The labor market for new law professors

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies

Volumn 11, Issue 1, 2014, Pages 1-38

  George, Tracey E ^a   Yoon, Albert H ^a  

^a VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84892664067     PISSN: 17401453     EISSN: 17401461     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/jels.12033     Document Type: Article

References (148)

1. New 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 applicants 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.
2. See 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).
3. Deborah Jones Merritt & Barbara F. Reskin, Sex, Race, and Credentials: The Truth About Affirmative Action, 97 Colum. L. Rev. 199 (1997).
4. 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).
5. See 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);
6. 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).
7. In 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.
8. See, 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");
9. 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);
10. Tanya K. Hernandez, Placing the Cart Before the Horse: Publishing Scholarship Before Entering the Legal Academy, 7 Mich. J. Race & L. 517 (2002). Many law schools offer post-J.D. fellowships for lawyers aspiring to academic jobs. These positions usually include teaching, an experience not tpically 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.
11. See 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.");
12. 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). Between 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.
13. See also Frank T. Read & M.C. Mirow, So Now You're a Law Professor: A Letter from the Dean, 2009 2 George and Yoon 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).
14. See, 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.
15. Ethan 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.
16. 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).
17. 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).
18. See, e.g., John Jay Osborn, Jr., The Paper Chase (1971); The Paper Chase (Twentieth Century Fox 1973).
19. 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).
20. See 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;
21. see generally The Law School Transparency Project. LST Score Reports, http://www.lstscorereports.com/.
22. 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.
23. See, 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).
24. see, e.g., Bruce MacEwen, Growth is Dead: Now What? (2013);
25. Richard Susskind, Tomorrow's Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future (2013).
26. Richard Susskin, The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services (2008). For a more optimistic assessment of the legal labor market.
27. Michael Simkovic & Frank McIntyre, The Economic Value of a Law Degree (working paper, 2013), http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract _id=2250585. Empirical studies have examined the composition of law school faculties, but have not looked at the market by which applicants are matched to jobs.
28. See, e.g., Charles E. Daye, Walter R. Allen & Linda F. Wightman, The Educational Diversity Project: Analysis of Longitudinal and Concurrent Student and Faculty Data (Law School Admission Council Grants Report 10-01, March 2010), http://www.lsac.org/LSACResources/Research/GR/GR-10-01.pdf;
29. William D. Henderson & Andrew P. Morriss, Student Quality as Measured by LSAT Scores: Migration Patterns in the U.S. News Rankings Era, 81 Ind. L.J. 163 (2006);
30. Charles Longley, Law School Admissions, 1985-1995: Assessing the Effect of Application Volume (Law School Admissions Council Grant Report 1998);
31. Charles Longley, Who Gets the App? Explaining Law School Application Volume, 1993 to 1996 (Law School Admissions
32. Council Grant Report 1998), http://www.lsac.org/LSACResources/Research/GR/grants-reports.asp.
33. See, e.g., After the JD II: Second Results from a National Study of Legal Careers (2009); http://www.americanbarfoundation.org/uploads/cms/documents/ ajd.pdf.
34. After the JD: First Results of a National Study of Legal Careers (2003), http://www.americanbarfoundation.org/uploads/cms/documents/ ajd.pdf.
35. See, e.g., Joyce S. Sterling & Nancy J. Reichman, So, You Want to be a Lawyer? The Quest for Professional Status in a Changing Legal World, 78 Fordham L. Rev. 2289 (2010);
36. Bryant G. Garth & Joyce S. Sterling, Exploring Inequality in the Corporate Law Firm Apprenticeship: Doing Time, Finding the Love, 22 Georgetown J. Legal Ethics 1361 (2009).
37. See, e.g., David Wilkins, Ronit Dinovitzer & Rishi Batra, Urban Law School Graduates in Large Law Firms, 36 Sw. U.L. Rev. 433 (2007).
38. Lincoln Caplan, Skadden: Power, Money, and the Rise of a Legal Empire (1993);
39. Carroll Seron, The Business of Practicing Law: The Work Lives of Solo and Small-Firm Attorneys (1996);
40. John P. Heinz et al., Urban Lawyers: The New Social Structure of the Bar (2005);
41. John Heinz & Edward O. Laumann, Chicago Lawyers; The Social Structure of the Bar (1982).
42. Marc Galanter & Thomas Palay, Tournament of Lawyers: The Transformation of the Big Law Firm (1991).
43. See, e.g., David S. Abrams & Albert H. Yoon, The Luck of the Draw: Using Random Case Assignment to Investigate Attorney Ability, 74 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1145 (2007);
44. Lynn Mather et al., Divorce Lawyers at Work: Varieties of Professionalism in Practice (2001).
45. See, e.g., David Segal, Is Law School a Losing Game? N.Y. Times, Jan. 9, 2011, at BU1;
46. Steven M. Davidoff, The Economics of Law School, N.Y. Times, Sept. 25, 2012, at F8;
47. Jennifer Smith, A Crop of New Law Schools Opens Amid a Lawyer Glut, Wall St. J., Feb. 1, 2013.
48. See David Lat, A Law School's Possible Purge of Its Junior Faculty Ranks, Above the Law, July 1, 2013, http:// abovethelaw.com/2013/07/a-law-schools-possible-purge-of-its-junior-faculty-ranks/.
49. American Bar Association, Task Force on the Future of Legal Education, http://www.americanbar.org/groups/ professional_responsibility/taskforceonthefuturelegaleducation.html.
50. Dylan Matthews, Obama Thinks Law School Should Be Two Years, Wash. Post, Aug. 27, 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/27/obama-thinks-law-school-should-be-two-years-the-british -think-it-should-be-one/. The present study focuses on tenure-track hires for several reasons: (1) the tenure-track job market is largely distinct from the market for term appointments (such as clinical and research and writing posts at most institutions), for visiting professors, and for adjunct faculty, (2) professors on the tenure track typically hold greater authority and power than untenured faculty, and (3) we would not expect qualifications to be the same and/or carry the same relative importance for nontenured positions.
51. Merritt & Reskin, Deborah Merritt and Barbara Reskin, for example, completed a substantial quantitative analysis of law professors, focusing on those who had been hired during a five-year period.
52. Deborah J. Merritt, Barbara F. Reskin & Michelle Fondell, Family, Place, and Career: The Gender Paradox in Law School Hiring, 1993 Wisc. L. Rev. 395 (1993);
53. Deborah J. Merritt & Barbara F. Reskin, The Double Minority: Empirical Evidence of a Double Standard in Law School Hiring of Minority Women, 65 S. Cal. L. Rev. 2299 (1992).
54. See also Robert J. Bothwick & Jordan R. Schau, Gatekeepers of the Profession: An Empirical Profile of the Nation's Law Professors, 25 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 191 (1991);
55. Donna Fossum, Law Professors: A Profile of the Teaching Branch of the Legal Profession, 1980 Am. B. Found. Res. J. 501. Our database includes all job applicants who participated in the AALS faculty recruitment process as well as successful applicants who found jobs outside that process. We do not have data on unsuccessful applicants who did not use the AALS process. We do not have data on prospective candidates who decided against applying for law teaching jobs. As discussed later, such self-selection is relevant to the interpretation of our empirical findings. The ABA requires each law school to offer tenure or a comparable form of job security for its full-time faculty (excluding legal writing instructors and clinical professors). See ABA Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law School, http://www.americanbar.org/groups/legal_education/resources/standards.html. For example, several empirical studies have found that law professors at elite law schools have a comparative advantage in article placement in both their home institution's law journal and in law journals generally.
56. See, e.g., Albert H. Yoon, Editorial Bias in Law Reviews (working paper, 2013);
57. Leah M. Christensen & Julie A. Oseid, Navigating the Law Review Selection Process: An Empirical Study of Those with All the Power-Student Editors, 59 S.C.L. Rev. (2008) (finding that law review editors reported that author credentials, specifically ranking of law school, influenced the selection process);
58. Deborah Jones Merritt, Research and Teaching on Law Faculties: An Empirical Exploration, 73 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 765, 813-14 (1998) (finding that "[i]nstitutional prestige" after controlling for other variables "appears to affect a professor's ability to publish in the top journals, but not his or her overall productivity");
59. Jordan H. Leibman & James P. White, How the Student-Edited Law Journals Make Their Publication Decisions, 39 J. Legal Educ. 387 (1989) (learning in interviews with law review editors that author credentials played a significant screening or signaling role in selection);
60. Ira Mark Ellman, A Comparison of Law Faculty Production in Leading Law Reviews, 33 J. Legal Educ. 681, 692 (1983) (reporting that "the major law reviews publish the work of their own faculty disproportionately often").
61. See, e.g., Paul D. Allison & J. Scott Long, Department Effects on Scientific Productivity, 55 Am. Soc. Rev. 469 (1990);
62. Barbara F. Reskin, Scientific Productivity and the Reward Structure of Science, 42 Am. Soc. Rev. 491 (1977) (reporting that the prestige of Ph.D.-granting institution and entry-level institution affect productivity 10 years after the doctorate).
63. Diana Crane, Scientists at Major and Minor Universities: A Study of Productivity and Recognition 30 Am. Soc. Rev. 699 (1965). Stephen Cole, Making Science: Between Nature and Society (1992) (discussing the accumulation effect).
64. See, e.g., Ted I.K. Youn & Daniel Zelterman, Institutional Career Mobility in Academia, in Academic Labor Markets and Careers 52, 56-58 (David W. Breneman & Ted I.K. Youn eds., 1988) J. Scott Long, Productivity and Academic Position in the Scientific Career, 43 Am. Soc. Rev. 889 (1978).
65. The AALS process accounted for the substantial majority of tenure-track hires in 2008. In 2007-2008, law schools hired 220 new tenure-track professors, 167 were from the AALS process (or 76 percent). See text accompanying notes 35-40 infra (describing the search strategies of hires).
66. See http://aals.org/services_recruitment.php (website for the AALS describing faculty recruitment). Although the conference is dedicated to entry-level tenure-track hiring, some candidates register with the AALS for clinical or research and writing (typically nontenure-track) rather than research (tenure-track) positions. In addition, some individuals who register with the AALS already have a tenure-track job and are looking to switch institutions. In our analysis, we focus on new hires to the entry-level tenure-track market.
67. For a discussion of the conference, see, e.g., James D. Gordon III, An Insider's Guide to the Faculty Recruitment Conference, 43 J. Legal Educ. 301 (1993).
68. Our description is of the modal school. There are some exceptions. At least one law school is known to have two on-campus interview steps: the first with the full committee and the second with the full faculty.
69. See, e.g., Anne Enquist, Paula Lustbader & John B. Mitchell, From Both Sides Now: The Job Talk's Role in Matching Candidates with Law Schools, 42 U. Tol. L. Rev. 619 (2011).
70. For an interesting discussion of tournaments in a different legal environment, see Marc Galanter & Thomas Palay, Tournament of Lawyers: The Transformation of the Big Law Firm (1994).
71. Our surveys were approved through our respective institutional review boards. The IRBs' approval requires that our results are reported in a manner that ensures the anonymity of respondents. Consequently, we are constrained in our ability to use variables that would involve small numbers of candidates who might then be identifiable. We also followed numerous other steps designed to ensure that surveyed individuals knew that participation was voluntary and confidential, and it would not affect their candidacy for a position. For example, both authors were firewalled from the entry-level hiring process at our own institutions during the 2007-2008 academic year.
72. We worked with AALS in 2006, 2007, and 2008 to contact AALS FAR candidates to ask them to participate in the survey. AALS granted us permission to use the FAR database to supplement our survey results and also to provide a benchmark against which to evaluate the representativeness of the survey sample. During the 2007-2008 faculty recruitment process, candidates were allowed to opt out of having their FAR forms used as the basis of an academic study. A small number of candidates did so and are not included in our database. The AALS FAR data are owned by AALS and, as a result, we cannot share the data with third parties.
73. For a discussion of issues related to response rates below 100 percent, see Earl Babbie, The Practice of Social Research 272-74 (12th ed. 2010) (Babbie also observes that a return rate of 60 percent for mail surveys is good);
74. Delbert C. Miller, Handbook of Research Design and Social Measurement (1991);
75. Don A. Dillman, Mail and Other Self-Administered Questionnaires, in Handbook of Survey Research 359 (Peter H. Rossi et al. eds., 1983).
76. AALS provided us with email addresses for each of the four waves of applicants. Candidates were given the option of refusing to allow us to contact them, and a handful asked not to be contacted. The surveys also made clear that participation was voluntary and confidential, and that any resulting publications would protect the anonymity of respondents.
77. All surveys were retrospective, asking candidates about their experiences up to that point in the market. However, the first online survey was completed while many candidates were still participating in the market, while nearly all candidates had finished their search by the time of the subsequent surveys.
78. Incentives are an important component of increasing mail survey response rates.See, e.g., A.H. Church, Estimating the Effect of Incentives on Mail Survey Response Rates: A Meta-Analysis, 57 Pub. Op. Q. 62 (1993).
79. Specifically, we first asked respondents whether they received a job offer, and in a separate question asked the nature of the job offer (e.g., tenured, tenure track, clinical, fellowship, etc.). Not surprisingly, the vast majority of offers were tenure track.
80. This figure compares known race. We know the race of all survey respondents because every respondent answered our question about race. However, many AALS FAR applicants chose to leave the question blank on the form, which is circulated to law schools. Comparing the representation of whites in the respondent and nonrespondent groups, we find that 76 percent of survey respondents identify as white while only 63 percent of nonrespondents identify as white. However, an additional 14 percent of nonrespondents did not answer the FAR form race question. If the pools are otherwise similar on race, then most of the nonrespondents are likely white. This would be consistent with anecdotal accounts that the majority of FAR candidates who do not disclose race are white. See sources cited in notes infra.
81. Arguments regarding the role of ideology in law school hiring fall at the contentious end of the spectrum.
82. See, e.g., Adam Liptak, Lawsuit Pits Political Activism Against Campus Diversity, N.Y. Times, Jan. 9, 2012. We asked respondents about their ideology, but the smaller response rate and issues of relative salience (i.e., whether ideology was easily discerned by schools) made it inappropriate for inclusion in the present study, which looks at the entire sample.
83. See, e.g., Lucinda Jesson, So You Want to be a Law Professor, 59 J. Legal Ed. 450 (2010);
84. Brad Wendel, The Big Rock Candy Mountain: How to Get a Job in Law Teaching, http://ww3.lawschool.cornell.edu/faculty-pages/wendel/ teaching.htm.
85. See, e.g., Brannon P. Denning, Marcia L. McCormick & Jeffrey M. Lipshaw, Becoming a Law Professor: A Candidate's Guide (2010);
86. Ronald Eade, How to Be a Law Professor Guide: From Getting that First Job to Retirement (2008);
87. David W. Case, The Pedagogical Don Quixote de la Mississippi, 33 U. Mem. L. Rev. 529, 568 (2003);
88. James Gordley, Mere Brilliance: The Recruitment of Law Professors in the United States, 41 Am. J. Comp. L. 367 (1993);
89. Don Zillman, Marina Angel, Jan Laitos, George Pring & Joseph Tomain, Uncloaking Law School Hiring: A Recruit's Guide to the AALS Faculty Recruitment Conference, 38 J. Legal Educ. 345 (1988);
90. Jon W. Bruce & Michael I. Swygert, The Law Faculty Hiring Process, 18 Houston L. Rev. 215 (1981);
91. William J. Prosser, Advice to the Lovelorn, 3 J. Legal Educ. 505 (1951).
92. See Brian Leiter's Law School Reports, Advice for Academic Job Seekers, http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/ leiter/advice-for-academic-job-seekers/;
93. Lawrence B. Solum, Legal Theory Blog, Entry Level Hiring Report, http:// lsolum.typepad.com/legaltheory/entry_level_hiring_report/.
94. See also PrawfsBlawg, Entry-Level Hiring Report, http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2011/04/rookies-hiring-an-open-thread.html.
95. See, e.g., Michael Stokes Paulsen, Reverse Discrimination and Law School Faculty Hiring: The Undiscovered Opinion, 71 Tex. L. Rev. 993 (1993);
96. Richard H. Chused, The Hiring and Retention of Minorities and Women on American Law School Faculties, 137 U. Pa. L. Rev. 537 (1988).
97. See, e.g., John Hasnas, Affirmative Action and the New Discrimination: A Reply to Duncan Kennedy, 54 La. L. Rev. 263 (1993);
98. Marina Angel, Women in Legal Education: What it's Like to be Part of a Perpetual First Wave or the Case of the Disappearing Women, 61 Temple L. Rev. 799 (1988).
99. See, e.g., Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Complimentary Discrimination and Complementary Discrimination in Faculty Hiring, 87 Wash. U.L. Rev. 763 (2010);
100. Alfred C. Yen, A Statistical Analysis of Asian Americans and the Affirmative Action Hiring of Law School Faculty, 3 Asian L.J. 39 (1996). The Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) has collected independent data on law school faculty composition by race and gender.
101. See Richard H. Chused, The Hiring and Retention of Minorities and Women on American Law School Faculties, 137 U. Pa. L. Rev. 537 (1988). For the AALS data
102. see, e.g., Richard A. White, The Gender and Minority Composition of New Law Teachers and AALS Faculty Appointments Register Candidates, 44 J. Legal Educ. 424 (1994) (compiling data from several years), AALS Statistical Report
103. See Deborah Jones Merritt & Barbara F. Reskin, Sex, Race, and Credentials: The Truth About Affirmative Action, 97 Colum. L. Rev. 199 (1997) (presenting the primary multivariate analysis of their substantial database);
104. Deborah J. Merritt & Barbara F. Reskin, The Double Minority: Empirical Evidence of a Double Standard in Law School Hiring of Minority Women, 65 S. Cal. L. Rev. 2299 (1992).
105. Lee Epstein & Gary King, The Rules of Inference, 69 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1 (2002) (discussing this and a much broader set of issues related to the construction and interpretation of empirical research).
106. Ted I.K. Youn, Studies of Academic Markets and Careers: An Historical Review, in Academic Labor Markets and Careers 8 (David W. Breneman & Ted I.K. Young eds., 1988) (reviewing and evaluating the study of labor markets for professors). Gary S. Becker, Human Capital (1964);
107. Orly Ashenfelter & Joseph D. Mooney, Graduate Education, Ability and Earnings, 49 Rev. Econ. & Stat. (1968);
108. W. Lee Hansen, The Economics of Scientific & Engineering Manpower, II J. Hum. Res. 191 (Spring 1967).
109. Joseph R. Stiglitz, The Theory of Screening, Education and the Distribution of Income, 65 Am. Econ. Rev. 315 (1975) (finding that job prospects are determined by relative prestige of Ph.D.-granting institutions);
110. Bernard Berelson, Graduate Education in America (1960) (this early study of stratification in academia found a strong positive correlation between prestige of degree-granting department and first job department in the hard sciences); Theodore Caplow & Reese MCGee, The Academic Marketplace (1958);
111. Jonathan R. Cole & Stephen Cole, Social Stratification in Science (1973) (confirming and elaborating the early work of scholars such as Berelson and Allison and Caplow).
112. J.R. Niland, Allocation of Ph.D. Manpower in the Academic Labor Market, 2 Indus. Rel. 141 (1972);
113. E.P. Lazear & S. Rosen, Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimum Labor Contracts, 89 J. Pol. Econ. 135 (1981);
114. Diana Crane, The Academic Marketplace Revisited, 7 Am. J. Soc. 953 (1970) (sociologist who concluded that despite a commitment to universalism, science department hiring is explained more readily by graduate department prestige than by scholarly productivity).
115. Ted I.K. Youn, Studies of Academic Markets and Careers: An Historical Review, in Academic Labor Markets and Careers 8, 17 (David W. Breneman & Ted I.K. Young eds., 1988) (concluding based on a review of existing economic and sociological studies that "[t]he prestige of first career position is determined largely by the prestige of the graduate institution");
116. Robert McGinnis & J. Scott Long, Entry into Academia: Effects of Stratification, Geography and Ecology, in Academic Labor Markets and Careers (David W. Breneman & Ted I.K. Young eds., 1988) (finding that institutional or mentor prestige determines entry-level academic posts for biochemists, leading to long-term stratification in academia due to differing reward structures);
117. see also J. Scott Long, P.D. Allison & Robert McGinnis, Entrance into the Academic Career, 44 Am Soc. Rev. 889 (1979) (finding that biochemistry academic positions are allocated according to Ph.D. institution prestige rather than predoctoral productivity, especially with respect to first position); Barbara Reskin, Academic Sponsorship and Scientists Careers, 52 Soc. Educ. 129 (1979) (concluding that sponsorship by a prominent scholar matters more than personal achievement in a scientist's career).
118. Allan M. Cartter, Ph.D.s and the Academic Labor Market (1976);
119. see also Allan M. Carter, The Supply and Demand of College Teachers, 1965 Am. Statistical Ass'n Social Statistics Proceedings 70.
120. Sociologists Long, Allison, and McGinnis, for example, found that Ph.D. prestige was the most important explanatory variable and had a 0.28 regression coefficient as compared to -0.02 for preemployment publications (and citations), controlling for mentor's reputation, undergraduate institution selectivity, and graduate program size.
121. J. Scott Long, Paul D. Allison & Robert McGinnis, Entrance into the Academic Career, 44 Am. Soc. Rev. 816 (1979). These sociologists, who have done much work in the area, concluded that "neither the quantity nor the 'quality' of one's early publications has a significant influence on where one ends up in the prestige hierarchy" in biochemistry. Id. at 820. These studies focus primarily on elite research institutions (Ph.D. granting), and may not tell us much about hiring beyond the first tier of U.S. law schools where teaching (and, in law schools, service to the bench and bar) grow in importance relative to research.
122. For a discussion of the high consensus/low consensus distinction and its implications for studies of academic labor markets
123. see Lowell L. Hargens & Warren Hagstrom, Scientific Consensus and Academic Status Attainment Patterns, 55 Soc. Educ. 183 (1982).
124. See, e.g., Richard Carson & Peter Navarro, A Seller's (& Buyer's) Guide to the Job Market for Beginning Academic Economists, 2 J. Econ. Persp. 137 (1988) (finding that economics departments, in response to a survey, claimed that many factors matter to the decision to interview and the evaluation of the interview itself);
125. but see Wendy A. Stock, Richard M. Alston & Martin Milkman, The Academic Labor Market for Economists-1995-96, 28 Atl. Econ. J. 164 (2000) (finding in a later survey of economics departments that school affiliation was very important to decision to interview and was weighted as more important than particularized characteristics).
126. See Stephane Baldi, Prestige Determinants of First Academic Job for New Sociology Ph.D.s 1985-1992, Soc. Q. 777, 778 (1995) ("Fields characterized by specific, standardized procedures for evaluation of contributions (such as the hard sciences) should put greater emphasis on individual performance for employment in an academic department than fields that lack standardized procedures.").
127. Richard Whitley, The Intellectual and Social Organization of the Sciences 164-205 (1984).
128. See, e.g., Brian Leiter's Law School Reports, Harvard Law School to Adopt Pass-Fail Grading System Like Yale and Stanford, http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2008/09/harvard-law-sch.html.
129. See National Order of the Coif, http://www.orderofthecoif.org/.
130. See, e.g., Thomas F. Bergin, The Law Teacher: A Man Divided Against Himself, 54 Va. L. Rev. 637 (1968) (arguing that a Ph.D. would be better training for law professors because of the requirement that law professors be both scholars and teachers).
131. See, e.g., Joni Hersch & W. Kip Viscusi, Law and Economics as Pillar of Legal Education, Vanderbilt Law and Economics Research Paper No. 11-35, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1907760, at 3-4, 21-23, Table 1 Panels A-C (reporting on the number of professors with doctoral degrees at the top-26 law schools and finding a correlation between ranking and number of Ph.D.s on faculty);
132. Tracey E. George, An Empirical Study of Empirical Legal Scholarship: The Top Law Schools, 81 Ind. L.J. 141, 151-52 (reporting on the significant number of professors on elite law faculty with social science doctorates).
133. State bar membership, the formal mark of being a lawyer, is common for entry-level law teaching applicants. Almost every applicant-92 percent-had been admitted to a bar and those who were not admitted usually have a reason, such as a foreign law degree or no law degree. The lack of a U.S. law degree should have an independent effect on job prospects. Thus, we did not include bar membership as a variable because it is not well-supported theoretically as a proxy for legal experience and is unhelpful empirically in explaining the results.
134. See, e.g., Ethan S. Burger & Douglas R. Richmond, The Future of Law School Faculty Hiring in Light of Smith v. City of Jackson, 13 Va. J. Soc. Pol'y & L. 1, 35 (2005).
135. See, e.g., Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: On Race, Black Power, Black Studies and Affirmative Action (1987) (presenting perhaps the most famous such account). Studies of other disciplines such as economics and sociology have not found an effect.
136. Debra A. Barbezat, The Market for New Ph.D. Economists, 23 J. Econ. Ed. 262, 268-69 (1992).
137. See, e.g., Richard H. Chused, The Hiring and Retention of Minorities and Women on American Law School Faculties, 137 U. Penn. L. Rev. 537 (1988).
138. The American Bar Association reports historical enrollment of men and women. See http://www.abanet.org/ legaled/statistics/charts/stats%20-%206.pdf.
139. See Washington & Lee University School of Law, Law Library, Law Journals: Submissions and Ranking, 2005-2012, http://lawlib.wlu.edu/LJ/. Under journal criteria, we selected "all subjects" in the United States. We coded the normalized "Combined Score," which "is a composite of each journal's impact factor and total cites count." We used the default setting, which weights impact factor one-third and citations two-thirds, http://lawlib.wlu.edu/LJ/ method.asp#methodology.
140. Candidates are listed only once in the "Scholarly Publication" section of Table 4. If a candidate/respondent published more than one work of the types listed, we included the highest ranked law journal article.
141. Most screening interviews occurred at the AALS Faculty Recruitment Conference, but some occurred at the school itself. An on-campus interview was coded as only an "initial" or preliminary interview if it did not include a job talk.
142. Respondents in Column 1 include 15 candidates who received tenure-track offers but declined them. This group had, on average, fewer interviews, job talks, and offers than applicants who ultimately accepted tenure-track offers.
143. Years since graduation should have a curvilinear relationship to job market success: additional years of experience would be positively associated with job market success until some point, at which the return would become negative. Stated differently, the early years would reflect investments in personal capital, which are positively associated with success. However, a candidate who has worked past that point is likely to have invested in activities designed for a different career and thus is a weaker candidate. Because of the curvilinear relationship, we tested a quadratic specification of time since graduation, including both years and years-squared. The direction of the covariate as well as the lack of statistical significance led us to reject this specification in favor of a cut-point approach. For screening interviews, probabilities steadily increased until 13 years out of law school (13-18 percent), after which they began to decline. For the next two stages, the decline began around Year 10. For consistency and comparison, we used the same binary variable for all three models.
144. The probit model includes a publication variable based on the Washington & Lee ranking of law journals. The relationship between law journal ranking and job market success is not linear, thus, we created tiers based on natural breaks. The three tiers include the two reported (Top 100 and 101-300) and the omitted category (no top-300 articles).
145. We ran the models with the book variable as a separate category, but the sign (negative) did not make sense theoretically. Few candidates have books. The books include university press books, practitioners' guides, casebooks, jury instruction manuals, books only loosely related to law, how-to books, and so on. But the numbers of each are so small, it is not meaningful to divide the "book" variable into separate categories. Therefore, we do not control for books. Another complication: in the ordered probit model, the book variable is perfectly correlated with outcome in some law school tiers, distorting the standard errors in our ordered probit model.
146. Although not reported in Table 6, we also consider interactions of some of these terms. For example, we considered the joint effect of having both published and possessing a Ph.D. In our sample, candidates with Ph.D.s are more likely to have published (77 percent) than non-Ph.D. candidates (65 percent). We found, however, that among the subset of applicants who had published, those with a Ph.D. had roughly the same probability of receiving a screening interview (86 percent) as those without a Ph.D. (86 percent).
147. We recognize that the criteria for clinical-track tenure-track hiring likely differ in some respects from researchtenure tenure-track hiring. We do not, however, know with specificity the differences for the respondents to our survey.
148. The total number of applicants who declined a tenure-track job is likely higher, given the number of candidates who did not participate in the survey.