War Stories: A Successful Law Teaching Candidate Reflects on His Experience on the Job Market

A newly minted law teacher, who will start teaching at a very good law school this fall, writes with the following interesting remarks about his experience on the teaching market this past year:

Some of life's more grueling experiences (serious illness, for example) are hard to describe without metaphor.  For me, the entry-level job market -- though no life or death matter, despite the market's effort to convey that -- is one of them.  I can relate my experience through two metaphors, one for each of the two major stages of this process.

1. The Meat Market.  Here, the self-conferred metaphor is apt:  meat, or some other gustatory product.  I did 20 interviews at the AALS conference, ranging throughout the USN top-100 schools.  This is a process heavily determined by framing effects.  While I didn't get much sense at the Marriott as to how each interview went, I did get a general sense that the market had already slotted me into a pretty firm category and was going to do what it could to persuade itself that its ex ante decision was correct.  Under these circumstances, it is extremely difficult to change one's position in a 30-minute interview format.  I seem to have been graded ex ante as steak, perhaps tasty steak, but not veal or filet mignon.  As results of blind/non-blind test tastes tend to show, knowledge in advance of the brand or grade assigned to what one is tasting is the most important factor determining what one ends up thinking about taste.  (Good steak, by the way, may well be offered to filet-eating faculties at the call-back stage but the experience may only remind them why they prefer filet.)

2. The Call-Back Market.  Here, the metaphor shifts -- to real estate, with apologies to those who have not yet sold a home.  The candidate is both the house and the seller.  The candidate's recommenders are the seller's agent.  The appointments committee chairs are the buyers' agents.  All the real estate agents talk to each other constantly about all the houses on the market.  While all buyers will undertake a rigorous and professional inspection before finalizing a contract, buyers' first and superficial impressions of a home are often critical in solidifying or destabilizing their desire to purchase that home.  Psychology drives the market.  Critically, how long the house has been on the market, how many buyers have requested showings (and how wealthy are those buyers), and whether the house has received any offers largely determine (once you're talking about the nice houses in the desirable locations) which houses sell for at, over, or under asking price.  From the candidate's perspective, this is much less enjoyable than the quite unpleasant process of selling one's home because, again, the candidate is not only the seller but also the house.  One can have various levels of emotional investment in a home.  One generally has complete emotional investment in oneself.

In a possibly more productive vein, below are some practical impressions from one candidate's perspective.

1.  The AALS interviews divided into two types:  1) top-20 schools grilled me on my paper, and virtually nothing else, from the first question to the last with almost no pleasantries or opportunity for me to ask questions; 2) everyone else (with a couple of exceptions) tried to sell their schools, with varying success.  The interviews further divided only in this way.  Category 1s either grilled with some personality, or with none.  The Category 1 interviews that lacked any personality or warmth were slight turn-offs, but that of course doesn't matter if one has been graded as steak, because the market assumes all steaks will accept all offers from Category 1 schools.  Category 2s either mixed in a bit of substantive exchange to their sales pitch, or exclusively engaged in sales.  Surprisingly and in spite of general candidate anxiety about getting pressed, the latter form of Category 2 interview was a turn-off because it left the sense that the faculty might not be sufficiently engaged with ideas.  On the other hand, lower-ranked schools that were too aggressive, even a touch hostile, in their interviews tended to convey a sense of insecurity that was concerning.  All interviews that include young faculty, ideally with a bit of adult supervision, make better impressions on the interviewee than those that don't.  It's also effective to be able to talk about momentum in junior hiring so that the candidate does not worry about isolation.  This may go without saying, but it is not a good idea (as was the case with one school) to send a panel of interviewers likely to be stumped by the question who on their faculty in recent years has taught a core upper-level course that is part of every law school's curriculum.

2.  The hiring committee chairs, who become so central during the second stage of this process, were almost unfailingly straightforward, courteous, and decent in all of their dealings with me -- well above the average I have encountered in other settings in the legal academy.  I suppose this is because faculties are very careful about whom they select to perform this function.  Lack of those qualities by the person in that position could be disastrous for a school.  This is perhaps evidence that faculty governance can be rational.  On a last and I hope somewhat amusing note, I am certain that one hiring chair who called me in order to set up an AALS interview -- from a school I declined to interview with -- conducted our telephone conversation from a prepared script.  To '06-'07 candidates:  keep your sense of humor throughout!

Comments are open, for those who want to share other "war stories" or comment on how their experiences relate to those described above.  (Post only once; comments may take awhile to appear.)

Comments

[Orin Kerr]

There's a lot here, but let me disagree with the argument of Stage 1, that "it is extremely difficult to change one's position in a 30-minute interview format."

I have only been on an appointments committee once, and only at one school. In my experience, though, the 30-minute intveriews at the meat market were critical. Candidates often came out of the interview either much higher or much lower on our list than before the interview.

[Brian Leiter]

I want to second Orin Kerr's point: the 30-minute interview can make a substantial difference.

[Kevin Johnson]

ditto I have been on interviewing teams 12 or 13 times and, every year, I am surprised by how much the interviews mean. To use the candidate's metaphor, I have see filets turn into hamburger in five miniutes. :)