KIMBERLY J. ROBINSON:
I'm just going to share my own personal journey
to becoming a law professor. So when I went to law
school, I was planning to be a civil rights lawyer. And that is what I became. Upon graduation, I litigated
cases for school districts that focused on school
funding equity issues, I worked for the United
States Department of Education on issues of civil rights. So sex discrimination,
disability discrimination, and race discrimination. So I helped to draft
regulations about these issues, I helped to write guidance
about these issues. This was exactly what I
went to law school to do. What ultimately
started happening was, I was just asking
questions about why we have the inequalities
we have in education. And so those questions are sort
of first generation questions. Like, sort of, how
did we get here to where we're trying to address
all these areas of inequality? Why is the system so broken? Why do some kids get a
terrible school and some kids get an excellent school? And so these are the kind
of fundamental questions that I was thinking about and
wanted to start writing about. And as you might
imagine, those are not the questions that
come up in litigation that the federal government
is engaging in, right? Those are questions
underlying the litigation and those are questions
underlying the policies that we're creating, but
they're not questions that your supervisor at
the Department of Education is asking you to
write about, right? And so ultimately I decided
to go on the market-- and then this was
actually something that a faculty mentor
of mine recommended that I do in law school. I was his teaching assistant. He said, I think you would
make a great law professor. And I was like, no, no. I think I'm going to go and
be a civil rights lawyer. I'm very clear. I'm one of those goal-oriented
people, I make a lot of lists. And it was like, law school,
check, clerkship, check, and then be a civil
rights lawyer. But he was right in that he saw
something in me that suggested I might sort of
enjoy teaching and I might enjoy the
intellectual inquiry that you get to engage
in as a professor. So as a professor, I get
to write and think about, why is our education
system broken? And I get to propose
solutions for how we could build a better system. Those are things that,
oftentimes in litigation, you're not always engaging those
first generation questions. And so that is, for me, one of
the things that I really love about being a law professor. So one is-- so in terms
of thinking about, why do I enjoy being
a law professor? There are several reasons. One, I get to sort
of, for the most part, except for my
teaching schedule, I get to write and think about-- I get to create my
own set of, sort of, goals for work and sort
of what I'm working on. I set my research agenda, no
one is setting that for me. So that's a lot of autonomy
and flexibility, right? I mean, as long as I
continue to be productive, and focused on scholarship,
and speaking, and those kinds of things, no one's going
to come in and tell me, this week you have
to write about this. And next month you have
to write about this. I really set my own
research agenda. And that's incredible,
I mean, to be able to write about the things
you're passionate about, think about the things
you're passionate about, research about the things
that you're passionate about. So that level of
autonomy is something that you will not find
in many areas of law. So that is one of
the things I love about being a law professor. Another thing is that I
love research and writing. So basically I could research
and write, sort of, all day. I'm a complete nerd. I embrace that in myself. And I love researching, and I
love writing, I love reading. Like, I just love all of it. So I could write all the time. And so one of the
great things about that is that that is part
of what I'm supposed to be doing as a law professor
is researching, writing, putting out scholarship. I mean, for me, it's
really just a question of, like, I just want to
get more scholarship out and more scholarship out. It's not about, oh, I
have to write today. It's like, oh, where can I
carve out some time to write, so that I can do
part of what I love? Another thing that
I really love-- and this is how I
approach my classes-- is I really love
engaging with students and encouraging them to think
about being social engineers. So I challenge my students
to think about and understand not just what the
law is, but I want you to think about
what the law should be. And in all of my classes
I encourage students-- I teach upper-level classes-- so I'm not in the
core curriculum. And I'm challenging students
in all of my classes to think about, how is the law
contributing to inequality? And how could you reform it to
reduce inequality and create a more just society? So I love encouraging
and challenging students to think about that. I've had so many
students come to me and say, my entire time
in law school no one has ever asked me,
what should the law be? They're mostly telling
me what the law is, and we think about what
the law is, and maybe even its strengths and weaknesses. But you're the first
professor to ask me, what should the law be? And so I'm always asking
students that question. Like, not just-- I help them
understand what the law is. You can't say what
the law should be until you know what it is. But I do always
encourage them to think about what it should be. And then I challenge
them, like, you will be out there making law. You are the future justices,
and judges, and lawyers, and reformers who
are shaping issues of educational inequality. So I challenge them
to really think about how they could help
to reform the system. And finally, the
last thing I really love about being a law
professor-- although I'm sure there are others. I love how flexible and
family-friendly it is. So my husband and I
have three daughters. We have two young ones at
home, and then one who's already graduated from college. And being a parent is a
very busy responsibility. And so I can-- if I'm done
teaching for the day-- I can go see my daughter's
4:00 volleyball game and cheer her on
with her teammates. I can pick my kids up
from school sometime. I can tell you I end up,
usually, making up that time some other time, whether it's
early in the morning or late at night. But there is a
flexibility there that I can be present to my
kids when they're awake. And for me, that was
something really important. I really wanted to be the
one who was raising my kids, be the one who was
there for them. And so being a law professor
really allows me to do that. I craft my schedule. There's no one clocking when
I come in and when I come out, when I take vacation
or when I don't. I am productive and
doing my job, so no one's sort of tracking. I'm not tracking my hours, I'm
not tracking all those things. I'm just doing the things that
I love, which I do organically. And then I have the
space and the flexibility to make a schedule that I
can be there for my family and be available. And to me, that is priceless. I would find it really
difficult if I could not be present to my family
in the ways that I am. Do I sometimes have
to be at work late, and they stay after
school and stay late? Absolutely. I can't pick them up every day. But I love that I can
even do that sometimes. And so for me, that
flexibility is something that I really love. So that's me. RICHARD C. SCHRAGGER: Great. So I'm Rich Schragger. I'm the Chair of the
Academic Placement Committee. And this is the committee. Professor Nelson, Professor
Robinson, and myself are the faculty members on that. What we do is we assist folks in
going on the academic teaching market. And we'll talk a little
bit more about that. My path to academia runs
through, also, some practice. I graduated law school,
I clerked for a year on the Third Circuit, then
I went into a law firm in Washington DC. I wanted to be a trial lawyer. I turned out to be not
a very good trial lawyer because I didn't like conflict. Turns out you need to like
conflict to be a trial lawyer. I got anxious about
conflict it turns out. So I then-- although I did
enjoy certain practices, certain parts of the practice. I transitioned to law
teaching by doing a fellowship and teaching some legal
writing courses at Quinnipiac University Law School, and then
went on the teaching market after that. So that is fairly
straightforward. I had practiced for
about 2 and 1/2 years, I went on the teaching market
about three or four years after clerking. So about five years
after graduating. That's a pretty standard
kind of timeline. Sometimes they're
longer, sometimes they're a little shorter. Teaching, as someone
told me, is a loophole in life, law teaching
in particular. You get all those benefits
that professor Robinson talked about. There are lots of
ways to be a teacher. You don't have to-- we're on
the research faculty, which means we do a lot of
research and writing, and we teach most of the
basic classes in law school. There are also
clinical faculty, there are administrative
kinds of faculty that are engaged in
academia as well. So there are a range of ways
to get into the legal academy. For clinical faculty,
for example, they're excited because they get
to bring cases and still be active litigators
in many cases, or transactional lawyers, but
they get to work with students, and they get to do a little
bit of teaching and scholarship on the side. For research faculty,
the research and writing is a bigger piece of it. But also, the teaching
is obviously a big draw for those of us that do it. Let me say a little bit
about the nuts and bolts of going on the
teaching market, just because it's sort of a mystery. It's actually quite
straightforward. You could go on
the teaching market tomorrow if you wanted to. It's really the preparation for
going on the teaching market that's the important part. But just working
backwards, the way we hire, at least research
faculty in law schools, is we all show up in Washington
DC at a big hotel and we interview folks who
have filled out a form and sent us their resumes. It's just a super
centralized system. There are anywhere
between 300 and 600-- maybe some more
depending on the years-- people who have
filled out this form. It's operated through the
Association of American Law Schools, the AALS, and it's
called the meat market. That's a terrible word for
it, but that's what it is. That happens in the fall. It happened a
couple of weeks ago. And that's the market,
the place where entry-level law teachers go. Law faculties have
a committee that screens the resumes of potential
entry-level law teachers. Those are submitted to those
committees in July or August of that summer, and
then they reach out to potential candidates between
then and the meat market to ask them to come to 20-minute
interviews in hotel rooms. This looks a little
bit like OJI in a way, but it's in a hotel room, which
is weirder because there's, like, a bed there and then-- And then the committee
meets with those folks for 20 minutes at a
time, and then decides whether to bring some of them
back for full-day interviews. And the full-day interviews
involve office interviews. Again, similar to
things you might do for other kinds of jobs,
and what's called a job talk. Which, for research
faculty, means presenting a paper, an original
research paper to the faculty and answering
questions about it. Sometimes meeting with
students, you meet with the dean and so on. That's the whole thing. That's how the system works. It's actually quite low-cost. It's very centralized and very
convenient in that respect. The working up to
that, to getting to a place where you're an
attractive candidate for law teaching is a different matter. And we're going to talk
a little bit about that. Do you want to talk about-- KIMBERLY J. ROBINSON:
Yeah, what to do? RICHARD C. SCHRAGGER: Yeah,
talk about what's to do, yeah. KIMBERLY J. ROBINSON: Yeah,
so you all are probably-- if you're interested in
teaching, are thinking about, what should I be
doing right now if I want to be a law professor? And there's a number of
things to think about. So my first
recommendation to you is to think about being
a research assistant. Why might you want to do that? You're going to
need some faculty members who know you well and
can speak highly of your work. That can happen from a seminar-- a small class. So that's my second
recommendation. Take some seminars
and small classes where faculty members
get to know you well. But I really think
there's nothing to substitute from being
a research assistant. In part because you get
a one-on-one relationship with a faculty member. Even in a seminar
of 16, that's still quite a lot of people
around the table who are sharing their
opinion, whereas when you work one-on-one with a
faculty member doing research, you just get that close
relationship where they really get to know you. And they can talk about
your work, they have-- when I write
recommendation letters, I write about the assignments
students have done for me, I write about how they
did, were they thorough, was the memo clear, was it-- I write about their
analytical skills. Are they professional? On time? All those kinds of things. All those things are established
in this relationship. And so I definitely
encourage you to think about being
a research assistant. There's many ways to do that. A lot-- most of us hire research
assistants over the summer. Most of us hire more than one. But also-- so you might
think about, like, which professors are
working in the areas you are interested in. Also, there's something
called directed research where you can get to know
a faculty member well. And then the other way, kind
of the second recommendation is think about a seminar
or independent research. So independent research is
another one-on-one chance with a faculty member. The faculty member you
are then writing a paper that you want to write, but
you have a faculty member supervising you. So that's another way to get
to know a faculty member well, to establish a
relationship with them, so that when you go on
the market, sort of, five years later, they should
have a recollection of, yes, I worked with you
weekly for a semester. That's a relationship
that is going to stand up for some time. So you want to look
for those opportunities to have close interactions
with faculty members because you're going to
need these recommenders. Third thing you want to-- so those are the
sort of first two. First, either a research
assistant or [INAUDIBLE].. The second is a seminar or some
kind of independent research. Third is you definitely
want to go on to a journal and write if at all possible. I know that's not always
possible for all journals. I'm actually very
new in Virginia, so I'm still learning
the journal system here. All the journals are a
little bit different. But my sense is there
are many opportunities to be on a journal. And so that's a wonderful
thing because there are many law schools who
have, like, three journals. And you have far more than that. And so the nice thing
about a journal is, one, you are forced to look
at a lot of reading. Right? You side check things,
you look at writing. And by editing and
making recommendations on other people's writing,
your own writing gets better. So Professor Schragger
and I were actually on law review together, and we
site checked a lot of articles in our time in law school. But I'm definitely attributing
law review to making me the writer I am today in
some substantial part, because it just-- when you are
editing people's sentences over and over you just write
your sentences better, because you're, like,
well, I don't want to be-- I don't want to have
all these extra words. I don't want to have
[INAUDIBLE] things happening. So you start to
become a better writer by editing other people's work. And you really-- I mean,
you learn The Bluebook inside and out, and you learn
what strong citations are and weak citations are, right? So you learn how to really
site to a primary source for a particular proposition. So additional things
you want to think about. You do want to
think about how you are performing in law school. Grades do matter. Upon graduation they do-- one of the only times I've
had my transcript looked at upon graduation was when I
went on the teaching market. And my first school that I
taught I was Emory University, and they said, send
us your transcript. And I was like, no
one has asked me for my transcript for
a really long time. And so, I mean, obviously,
it stood the test of time. But you want to think about
the courses that you're taking as well as how you're
performing in class. You are all at a
wonderful law school and probably know
that you will graduate and be able to get a job. But you don't want that to be a
reason to sort of stop engaging in your coursework, one, is it's
just a tremendous loss for you, but two, a law school
may eventually-- especially if you're an
entry-level candidate-- less likely when you're
a lateral candidate-- I haven't had-- since my
first [AUDIO OUT] anyone ask for a transcript. But your entry-level job,
they may want your transcript. They want to see, sort of, how
you did in law school, and sort of what you were taking, what
you were thinking about then. And so somebody, some day, may
be looking at your transcript and making assessments about
who you were as a law student. So those are sort of
some of the main things to think about in law school. I think the other
thing to do is, depending on the type
of faculty member you want to be-- so for
example, if you want to be a clinical
professor one day, then certainly you
want to take advantage of those opportunities
in law school. You don't have to
do every clinic. That would be
overwhelming, right? But just definitely pick some
that you're excited about. Same thing, if you want to be
a research faculty, then again, as I mentioned,
like, take advantage of opportunities in
law school to write, to try to publish
a student note, to try to even publish a
paper outside of a student journal, or even one that
you can publish right upon graduation. And then finally, I think one
thing to really think about in terms of what
to do in law school is if you do a great
job with a paper here, it can be a great
foundation for a paper that you eventually publish. You may not publish it during
your time in law school, but it can have the
seeds of an article that becomes a publishable paper. And so even if you-- even if, for example,
Law Review turns you down and you're not able to
publish your paper there, that doesn't mean some
other journal is not going to think it's
great and pick it up. And so you want to not only
think about the options that UVA would give
you to publish, but upon graduation, once you
have that JD after your name, other journals will
think about your piece as a possibility
for publication. Hard to publish
at others schools when you are a law
student, but not so much when you have
the JD after your name. And then finally, I
would say, think very hard about doing a clerkship. So this is one of the
things that law schools, for whatever reason,
we look for clerkships as a marker of
sort of excellence among the student body. And clerkships are
something where you can gain valuable experience, and-- remember I was
saying you're going to need some recommenders
who know you well. Your judge can serve
as a recommender. So when I went to
Emory, they called-- I had clerked for Judge
Browning on the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. And they called him. And they asked, what kind
of law clerk was she? Now, mind you, I
went on the market, like, eight years later. But still, they wanted
to talk to my judge, and ask my judge, what was
she like as a law clerk? Was she good at research? Was she-- how was her writing? All those things, they
asked this of my judge, even though it had
been quite some time that I would have continued
to develop as a lawyer. So I would say those things
are the things to think about. There's reasons outside of
becoming a law professor to do a clerkship. I really think it's one of the
best jobs you can have upon-- as a lawyer. Like, just getting inside
a judge's chambers, and getting inside their head,
and watching how chambers work, and getting to talk
with other judges. It's really fun and invaluable. You get some real insights
on how judicial opinions are made, and decided, and written. And so that has a value
just in and itself. But if you're thinking
about teaching, it's also just kind
of one of the markers that people look for when we
are considering candidates. So those are the things
that I would think about. You want to add to that? RICHARD C. SCHRAGGER:
So I would just add, one of the things
you're hearing here are folks like us
who have just a JD. Am I right about that? KIMBERLY J. ROBINSON: Yes. RICHARD C. SCHRAGGER:
I have an [INAUDIBLE].. The advanced degree is a JD. There are other members
of this faculty who have a slightly different
route, and I just want to mention that
at the outset, which is a number of our
faculty also have a PhD. And that's much more
common than it used to be. It's still not it's still
not the overwhelming number of faculty, but it's a
significant number of faculty. And those folks have
either done a joint JD-PhD, at sort of the same time, or
they did PhD and then the JD, or vice versa. And what we see in
terms of PhDs are mostly history and economics. I think those are the dominant
ones, but also sociology, psychology PhDs also. And in those cases, the
route towards academia is more conventional in terms
of, say, the wider university. That is, to get a job in the
wider university, obviously, you have to have a
PhD in most cases. And you do research and writing. You complete a dissertation. You then go on the
teaching market, say, in an English department
or an economics department or a history department on
the basis of that work, which you will then, say, turn into
a number of articles or a book or something like that. And that process can be long. It can be five years, six
years, seven years in the PhD. If you're also
doing a JD, you're adding two or three
years to that. So there are folks that
have those joint degrees. And they're doing a more
traditional route, at least in terms of the wider university
as opposed to those of us who have received a JD,
then did some practice, then transitioned to the market. And let me just say something
about that transition. In order to transition to the
market as a JD from practice, it's often necessary
to get some time off, either through a
fellowship or some kind of visiting teaching or
visiting professorship. And that's what I did when
I taught at Quinnipiac. Very part-time in the
legal writing program-- that gave me time to
do some writing, which is what I needed to do. Because when you then go
on the teaching market, you are competing with some PhDs
who have spent the last five years doing, say, a dissertation
or a series of articles or working on a book. And you're somebody
coming out of practice. You need a little bit of time
to also produce some work. But as a research
faculty member, what law schools
are looking for is some evidence of scholarly
productivity and promise. And it ranges. Different law schools have
different criteria for that. Some will want to
see a ton of writing, and some will just want to
see, say, one or two pieces. It just depends. And it's very variable. But these are two
different routes. And if you're thinking,
hey, maybe I'm into the academic
route, but I really want to do the PhD as
a joint degree, that's another way to do this. KIMBERLY J. ROBINSON: Yeah. I would just add one
of the advantages of doing the PhD is
people tend to publish off of their PhD for years after. So they've done
this body of work. And they pump out multiple
papers from the PhD and usually a book or
two from the PhD work. And so that is a huge running
start in your academic career. You have all this work
to kind of feed off of. You're not doing
original research then. You've done the original
research to earn the PhD. And so you start publishing
articles and then, ultimately, a book or
two from your PhD work. And so that really gets
you on a running start for your publishing career. RICHARD C. SCHRAGGER: So
should we take questions? KIMBERLY J. ROBINSON:
Yeah, questions. RICHARD C. SCHRAGGER: Yeah. KIMBERLY J. ROBINSON: That
was a lot of information we just gave you. But we welcome your questions. Yeah? STUDENT: How common
is it for students to go straight from
clerkship to legal academia rather than going
out to the field and then coming back
to legal academia? RICHARD C. SCHRAGGER:
So in the old, old days, say Alan Dershowitz
at Harvard, he graduates number
one in his class. He clerks. He clerks for the Supreme Court. And then Harvard brings him
back as the youngest professor. And then he gets youngest
tenured professor. He liked to brag. I had him as a
criminal law professor. In any case, we don't do
that anymore very much. That is, I think it's
probably quite unusual to go from a clerkship right to
an academic job, a tenure track academic job, without
something in between. It's possible to do that if
you've done the PhD first, then you clerked. Because that's the
traditional timing for PhDs. But even PhDs do sort
of post-doc fellowships in between, much, much
more than they used to. So I think, again, for just
the JD who's, say, clerking, there's usually some
period of practice or some fellowship
or probably both. What I would say is law
schools are a little wary of folks who've been out
for, say, more than five or eight years. I think your trajectory is a
little bit longer, a little bit longer out in the world. Once you're out past
a decade or something and trying to
transition back in, that's a little
trickier, in part because you've been further away
from the Academy for longer. That doesn't mean
you don't do it. Rachel Harmon on our faculty was
doing civil rights litigation in the Justice Department
for at least a decade and transitioned
into the Academy. So it's not a hard
and fast rule. But three to five years out
of graduation from your JD is sort of the rough window. Again, it's not a
hard and fast rule. But it would be quite unusual
to come out of your clerkship, unless you had written
a couple of books. You're very precocious. You wrote a bunch of
books in high school. That would do it. And then you could get there-- yeah, but good question. KIMBERLY J. ROBINSON:
I think part of what happens when people
are out a really long time is that you always
raise the question of do they want to be a professor? Or do they just want
to leave their firm? And so-- I mean, you'll see,
that if you go to a firm there is a place where people
start to just peel off. And the question is did
they peel off to the Academy because they want
to be here, they're longing to be a law professor? Because we want you to love it. The tenure process is rigorous. And once people
are granted tenure, it's very rare for
someone to be removed. And so you want somebody who's
passionate about teaching and passionate about
writing, not just that they're in a house
on fire and they're trying to get out of it. So that's part of the question
that has to be answered. And many people have
answered that successfully and said yes, I did this. I was passionate
about this litigation. But I'm equally passionate
about being a professor. But that's the
question that gets raised is what's the
motivation and what's the back story there. Yeah? STUDENT: My question was
and you guys might not know this, but those of us
that are planning to finance our degrees with PSLF. It's a public school. Does that still qualify? Or would I have to-- because you were saying,
like, 10 years being too long, would you have to wait to
do the 10 years of PSLF if that's how you're
trying to finance your degree before moving in
because that wouldn't qualify as qualified employment? RICHARD C. SCHRAGGER:
This is for the public? STUDENT: [INAUDIBLE] RICHARD C. SCHRAGGER: Yeah. So I don't know
the answer to that. And I take it there are
also salary caps for that. Is that right? STUDENT: Not for
the government-- RICHARD C. SCHRAGGER: Oh, I see. OK. OK. So I just don't know the
answer, as a public law school, whether that would qualify. But that's a good question. We can find out. KIMBERLY J. ROBINSON: Yeah. We can research that. Yes ma'am? STUDENT: So for someone who
is thinking about practicing in international
law but still wants to be a professor
eventually, one day, does a clerkship
path look different? Because I've noticed
that [INAUDIBLE] tend to do their clerkships,
I guess, one or two years after graduation. And I was just
wondering how that would look for a junior
corporate attorney. KIMBERLY J. ROBINSON:
That's a great question. So one of the things
to think about doing if you're thinking about
becoming a corporate law professor is to think about
clerking on the Supreme Court of Delaware. So this is where just so much
of corporate law comes from. And so that's a really
prestigious clerkship, if you're going to go
into teaching in that way. I think, still, there is great
value for even someone who's going to teach corporate
law to do a clerkship. An appellate
clerkship isn't as-- even though it's
litigation, it's not as litigation focused as
a district court clerkship. And so what you're
learning at the clerkship is things like writing,
research, analytical skills, all those skills. Those are still
going to be valuable for a corporate attorney. There's nothing on that list
that a corporate attorney doesn't need. And so it's still very valuable
to have that experience. RICHARD C. SCHRAGGER: We
do have folks who, I think, went into the corporate
world without clerkships and then came into teaching. And that's because they gained
some specialty in that world, in the world of finance or
the world of corporate law. I think you should
clerk, regardless. I agree with that
recommendation. But they are looking for
something slightly different. And also one thing, if
you're interested in sort of corporate law, it's
very economics heavy. And so some expertise
in economics, not necessarily a PhD, although
that might be something that you think about, but
gaining some understanding and fluidity with
economic concepts. Because a lot of
the corporate law today is very economics heavy. KIMBERLY J. ROBINSON:
The other thing I will say about
going into the market and wanting to teach
anything in corporate law is it can be tougher
for law schools to hire corporate law faculty. Because corporate law faculty
often are paid very well. And so they often don't want
to leave their corporate jobs. And so my experience from being
at three different law schools is that in looking
for corporate faculty, it was definitely
a little bit harder to find people who could
research and write and do all those things and had
strong corporate experience. Because those people
often want to continue doing corporate work. And so it was actually something
that we would work very hard at, to find great
corporate candidates who wanted to come and teach and
write about corporate law, instead of practicing
corporate law. RICHARD C. SCHRAGGER: And
this raises this question about fields, what you might
think about studying and being a law professor. There's obviously
continuous need in law schools for
teaching the core courses. And so as you think about this,
well, which courses did I like? I liked property. That was strange, I
know, but nevertheless. And so when I sort
of transitioned, I thought, oh, I'd like to
maybe teach property and write a little bit about property. I also liked my local
government law course. So I decided I'd write in that. That's less of a
demand in law school. So it wasn't particularly
strategic to think in those terms. Corporate law is an area
which is always a great need and getting good corporate
law people can be challenging. So committees are
looking for that kind of combination of interests. But it's very hard to
tell, year to year, what law schools will need. There was a period of time
where intellectual property was something every law school
really was desperate for and they were less desperate
for constitutional law, for example. But sometimes that flips. And now there seems to
be a lot of interest in constitutional law. And law schools do
hiring very differently. So at UVA, we do look
for particular fields and particular classes
that people can teach. But often, we're trying to
hire just the best people in the market at the time. That's still a consideration,
what they're teaching, but not as much. There are law schools who say,
hey, we need a civil procedure person. They need to be able to
teach civil procedure, and they need to be able to
write in this field, as well. Or we need a
corporate law person. We don't have anybody
teaching corporations. We really need that and they
should write in this field, too. So one of the things folks do
as they're putting together their package, and this
is later in the process, they're thinking about,
well, what are the things I might teach? What are some of the needs
that law schools might have? What you don't want
to do is be a person who only writes in a
tiny little field that is what we would call, on
a committee, a luxury item for law schools. You want to be a little
bit broader than that so that you can teach a
basic first year course, you can maybe teach a
basic second year course. And you write in
areas where there'll be a community of scholars,
not just a very, very, very narrow place. Even though you certainly
should write about what you're interested in. But when you're sort
of thinking about this, that's sort of what committees
are looking for, more generally. STUDENT: The more
greatly focused faculty-- is there a baseline? Because most of what
you've been talking about is more geared to
the research faculty. Is there a baseline of
research and certain experience to have in addition to, then,
expertise in a given area, or is it much more focused
on that person's ability or expertise in the given
field that they'd be teaching [INAUDIBLE]? KIMBERLY J. ROBINSON:
I think it's partly expertise in that area. The other thing
that's very helpful is does the person have
any management experience. Because you are
managing a clinic, you are managing
students, you're interfacing with clients. You want to actually know that
they have experience managing multiple assignments
and can kind of do the administrative
part of a clinic. The student may not see it. But there's quite a
bit of administration going on with clinics. And so it's great if someone
has great people skills, they know how to manage
multiple individuals on a diverse array of
projects, as well as if they have taught at all. So for example, even
just teaching a course at the local law
school, wherever you happen to be practicing,
lots of law schools love having people
from the community come in and teach something
that they have a need for. And so having some
teaching experience also can be very valuable
for clinical faculty. RICHARD C. SCHRAGGER:
What you'll see, and this is different
from the research faculty and clinicians, are
they have usually a long track record of doing the thing that
they're doing in the clinic. They did it out in the world,
sometimes a much longer time than, say, the five
to eight years or so-- not always. There are law schools
and, again, it depends, it's quite different, that have
research and writing demands that they place on
clinical faculty. And they might be on a
tenure track, for example. So that's a little
bit different. Also, the clinical
faculty hiring process doesn't always go through
the AALS meat market that I mentioned. Often, we just post
for a position, like an appellate
litigation clinic position. And then we get a
resumes in the door. And that process is sometimes
independent of the entry level market. And again, these
are usually people with certainly more experience. A lot of our clinicians were
practitioners in that area before they came in. CALEB NELSON: I'm Caleb
Nelson, also of the committee. I just thought I'd
underline a couple of things that Professor Schragger and
Professor Robinson said that I think are really important. So just working backward from
how law schools hire people, and this is mostly for research
faculty type positions, but working backward
from the meat market. I think to get your foot in
the door at the meat market, to get an interview, and
then to be in the ballpark, I think pretty much
you have to have at least two major write-ins
under your belt, which would include at least
one major published writing besides
your student note, so one article in a law review
that's already appeared. And the second
one that's exactly like that, except that it
hasn't yet been published, that can serve as your job
talk, but it's basically done. It, too, is a finished
piece of work. And many people these
days have more than that, have more [INAUDIBLE],,
which makes it all the more important what Professor
Robinson said about while you're in law
school now, doing work of the sort that can
serve as the basis for one of those articles. Because you have the
luxury now of having a certain number of years
where you're a student and you get to research
and write without having to go hours on
some other job, you can get some
foundation for that. But be aware that that is kind
of the price of admission, is at least two
major pieces of work, and sometimes more than that. That's one reason why
fellowships have taken off. I think one of the
differences between the hiring market these days and the hiring
market when I was in an entry level candidate, is that
many, many, many more people are coming out of either
PhD programs or fellowships where they've had the
opportunity to write. I have actual data on this. Sarah Lawsky is a
professor at UC-Irvine, compiles the entry level
hiring report each year. So the numbers are
a little noisy, because they're based
on self-reported data. So just people, when
they get their jobs, or schools, when they hire
somebody, post something. They can send
Sarah an email that gets compiled in this report. But last year, she
says 82 reported hires. Of that 82, zero had neither
a fellowship, nor a clerkship, nor a PhD or JSD. So everybody had at least
one of those three criteria, one of those three
credentials-- a doctorate, a fellowship, or clerkship. Only three of the 82
simply had a clerkship. So 96% of the folks
who were hired had either a fellowship or a
doctorate, which includes JSD, but either a PhD or JSD, or both
a fellowship and a doctorate. And that's because
of the writing that Professor Robinson
was talking about. That just the price of
admission for being considered for a research faculty position
is having, at this point, a fairly substantial
body of work beyond just a student note. And as Professor
Schragger says, I think, as you're thinking
toward that, you do want to be strategic
about what you're writing in. Because you want
to write in areas that there's a need
for in law schools. So if you're choosing, I want
to write this major paper and spend a year of
my life on this topic, I think it's a good idea, other
things being equal, for it not to be a luxury item
type topic, but instead more at the core of
what law schools do, just because there's more
demand for that kind of faculty member, I think. STUDENT: Just-- you guys were
talking about fellowships. Does that include VAPs,
or are VAPs separate? CALEB NELSON: I think
that includes VAPs. RICHARD C. SCHRAGGER: Yeah. So there's a range of kind
of fellowship options. One is where you're doing
some legal writing teaching. There's a couple of fellowships
like that out in the world. That's sort of what I did,
although I was just I didn't really have a fellowship. They didn't give me
any identity at all. They just told me
to teach this class. I then transitioned into
a visiting assistant professorship. Because I was not really
that in the initial year and taught a substantive class. They needed somebody to
teach civil procedure, so I taught it. But these are the same. They do the same
kinds of things. And they're not they're
not always easy to find, necessarily. Right? Sometimes a law school will
have visiting assistant professorships, and
sometimes they won't. Sometimes they'll have
a need, like Quinnipiac had a need for civil procedure. It wasn't an official fellowship
program, but I was around. So that was just helpful to be
in the building, it turned out. So those are good. And I think Professor
Nelson is right. The folks we have
helped on the market have often had a couple of
years to do some of this stuff and do a little bit
of writing beforehand. Yeah? STUDENT: You guys
mentioned SJDs. Do you think those
are very valuable, or are on par with a PhD? It seems like a lot of
faculty don't have SJDs. KIMBERLY J. ROBINSON: So
that's a great question. I mean, I think
the PhD is valuable because you just get to do such
a deep dive into something. And the time that
you invest really yields great
scholarship afterwards, assuming that you
spent the time wisely. And so I have to be honest. I don't know as
much about the SJD. I think it's a much
shorter program. And so part of what the
PhD has going for it is just that you've just
been researching and writing for a really long time. And so you can feed off
of that, like I'm saying, once you become
a faculty member. I don't know if an SJD, given
that's a shorter time frame, is going to have
that same benefit. It doesn't mean
that people don't go on the market with an SJD. They do. But one of the
benefits of the PhD is your deep expertise
in your particular field that you then feed off
of for future research. RICHARD C. SCHRAGGER: The SJD-- sorry, just a quick comment. The SJD was traditionally more
for international students to get a basis in US law. There is now-- Yale has started a
PhD in law program. And that's pretty new. And I think, for them,
there's still some questions about how successful. But I think it's been
pretty successful in terms of then placing students. And those are students who have
JDs, who, for whatever reason, don't want to pick
a cognate discipline and then get time to
write and do get a PhD. It's through their
graduate program at Yale. That's the only program like
that, I think, in the country at this point. But more and more people
are interested in it for this reason. And we hired someone out of
that program, Molly Brady, who sadly left for Harvard. Also, she's doing
pretty well out of it. I think probably the most
successful recent candidate of that program. And we identified
her first, of course. [LAUGHTER] So we were so smart. KIMBERLY J. ROBINSON: Yes? STUDENT: I just
wanted to ask if you could speak more about the
fulfillment [INAUDIBLE] especially transitioning
from the [INAUDIBLE] to advising what
the law should be. Do you feel [INAUDIBLE],,
and how does that work? KIMBERLY J. ROBINSON: Yeah. That's a great question. So first of all, I
mean, one of the things we haven't talked about
is, as faculty members, lots of us engage in
litigation and engage in sort of reform work,
engage in products, we sit on commissions. We do all kinds of things
that are impacting the world. So our soul impact isn't
through our scholarship or through our students. It's that we're out there. We are out there
engaging these issues. And so one of the
great things, though, about engaging as a
faculty member is you get to choose the
products you engage in, as opposed to your
boss telling you what you're about to engage in. And so it's great. Because you have people
calling you and saying, can you take on this? And depending on what
projects I have going on, which are usually
a lot, oftentimes, I turn those roles down. But there are times. For example, right
now, I'm working with a think tank in DC. Because this think
tank has a broad reach across the country where
they're disseminating the scholarship of
various scholars around the country to lawmakers
to help shape education. So I was, like, yeah,
that I want to do. Right? I want to get my scholarship
into the hands of the people making the laws. And so that was a
energetic yes to, whereas other
products, so oh, do you want to write a brief for
something, those I occasionally think about doing or take
on, but much less likely. There is some
litigation right now that's going through the federal
court about a federal right to education that I may
eventually get on a brief on. But that's because I've written
two books about the topic. So that's really
close to my heart. But so we definitely
get to have an impact sort of beyond our students
and beyond our scholarship. So many of us are just
involved in litigation, involved with think tanks,
involved with reform projects. And so we just have
a lot of flexibility to sort of take
on those products. You can only take
on so many of those, because you have teaching
and writing responsibilities. But you can pick and
choose the ones that are just a great fit for you. And so I personally
find it very rewarding to have those kinds
of projects happening. Because I do want to make
sure that my work is not sitting in an ivory tower. I want it out
there helping kids. I mean, the whole reason
I went into education law is because I care about the fact
that there's so much inequality in education. So that is really
important to me. If I just felt like other
scholars were reading my work, I would feel like I hadn't
accomplished exactly what I became an academic to do-- part of why. RICHARD C. SCHRAGGER: Yeah. There's a range of practices. Some law professors, let's
say, they're a legal historian. They're in the archives. That's what gears them up. Some are out in the
world, but they're not necessarily interested. For other law
professors, they're doing litigation and amicus
briefs and the American Law Institute and legal
reform all the time and applying their
scholarship to real cases. So there's a nice
range of options and you do have the
flexibility to do all that. In terms of fulfillment,
I think the teaching is hugely fulfilling. I think we've said that already. And I think for
lots of us, that's one of the big
pluses of the job. Which is to be in an
environment with young people, interacting, learning with them,
doing the teaching that that teaches us a lot of times. So that's really fun for us. And being in a
university environment is really, really nice. So that's always been
a big plus for me. KIMBERLY J. ROBINSON:
One of the things we want to leave you with as
a committee is to make sure that you all reach
out to us as you're thinking about the market. And we don't mean when
you're about to push send on the form that goes to AALS. You won to contact us well
in advance of that process. One of the things
we're trying to do is encourage UVA
students to think about becoming law professors. You'll all have the
credentials to do so. And so we want to encourage
people to think about this. And part of what's needed
is someone to sort of help and guide you. And that's what our
committee is for. Even if the composition of
it may change eventually, the Academic Placement
Committee is here to help you go onto the market. I know I had a mentor who
explained all of what was just explained to you here,
but also just held my hand through the whole process. Because I can tell you,
like going and presenting your first paper to an
entire room of faculty is an intimidating thing. Right? And so what I did, my
mentor set up for me-- there were two different
mock job talks that I did. So I sat with faculty, a much
smaller number, but staff, and did my talk. And they gave me feedback on
am I moving my hands too much, which you can tell that I do. Or am I saying "uh" too much? Or am I not answering
the question? Or you may want to say this. And so I did that
multiple times. I can still picture in
my mind doing a moot job talk in a couple of law
professors' dining room, right? I can still see it. And they're faculty
at GW right now. But they were helping me and
shepherding me onto the market. Well, we want to do
that for you all. We have, already this
year, talked with and done sort of mock
interviews with candidates who are from UVA who
are going on the market. And we want to be
that resource for you. So we just want to make sure
people are aware of that, that you have this resource. And if you go on the
market, we are here to support you in doing that. RICHARD C. SCHRAGGER: Yeah. And all the things before that. So if you have questions
for us, I live over there on the first floor. KIMBERLY J. ROBINSON: I live
on the third floor, for now. RICHARD C. SCHRAGGER: Yeah. You're on the third floor. But come and see us. It's never too early. It's never too late, frankly. And we can talk about it. And after this, if a question
occurs to you, we're available. So we want to make sure. If you have friends
and neighbors who might be interested, too,
tell them we're here, too. The Academic Placement
Committee is awesome. They're great people
to hang out with. Right? And so come and
hang out with us. Thanks for coming everybody. KIMBERLY J. ROBINSON: Yes. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
