? Or is it true that you have hired no candidates with mediocre laws school records (because having good law school grades is one of you initial filters), and that you merely assume that they would not have success in academia?

Alright, I understand that you must filter candidates some how. And I accept that bad law school grades are a valid initial filter for someone who has nothing else to offer but their law school performance. But, I think it is a very poor filter for people with other things on their resume. For example, let's say you had a candidate who did poorly in law school, but who went on to get a PhD in poli sci with an emphasis on the judiciary, and who won teaching awards for his part-time work teaching Con Law at a community college while in grad school. Would that candidate get eliminated in your search because of his law school transcript? It would seem to me he should jump to the head of the pack because of his proven scholarship and teaching skills? Do you agree?

By the way, did Payne break your heart Friday night? Are you pro or anti Crowton? Rise and shout....

I appreciate your honestly in describing the process, but I also found your description troubling.

Perhaps this is because I am on the market hoping to move to a higher tier. What I see makes me sick. The hypocrisy! The double-talk! The rationalizations! All draped in a patina of rationality and reasonableness!

If you are looking for a scholar, the best indication of that is pre-existing scholarship. Period. All of the rest (law school attended, law grades, clerkship, letters of rec) only POINT toward the ability for future scholarship many years down the line. Why would a rational committee ignore the PRESENT ability to publish over the FUTURE potential to publish? It makes no sense; that's how you know it is a bogus rationale. If a candidate who went to, say, Iowa has a proven record of peer-reviewed scholarship and teaching experience in a PhD program, what difference could it possibly make if they were in the top 10% during law school? They can deliver the goods now -- and that is all that counts.

I often see candidates like myself with two peer-reviewed books from university presses and many peer-reviewed articles passed over for a fresh Harvard or Yale grad who has never written anything and really has no new ideas. PhD candidates have already taught as part of their training, and they have done extensive research and writing. Why wouldn't that be preferable to a law graduate? Committees aren't looking for new ideas, or else you'd be hiring PhDs instead of people two years out of law school.

Basically, people in power like to replicate themselves. If we can assume that interesting people are pretty well distributed over the top 20 schools, it makes no sense that 50% of professors come from two schools. I wish I had a buck for every law professor who insisted on scholarship yet never published a single peer-reviewed piece and whose only 'critics' have been law student editors; these are the same people that are interviewing me for jobs! The law schools are full of professors from elite schools who trudge along churning out mundane and unimaginative articles that chart the black-letter law and perhaps suggest one slight change, totally uninformed by interesting theories in the academy (whether philosophic, economic, etc).

I consider myself a good teacher and a good scholar, yet I was in the middle of my class in law school: I found it totally boring and so I spent a lot of time working at a law firm actually taking part in corporate deals, going to the SEC to file offerings, and spending nights at the printers. I didn't see anything particularly creative or "spark"-ish about the people who were at the top of the class -- some were brilliant and others were drones.

The hiring process is about power. It gets mediated through a lot of bs excuses and rationalizations about finding the best candidate etc etc -- but in the end it is about replicating oneself and holding power, and that happens by excluding people who don't look like you, write like you, or have the same career path that you took.

The most honest thing a top professor from an elite school ever said to me was, "Every year we hire a Harvard or Yale grad thinking he will be the next Sunstein, and every time we get disappointed, yet we do it again and again year after year."

Why not just admit that it is about power and drop the pretense of 'system and method'?

Law Teacher: "Let's say you had a candidate who did poorly in law school, but who went on to get a PhD in poli sci with an emphasis on the judiciary, and who won teaching awards for his part-time work teaching Con Law at a community college while in grad school. Would that candidate get eliminated in your search because of his law school transcript? It would seem to me he should jump to the head of the pack because of his proven scholarship and teaching skills? Do you agree?"

I don't see any proof of scholarship in the "hypothetical," unless you think that an unpublished PhD dissertation is proof. Then again, every PhD has that, and we can't interview 150 people a year.

So if I assume no scholarship other than an unpublished PhD dissertation, and I assume that the candidate's law school record is "poor," then teaching awards at a community college will not make this person rise to the top of my list.

If you add some good publications -- either in peer reviewed journals or in top law reviews -- and the evaluation changes. Publications now mean more than law school back then. I should note, however, that it is very rare to find a "poor" law student who begins publishing well after law school.

I feel the need to add two reminders for those following this discussion:

1. My vote is not the only vote -- or even the most important vote -- on the committee. Six or seven faculty and two students toss their views into the mix. Although I don't think I would be an outlier on this hypothetical, we disagree regularly. Discussion sometimes narrows the ground for disagreement, but gaps remain. As a result, candidates who ultimately receive an offer must impress multiple constituencies, and that is a good thing, in my view.

2. Just because this person does not get an interview at the University of Wisconsin does not mean that they will not get an interview anywhere.

Finally, re Payne and Crowton, you really know how to hurt a guy! Payne is a great kicker/punter who made a mistake. No eternal consequence for me. Crowton seems like a good man, and I hope he can get some wins and stay for a long time. The game at BSU showed me a lot.

Lucky: "If you are looking for a scholar, the best indication of that is pre-existing scholarship."

I agree with that.

"Why would a rational committee ignore the PRESENT ability to publish over the FUTURE potential to publish?"

No committee would "ignore" present ability, though a committee might reasonably conclude that one candidate's present ability is outweighed by another candidate's potential. One risk of having a publication record is that we now have some sense of what you are capable of doing, and we may conclude that we can find someone who would do better.

"It makes no sense; that's how you know it is a bogus rationale. If a candidate who went to, say, Iowa has a proven record of peer-reviewed scholarship and teaching experience in a PhD program, what difference could it possibly make if they were in the top 10% during law school? They can deliver the goods now -- and that is all that counts."

So we should hire only PhDs? Maybe. I think the market is heading in that direction, though I know that a lot of people would think this a loss.

How do hiring committees deal with age? Some applicants might be as young as their late 20s while others may be in their 40s. Is there a preference for younger professors and is it legal to use age as a factor in interviewing?

Portie

Dear State Clerk and other readers,

After posting that last comment, I received an email from a state court judge, chastising me for repeating the old canard that federal judges are better than state judges. As my correspondent noted, I was trying to waffle on this very point by using the word "perceived" and adding "in the minds of most professors I know." Two main points to emphasize by way of clarification:

1. Most professors I know believe that there are quality differences between federal and state judges, and I wanted to pinpoint that belief as a source of the reputational disparities between courts in the two systems.

2. Despite #1, I am personally agnostic on this issue, having had too few contacts with judges in either system to make an informed evaluation.

Ideally, we would all know enough about each judge and how she employs her clerks that we could make very nuanced evaluations of clerkship quality. We don't live in that world, so we tend to lump clerkships by court and assume some degree of similarity among the various experiences. I am less concerned about state v. federal than about trial v. appellate. With respect to that later dichotomy, I may value one more than the other depending on what the candidate is interested in teaching (e.g., trial court clerkships are extremely valuable for procedure teachers), but "prestige" is not an interesting variable.

Portie,

This is another good set of questions. Age is almost never discussed in appointments committee meetings, partly for the reason you mention: we are worried about age discrimination issues. As a general rule, therefore, age has less to do with the evaluation than experience. This can cut against both newly minted lawyers and seasoned lawyers.

Some candidates probably come out too early. While we all know the professors who graduated from law school, completed a clerkship, and immediately started teaching, I am not sure that the schools that hire such professors are doing them any favors. This is the law school equivalent of an NBA team drafting a high school player. Most of these professors have a difficult time transitioning to the classroom, though we can point to many examples of those who have become prominent scholars fairly quickly.

On the other end, some people wait too long. I have a strong distaste for the idea of someome retiring to law teaching, and when I see a long period since law school graduation, my antennae start twitching. This was, of course, a common model years ago, but relatively few candidates now fit this description.

A more common problem for seasoned candidates is the lack of publications. If you have been out of law school for 10 or 20 years and have never published a scholarly article -- or published one within the past year, apparently in preparation for the teaching market -- you will be hard-pressed to convince me that you have a passion for the life of a legal scholar.

Any advice for adjunct faculty? I have no interest in becoming a full-time professor. In law school I had several outstanding adjunct professors in patent law courses. I am very interested in teaching one patent law course per semester. What, if any, requirements are there for adjunct faculty? My impression is that the positions are a bequest from Sr. Partners to Jr. Partners.

Professor Smith:

I am truly enjoying your posts on the faculty recruitment process, and expect that others in the market whole-heartedly agree. A question came to mind after your last post, in which you talk about going back to fill your second slate of interview candidates. While you write that "in my experience, these candidates are equal to the first batch in every way," I wonder to what extent being a pre-AALS conference top choice, or conversely being a last choice, plays out in job talk decisions. For example, I know that some schools called me very early, which I found encouraging. On the other hand, some schools had very few slots open when they got to me, and I wonder if I am battling uphill in those interviews. Two other questions. First, what is your sense of the ratio of D.C. interviews to job talks? Second, will schools understand if you are late to an interview at the AALS conference, which I understand is common due to the difficulties in getting around that hotel? I assume advance notice of that possibility might be appreciated.

Many thanks!

V. Dare: "It boils down to this: those with top law school grades have a vested interest in preserving that currency, so they use their power towards that end. In other words, since they got the top grades, they have to hire others with similar grades, or else the value of such grades will decline, along with their status."

Agree and disagree. I think that there is a real temptation to replicate yourself in hiring decisions, and I have railed against that tendency often. But it's pretty natural, and I have seen it in action. That's the agree part.

But I do not agree that law professors have any special interest in "preserving that currency." Once you are in, the main currency becomes publications, with teaching excellence and service also part of the package. This fall, we are looking as several lateral candidates, and I have no idea how they did in law school. I might be able to find out by looking at their CVs, but when I look at their CVs, I am focused on their publications.

Hopeful: "I wonder to what extent being a pre-AALS conference top choice, or conversely being a last choice, plays out in job talk decisions."

This probably works out differently for different schools and in different years. The reason I do not perceive much difference in quality among our candidates this year is that we are hiring for an open position (no subject matter limitations), which means that we have to look at everyone. The people who are already on our list are terrific, but they are there because a lot of people noticed them or because a few people on the committee noticed the candidate and one of those said, "Hey, how could you not vote for so-and-so?" Sometimes, the response is that some people on the committee just missed the candidate, and they change their vote on the spot. This week and next, we will be discussing candidates that not everyone noticed, and I suspect that most of them were inadvertantly skipped. I just hope they still have room for us on their dance card.

Another thing might explain the order in which you are called: schools might be filling different positions and might decide that candidates for one position will be more popular than candidates for the other position. For example, we have assumed that we will have more competitor schools for the open candidates than for the tax candidates simply because the open candidates will attract attention from two groups of schools: (1) those doing "best athlete" searches, and (2) those doing focused searches in the areas of specialty of the various open candidates. On the other hand, schools tend to hire tax professors in focused searches, even though some of the candidates would be very attractive in "best athlete" searches. As a result, we may call the open candidates first, assuming that the tax candidates will be less likely to fill up their dance cards.

Of course, you might be called late because you are on the bottom of the paper pile. That is, you might have received a call only after the school's higher-priority candidates have scheduled their interviews. No doubt that this happens, too. Does this affect your likelihood of getting a call back? Probably. Interviewing teams form expectations of candidates based on the paper, and I think it is safe to say that the expectations are often unrealistically high. As a result, it is tough for candidates to exceed expectations, and common for candidates to disappoint. (I am planning to write more about the interview in a future post, so I won't say too much more about it now.)

Now, your two specific questions:

1. "What is your sense of the ratio of D.C. interviews to job talks?" We will interview about 30 people in two days, and I expect to invite 3-6 of those candidates back for job talks.

2. "Will schools understand if you are late to an interview at the AALS conference, which I understand is common due to the difficulties in getting around that hotel?" Hmm. Some people are very picky about this. They have the sense that, "if you were really interested in our school, you would have made a point of being on time." And there is probably something to that. If your next interview is with Yale, are you going to be late? Anyway, if you have a school you really want to impress -- one where you think you have a legitimate shot of getting a job -- try to leave the spot just before open. If you can't do that and you know that it will be difficult to arrive on time, notifying them of the possibility of your being late would be very thoughtful and much appreciated, though I can't remember any candidate ever having done that. The problem may be that you don't know how far apart your interview rooms are until the conference begins. Is that true? Or is that information available in advance?

If people are following these comments but only looking at this thread, I would direct your attention to a post from earlier today, in which Judge Ralph Adam Fine shared some interesting thoughts about clerkships. The post is here.

Lucky said: "The hiring process is about power. It gets mediated through a lot of bs excuses and rationalizations about finding the best candidate etc etc -- but in the end it is about replicating oneself and holding power, and that happens by excluding people who don't look like you, write like you, or have the same career path that you took."

This is the most accurate description I've yet heard, and I would note that Professor Smith did not address it in his reply. It boils down to this: those with top law school grades have a vested interest in preserving that currency, so they use their power towards that end. In other words, since they got the top grades, they have to hire others with similar grades, or else the value of such grades will decline, along with their status.

It's in effect a self-interested approach, and Lucky has zeroed in on the hypocrisy of it with the zeal and bitterness that only experience can bring.

This methodology exists, of course, in the hiring processes of major law firms as well. I read about something that happened at a D.C. firm a few years ago: they were considering brining on board a lateral partner, who had several million dollars in portable business. Everything looked fine, until they asked to see his transcript. He had graduated from law school about 25 years earlier, but the major law firm concluded that his grades were inadequate, despite his demonstrated career success and lucrative business.

In the end, no one can seriously say that peformance on written exams, undertaken at the age of 22 or 23, provides much insight into the abilities of someone 5 or 10 years down the road. That's not what it's about. It's about preserving the value of the transcript.

Prof. Smith: "For me the initial hurdle is law school performance....If the candidate did poorly at any law school, my review is over."

V. Dare: "In the end, no one can seriously say that peformance on written exams, undertaken at the age of 22 or 23, provides much insight into the abilities of someone 5 or 10 years down the road."

And then, Prof. Smith: "Once you are in, the main currency becomes publications, with teaching excellence and service also part of the package. This fall, we are looking as several lateral candidates, and I have no idea how they did in law school."

My point is that the "initial hurdle" as you put it, which you've described explicitly as law school performance, is both a mistaken standard, since it has little to do with subsequent ability and at most measures the exam skills of twenty-somethings, and a self-interested standard, as it is applied with vigor by people who have an interest in preserving the value of high law school grades.

Sure, a lateral candidate can be judged on publications, but under your own standards, that person would never have gotten to the point of being a potential lateral hire but for his high law school grades.

This exchange has been terrific, yet disheartening.

I jumped in the AALS meat market knowing I was a dark horse candidate. I did my undergraduate work at public university and went to a mid-level law school (graduated summa and magna). I have a federal app. clerkship and have just recently had a book published by a major academic press.

As of this writing, I have received zero interview calls for the Nov. meat market. I wondered just how much my state schools would hurt me--I knew it would be a significant, but at this point it appears I will never be able to overcome this.

What advice do you have for me? Should I forget all hopes of teaching and scholarship and just concentrate on making partner and $$$ in my firm? My guess is that I will not receive a call, what thinks you professor???

Dear stateschool,

My impression is that undergraduate institutions have almost zero weight in the evaluation process. I have never heard a committee member say, "look at this candidate with the Princeton degree." We are much more interested in the law school attended.

Being from a state law school also should not necessarily be a negative. Many state schools produce legal scholars in volume. Graduating from a "mid-level law school" -- whether public or private -- will attract less attention than graduating from a top law school.

Having a book should be a plus. So is a federal clerkship. Based on the information that you provide, it's hard to tell why you aren't getting calls. My guess is that you have positioned yourself too narrowly, but I would have to see the form.

I'm a lateral/perennial visitor, 18 years out of school, some publications (none in top 20, but several in lower-first tier schools and Top 20 specialty journals, and a few second and third tier schools as well), with most of my experience teaching first year courses.

I've never gotten double digits and this year have only two interviews so far- and I'm trying to figure out what went wrong. Is the 18 years out a deal buster (especially for someone focused on first year courses rather than hot upperclass electives?) Or is there something else screwing me up?