Tuesday, September 24, 2024
The new timetable of the law school hiring market
Because I've been working with Chicago alums and fellows on the teaching market since 2008 (and doing the same at UT Austin before that), I've been witness to the changing timetable since the pandemic killed the "meat market" in Washington, DC (thank goodness!) and Zoom took over.
Here's my perception, but I've opened comments for different perspectives and input (please use your full name and a valid email address):
1. Schools start scheduling interview within a week of the FAR forms being released, especially for candidates with strong credentials that meet their hiring needs. (Caveat: the selection bias in my sample is that I'm dealing with Chicago alums and Fellows.) Bear in mind that 80-85% of schools every year are hiring to fill pressing curricular needs; only a minority are doing pure "best athlete" hiring.
2. By this time (i.e., roughly a month after the FAR is released), there are relatively few screeners being scheduled, except by elite law schools, which take their time.
3. Also by this time, the candidates who are successful at screener interviews are getting callbacks, though the rate varies: 25% yield (sometimes higher) for the strongest candidates, lower for others (many of whom will go on to get jobs!).
4. Some schools begin making offers in October, which was almost unheard of under the old system.
5. Despite the preceding generalizations, candidates get screener invitations well into October (and not only from elite schools), and callbacks and offers of jobs still extend well into February and March.
Please submit your comment only once, it may take awhile to appear. Remember: full name and valid email address (the latter will not appear). Thank you.
https://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2024/09/the-new-timetable-of-the-law-school-hiring-market.html
Apologies for the meta-comment, but I am struck that no one has commented on this post yet. Apart from mere chance and the press of life, which of course may be the reason,* I could imagine several possible reasons: 1) No one knows anything! The death of the old system has left chaos, ignorance, and uncertainty in its wake. 2) Those who do know something--who know, in any event, what their own institution is doing--have no idea what anyone else is doing. 3) Those who know what their own institution is doing and have some idea what others are doing are unwilling to say much in public, lest they lose a temporary market advantage. ("Temporary" because the information will eventually filter out and other schools will respond, forcing competition along other lines and other momentary advantages derived from clever strategic moves.)
In any event, the less we know and/or say, the more we should be thinking about how the lack of information affects candidates, whose welfare we often purport to care about.
* I grant another, quite likely possibility: that the information is being collected and shared, helter-skelter, on social media. Since I mostly avoid those precincts, I can't say. I'm sure more candidates are likely to look there, but I'm not sure it's a better vehicle for sharing information and insight than a centralized site like this one.
Posted by: Paul S Horwitz | Sep 26, 2024 6:18:54 AM