The Labor Market for New Law Professors

• Published date: 01 March 2014
• Author: Tracey E. George,Albert H. Yoon
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jels.12033
• Date: 01 March 2014

The Labor Market for New Law Professors

Tracey E. George and Albert H. Yoon*

Law school professors control the production of lawyers and influence the evolution of law.

Understanding who is hired as a tenure-track law professor is of clear importance to debates

about the state of legal education in the United States. But while opinions abound on the law

school hiring process, little is empirically known about what explains success in the market

for law professors. Using a unique and extensive data set of survey responses from candidates

in the 2007–2008 legal academic labor market, we examine the factors that influence which

candidates are interviewed and ultimately hired by law schools. We find that law schools

appear open to nontraditional candidates in the early phases of the hiring process but when

it comes to the ultimate decision—hiring—they focus on candidates who look like current

law professors.

I. Introduction

Every year in the United States, approximately 1,000 people apply to become a tenure-

track law professor.1Nearly all hold law degrees, often from the most selective

*Address correspondence to Tracey E. George, Vanderbilt Law School, 131 21st Ave. S., Nashville, TN 37203; email:

tracey.george@vanderbilt.edu. George is Charles B. Coxx III & Lucy D. Cox Family Chair in Law & Liberty, Professor

of Political Science, and Director of the Branstetter Litigation and Dispute Resolution Program at Vanderbilt

University; Yoon is Professor of Law, University of Toronto.

We are indebted to the Association of American Law Schools and especially former Executive Directors Carl Monk

and Susan Westerberg Prager, Managing Director Jane LaBarbera, and Registration Manager Kai Baker for their

assistance. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the

AALS or its staff. We are grateful to Chris Bransford and Linda Reynolds for their assistance with creation and

implementation of the survey, and to Ashley Dennis, Ellen Hunter, and Uros Petronijevic for research assistance. We

presented earlier versions of this article at Georgetown, Houston, Northwestern, and Vanderbilt law schools and

benefited from their faculties’ and students’ thoughtful feedback. We also received valuable input from the American

Bar Foundation Research Group on Legal Diversity. We thank Ronit Dinovitzer, John Goldberg, Mitu Gulati, Chris

Guthrie, Joni Hersch, Lonnie Hoffman, Edward Iacobucci, Helen Levy, David Madigan, Tom Merrill, Richard Posner,

Fred Tung, and Alan Wiseman for their helpful comments. This project benefited from the generous financial

support of the Russell Sage Foundation and Vanderbilt Law School. All remaining errors are our own.

1New law professors are hired either through a formal process organized by the Association of American Law Schools

(AALS) or by informal applications submitted directly to law schools. From 2000–2010, the AALS market has averaged

967 applicants. AALS Statistical Report on Faculty, http://www.aals.org/resources_statistical.php. In 2012, 875 appli-

cants participated in the AALS market. We do not have an accurate count of how many applications are sent to law

schools by candidates who bypass the AALS process, but we do know that some new professors are hired outside the

AALS process. Thus, 1,000 annual applicants is a reasonable estimate of the number seeking a tenure-track post each

year.

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Journal of Empirical Legal Studies

Volume 11, Issue 1, 1–38, March 2014

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schools.2Many have served as judicial clerks, a fair number at the U.S. Supreme Court.3

Increasingly, applicants have earned a masters or doctorate in another discipline, or an

advanced law degree.4They are often published authors5and experienced teachers.6By

most measures, the applicants are highly qualified to be law professors.7Yet, in a typical

year, only one in seven applicants will join the tenure-track faculty at one of the roughly

200 accredited law schools.8And, the number of hires is likely to decline, at

2See Richard E. Redding, “Where Did You Go to Law School?” Gatekeeping for the Professoriate and Its Implications

for Legal Education, 53 J. Legal Educ. 594, 595 (2003) (evaluating the impact of a small number of schools producing

the majority of law professors); Deborah Jones Merritt & Barbara F. Reskin, Sex, Race, and Credentials: The Truth

About Affirmative Action, 97 Colum. L. Rev. 199 (1997). See also PrawfsBlog, Entry Level Hiring: The 2012 Report,

http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2012/03/entry-level-hiring-the-2012-report.html (presenting and

slicing information reported by individual schools to the PrawfsBlog about each school’s entry-level hiring, and

finding results consistent with those discussed here but emphasizing that the data are entirely self-reported).

3See Kevin R. Johnson, The Importance of Student and Faculty Diversity in Law Schools: One Dean’s Perspective, 96

Iowa L. Rev. 1549, 1559 (2011) (observing that a Supreme Court clerkship is a credential sought by many law schools);

Trenton H. Norris, The Judicial Clerkship Selection Process: An Applicant’s Perspective on Bad Apples, Sour Grapes,

and Fruitful Reform, 81 Cal. L. Rev. 765, 767–68 (1993) (discussing the importance of a judicial clerkship to

becoming a law professor).

4In academic year 2008–2009 (the most recent year for which data are reported), more than one in three candidates

had an advanced nonlaw degree (Ph.D., Masters, or M.D.) and almost one in three held an advanced law degree such

as an LL.M. or J.S.D. One in 10 had both. 2008–2009 AALS Statistical Report on Law Faculty: Educational Degrees,

http://www.aals.org/statistics/2009far/degrees.html.

5See, e.g., Brian Leiter, Information and Advice for Persons Interested in Teaching Law, Nov. 2002, http://

www.utexas.edu/law/career/academic/Leiter_Teaching_Law.pdf (“it would be fair to say that the single best ticket

to a job in law teaching is to have published at least one article since graduating law school. . . . Publications

increasingly make and break candidacies”); Jeffrey M. Lipshaw, Memo to Lawyers: How Not to “Retire and Teach,” 30

N.C. Cent. L. Rev. 151, 158–67 (2008) (reviewing based on his experience the central role of a publication record and

research agenda to the law school faculty appointment interview process); Tanya K. Hernandez, Placing the Cart

Before the Horse: Publishing Scholarship Before Entering the Legal Academy, 7 Mich. J. Race & L. 517 (2002).

6Many law schools offer post-J.D. fellowships for lawyers aspiring to academic jobs. These positions usually include

teaching, an experience not typically part of a law student’s experience (as contrasted to a doctoral student’s

training). Professor Paul Caron maintains a list of such positions, which proliferated in recent years. Tax Prof Blog,

“Fellowships for Aspiring Law Professors (2012–13 Edition),” http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2012/09/

fellowships-for-aspiring.html.

7See Lawrence B. Solum, Foreword: The New Realities of the Legal Academy, in Brannon P. Denning, Marcia L.

McCormick & Jeffrey M. Lipshaw, Becoming a Law Professor: A Candidate’s Guide ix, x (2010) (“The credentials of

many entry-level candidates today would have qualified their possessors for tenure at almost any elite American law

school two or three decades ago.”); Lipshaw, supra note 5, at 164 (“The competition for jobs is unbelievably strong.

. . . Look up the credentials of the youngest faculty [at the lowest ranked schools] .. . Those professors are, almost

uniformly, among the elite law schools’ elite former students.”); Kevin H. Smith, How to Become a Law Professor

Without Really Trying: A Critical, Heuristic, Deconstructionist, and Hermeneutical Exploration of Avoiding the

Drudgery Associated with Actually Working as an Attorney, 47 U. Kan. L. Rev. 139 (1998) (offering a humorous

account of the competitiveness of the market).

8Between 1991 and 2007, approximately 12 percent of AALS participants were “successful” according to the AALS’s

own reporting, or about 100 participants each year. AALS, Statistical Report on Law School Faculty and Candidates

for Law Faculty Positions, 2005 . . . 2006, Table 13A, http://www.aals.org/statistics/0506/0506_T13A_E_14yr-

7yr.html. See also Frank T. Read & M.C. Mirow, So Now You’re a Law Professor: A Letter from the Dean, 2009

2George and Yoon

least in the short term, because law schools face revenue shortfalls due to shrinking class

sizes.9

The competitiveness of the legal academic market is hardly surprising given the

competitiveness of nearly all aspects of the legal profession. Despite the dramatic drop in

applications over the last three years,10 being accepted into a top-25 law school as a student

is difficult.11 The battle during law school for accolades is well-known.12 And, getting into a

top law school is even more important as the entry-level job market becomes tighter.13

Thousands of law students vie for prestigious postgraduate jobs, including judicial

clerkships14 and associate positions at top firms.15 The labor market for lawyers, from

beginning to end, is competitive. The recent economic downturn and technological

advances in law have only exacerbated this competitiveness.16

Cardozo L. Rev. 55, 57 (Read, who served as the dean at five different law schools over his career, observed that “[i]n

any law school, no matter how large, it is very rare to have more than one or two new teachers each fall”); American

Bar Association, ABA-Approved Law Schools, http://www.americanbar.org/groups/legal_education/resources/

aba_approved_law_schools.html (reporting the current number of ABA-approved law schools (199) and provisionally

accredited schools).

9See, e.g., Boston Public Radio, Here & Now Radio Program, Law School Enrollment Plunges, July 18, 2013,

http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2013/07/18/law-school-enrollment.

10Ethan Bronner, Law Schools’ Applications Fall as Costs Rise and Jobs Are Cut, N.Y. Times, Jan. 30,

2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/education/law-schools-applications-fall-as-costs-rise-and-jobs-are-cut

.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

117 Things You Don’t Know About Law School Admissions, Bloomberg Law, June 5, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/

watch?v=Jr-Els4z9Y0&feature=youtu.be (reporting Bloomberg Law’s computations, based on ABA and LSAC data,

that the top-25 law schools had an average rate of acceptance of 23 percent). See also Jesse Rothstein & Albert Yoon,

Affirmative Action in Law School Admissions: What Do Racial Preferences Do? 75 U. Chi. L. Rev. 649, 662 n. 49 (2007)

(describing how only three of the 185 law schools accepted more than half their applicants in 2007, which is same year

as our data); Law School Admissions Council, LSAT Volume Data, http://www.lsac.org/lsacresources/data/lsac

-volume-summary.asp (reporting annual figures on LSAT takers, JD applicants, and matriculants).

12See, e.g., John Jay Osborn, Jr., The Paper Chase (1971); The Paper Chase (Twentieth Century Fox 1973); Scott

Turow, One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School (1977); Amanda Brown, Legally

Blonde (2001); Legally Blonde (MGM 2001).

13See Karen Sloan, Read This if You Want a Legal Job: It Matters Which Law School You Attend, Nat’l L.J., Apr. 8,

2013, http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/legaltimes/PubArticleLT.jsp?id=1202595014134; see generally The Law School

Transparency Project. LST Score Reports, http://www.lstscorereports.com/.

14See Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, More Federal Judges Participate in OSCAR in FY 2012, Third Branch

News, Feb. 22, 2013, http://news.uscourts.gov/more-federal-judges-participate-oscar-fy-2012.

15See, e.g., Ranking the Go-To Law Schools: A Special Report, Nat’l L.J., http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/

PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202589189668&interactive=true (ranking law schools by the percentage of 2012 graduates

who obtain associate positions at NLJ 250 firms).

16See, e.g., Bruce MacEwen, Growth is Dead: Now What? (2013); Richard Susskind, Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An

Introduction to Your Future (2013); Richard Susskin, The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services

(2008). For a more optimistic assessment of the legal labor market, see Michael Simkovic & Frank McIntyre, The

Economic Value of a Law Degree (working paper, 2013), http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract

_id=2250585.

The Labor Market for New Law Professors 3