Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

Law school application season: total applicants down slightly, high-end LSAT scores down more

Blog Emperor Caron reports on the state of the law school application season about one-third of the way through.  Given how strong last year's applicant pool was, this slightly downturn (if it holds) should not be of great concern to the vast majority of law schools.

Lateral hires with tenure or on tenure-track, 2021-22

These are non-clinical appointments that will take effect in 2022 (except where noted); I will move the list to the front at various intervals as new additions come in.   (Recent additions will be put in bold.)  Last year's list is here.

 

*Michelle Adams (civil rights, constitutional law, law & race) from Cardozo Law School/Yeshiva University to the University of Michigan.

 

*Mario Barnes (constitutional law, criminal law, national security law, race & the law) from the University of Washington, Seattle (where he is Dean) back to the University of California, Irvine (effective January 2022).

 

*John R. Brooks (tax law & policy) from Georgetown University to Fordham University.

 

*Raff Donelson (criminal law & procedure, jurisprudence) from Pennsylvania  State University-Dickinson School of Law to Chicago-Kent College of Law/Illinois Institute of Technology.

 

*Clare Ryan (family law, human rights) from Louisiana State University to the University of Alabama (untenured lateral).

 

*Amy Schmitz (alternative dispute resolution, law & technology, consumer law) from the University of Missouri, Columbia to Ohio State University (effective January 2022).

 

*Andrea Schneider (alternative dispute resolution, negotiation) from Marquette University to Cardozo Law School/Yeshiva University.

 

*Shelley Welton (environmental law, energy law) from the University of South Carolina to the University of Pennsylvania.

 

*Lindsay Wiley (health law) from American University to University of California, Los Angeles (effective January 2022).

Links to all the 2021 Scholarly Impact ranking posts *so far* (for citations during 2016-2020)

Top 50 law faculties in overall scholarly impact, 2016-2020

Top 25 law faculties in median scholarly impact, 2016-2020

10 Most-Cited Faculty in the US, 2016-2020

20 Most-Cited in Administrative and/or Environmental Law

10 Most-Cited in Antitrust

10 Most-Cited in Civil Procedure

10 Most-Cited in Commercial Law

20 Most-Cited in Constitutional Law

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McCarthyist accusations deployed against law professor in Confirmation hearing (Michael Simkovic)

Cornell Law School professor (and former Davis Polk financial institutions group lawyer) Saule Omarova, was nominated by President Biden to head the Office of Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates nationally chartered banks.  Omarova is a progressive scholar of financial regulation who has written about the possibility of increased public provision of financial services, including a National Investment Authority to help finance infrastructure projects.

Such public financial institutions might sometimes compete with private financial institutions, much as public universities and k-12 schools take some business away from private universities and private schools, and as public transit takes some business away from car companies. Omarova's advocacy for public options, and some of Omarova's critiques of private financial institutions, have made her a target.

During Omarova's Senate confirmation hearing, her critics resorted to name calling and nationalist dog-whistles, with Republican Senators accusing her of being a "radical" and a "comrade" (i.e.,  a communist) out to "end banking as we know it" in part because she emigrated from a central asian country that was once part of the Soviet Union.

In what seemed like an anachronism from the worst days of the 1950s, Omarova felt compelled to defend herself by saying: “I am not a communist. I do not subscribe to that ideology. I could not choose where I was born . . . My family suffered under the communist regime.”

The Financial Times has the full story.

Senators are of course free to take exception with Omarova's proposals for an NIA or publicly backed electronic payments systems, or to disagree with her advocacy for robust financial regulation, but accusing her of being a communist is beyond the pale. 

UIC's John Marshall Law School should lose its accreditation if it continues with this "witch hunt" against a faculty member

Professor Andy Koppelman (Northwestern) comments at CHE (do read the full account):

In January the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Law disgraced itself with its foolish persecution of Jason Kilborn, a professor who was accused of racism for asking students to address an ordinary hypothetical, of a kind they are likely to encounter in normal legal practice. That episode has now ballooned into calls for his firing, with an ill-informed Rev. Jesse Jackson leading protests against him. And the university, while it refuses to fire Kilborn, is continuing to punish him for things it knows he didn’t do.

 

The trouble started when, in a “Civil Procedure” exam, Kilborn asked whether a hypothetical company, sued for discrimination, must disclose evidence to the plaintiff. In the test’s scenario, a former employee told the company’s lawyer “that she quit her job at Employer after she attended a meeting in which other managers expressed their anger at Plaintiff, calling her a ‘n____’ and ‘b____’ (profane expressions for African Americans and women) and vowed to get rid of her.” The exam did not spell out those words, which appeared exactly as you just read them. (This was just one of the test’s 50 questions.)

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Two Yale law students sue Yale and various Deans...

...for their actions during L'Affaire Chua.   The full complaint is here.  As paragraph 21 notes, the absence of grades at Yale "means that Yale Law School students are in high competition over non-grade signifiers of merit."  How much this competition has to do with "merit" is questionable, of course.  Coming on the heels of the "Trap House Affair" (and the earlier expose of the class divide), this has not been a good year for Yale Law School.

ADDENDUM:  A comparison of allegations about administrator conduct in the two cases.

 

10 Most-Cited Election Law Faculty in the U.S., 2016-2020

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the ten most-cited law faculty working in election law in the U.S. for the period 2016-2020 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2021, and that the pre-2021 database did expand a bit since then).  Numbers are rounded to the nearest ten.    Faculty for whom roughly 75% or more of their citations (based on a sample) are in this area are listed; others with less than 75% of their citations in this field (but still a plurality) are listed in the category of "other highly cited scholars who work partly in this area." 

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Simon Lazarus YLS '67 on "Where Yale Law School Has Gone Off the Rails, and What is Needed to Get It Back on Track"

Mr. Lazarus is a 1967 graduate of Yale Law School and a distinguished lawyer who served as associate director of President Jimmy Carter’s White House Domestic Policy Staff, and since then with private and public-interest law firms in Washington, D.C.  He kindly gave permission to share with readers his penetrating analysis of Yale's mishandling of the "Trap House Affair" and how to now make things right:  Download 11.9.2021 memo on the Trap House Affair.  Do read the whole memo, but here is an excerpt to give the flavor:

What now is most baffling is the YLS administration’s defiant, defensive crouch response to the widening public criticism – batting away the smoking-gun-studded factual record, as “partial facts” in a “charged media environment,” and attempting to deflect criticism by announcing an “assessment” by Deputy Dean Ian Ayres, “to help us move forward.”  Refusing to address publicly available facts, and trivializing, as media hype, outrage from a Pulitzer Prize winning Washington Post columnist, a Post Deputy Editorial Page Editor, and distinguished academics – will not stem this tide. Nor will Dean Gerken’s passing the buck to a subordinate.  

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What do you need to find out now that you've gotten a tenure-track offer?

MOVING TO FRONT SINCE SOME SCHOOLS HAVE STARTED TO EXTEND OFFERS (ORIGINALLY POSTED NOVEMBER 24, 2009--I HAVE UPDATED CERTAIN NUMBERS)--SEE ALSO THE COMMENTS, WHICH HAVE HELPFUL ADDITIONAL SUGGESTIONS

With luck, some of you seeking law teaching jobs will get offers of tenure-track positions in the next couple of months; a handful of offers have already been extended this season (2019-20).  What then?  Here's roughly what I tell the Chicago job candidates we work with that they need to find out, and in the interest of having it written down in one place and for the benefit of others too, here it is (not in order of importance):

1.  You will want to get (in writing eventually) the basic salary information, obviously, and the nature of summer research support and the criteria for its award (is it automatic for junior faculty?  contingent on prior publication [if so, how much?]?  awarded competitively (if so, based on what criteria/process)?).   You should also find out how salary raises are determined.  Are they, for example, lock-step for junior faculty?  Fixed by union contract?  (Rutgers faculty, for example, are unionized, a huge advantage and why they are among the best-paid faculty, not just in law, in the country.)  Is it a 'merit' system, and if so is it decanal discretion or is their a faculty committee that reviews your teaching and work each year?

2.  You should ask for a copy of the school's tenure standards and get clear about the expectations and the timeline.  Does any work you have already published count towards meeting the tenure standard?

3.  What research leave policy, if any, does the school have?  A term off after every three full years of teaching is a very good leave policy; some schools have even better policies, most have less generous leave policies.  (If there is a norm, it is a term off after every six years.)  Many schools have a special leave policy for junior faculty, designed to give them some time off prior to the tenure decision.  Find out if the school has such a policy.

4.  One of the most important things to be clear about is not just your teaching load, but what courses you will be teaching precisely.  You should ask whether the school can guarantee a stable set of courses until after the tenure decision.  Preparing new courses is hugely time-consuming, and you also get better at teaching the course the more times you do it.  As a tenure-track faculty member, having a stable package of, say, three courses (plus a seminar) will make a huge difference in terms of your ability to conduct research and write.   In my experience, most schools will commit in writing to a set of courses for the tenure-track years (and do ask for this in writing), but some schools either won't or can't.   In my view, it's a good reason to prefer one school to another that one will give you the courses you want and promise them that they're yours, while another won't--a consideration that overrides lots of other factors, including salary.

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20 Most-Cited Administrative and/or Environmental Law Faculty in the U.S., 2016-2020

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the twenty most-cited law faculty working in administrative and/or environmental law in the U.S. for the period 2016-2020 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2021, and that the pre-2021 database did expand a bit since then).  Numbers are rounded to the nearest ten.    Faculty for whom roughly 75% or more of their citations (based on a sample) are in this area are listed; others with less than 75% of their citations in this field (but still a plurality) are listed in the category of "other highly cited scholars who work partly in this area." 

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"Alan Dershowitz Chair in Public Outreach"

At Harvard Law School, no less:

THE HARVARD LAW SCHOOL invites applications for the position of Alan Dershowitz Chair in Public Outreach. Position will commence August 2022. The Law School welcomes applications from scholars in all subject areas of the law.  However, knowledge of the law is not required.

Strong applicants must be willing to seek media attention, and take positions that may seem outlandish or wild to skilled observers in the legal community. In fact, we fully expect the ideal candidate to trade on any scholarly reputation they might have in enhancing their notoriety as media attention is constantly thrust at them. The more outlandish the theories, the better. We need people talking about our faculty, too. And we don’t offer dinner parties.

There is no expectation that the Chair will publish. The only requirement for the position is that the Chair say outlandish things. However, outlandish op-eds, blog posts, and tweets are highly recommended.

10 Most-Cited Labor and/or Employment Law Faculty in the U.S., 2016-2020

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the ten most-cited law faculty working in labor and/or employment law (including employment discrimination) in the U.S. for the period 2016-2020 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2021, and that the pre-2021 database did expand a bit since then).  Numbers are rounded to the nearest ten.    Faculty for whom roughly 75% or more of their citations (based on a sample) are in this area are listed; others with less than 75% of their citations in this field (but still a plurality) are listed in the category of "other highly cited scholars who work partly in this area."  (Thanks to Professors Bradley Areheart, Matt Bodie, and Orly Lobel for help in thinking about the contours of this specialty and identifying relevant scholars; mistakes are mine!)

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10 Most-Cited Legislation/Statutory Interpretation Law Faculty in the U.S., 2016-2020 (CORRECTED)

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the ten most-cited law faculty working on legislation (understood broadly to include statutory interpretation and study of the legislative [e.g., Congressional] process) in the U.S. for the period 2016-2020 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2021, and that the pre-2021 database did expand a bit since then).  Numbers are rounded to the nearest ten.    Faculty for whom roughly 75% or more of their citations (based on a sample) are in this area are listed; others with less than 75% of their citations in this field (but still a plurality) are listed in the category of "other highly cited scholars who work partly in this area."  (Thanks to Professors Ryan Doerfler and Daniel Rodriguez for help in thinking about the contours of this specialty and identifying relevant scholars; mistakes are mine!)

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