Legal Commentary

Professor Kaimi Wenger gives some advice about getting into law teaching without having graduated from a top 5 school.  It's all very good and useful, and well worth checking out if you are in the position that he describes. 

I graduated from Boston University School of Law, and while my experience there was absolutely terrific and I think back on law school very fondly, I think it not unfair to say that BU does not produce many law professors and that there are special challenges facing someone whose JD is not, to say nothing of the top 5, from the top 15 (or 18 or wherever the "elite" label terminates).    

Here then is another occasional observation about the law school hiring process.  If you are one of the souls who is considering the market with a non-elite JD, perhaps you might think of yourself as being thrust into Canto XXVI of Dante's Purgatorio, right alongside Arnaut Daniel.  Daniel, a 12th century provencal troubador of unusual talent, sings now through his tears as he atones for his past follies (sins of lust) and hopes upon hope for redemption.  When one is in Purgatory, redemption comes, but at some quite indeterminate future point.

Arnaut's manner of suffering is exquisite.  Dante writes: "Poi s'ascose nel foco che li affina."  After his words with Dante, Arnaut "hides himself in the fire that refines him."  He will stay there, purifying, purging, refining, until he is ready.  He will remain there for many years.  And that, I think, is what people with non-elite JDs are taken to need. 

It may well be that sufficiently voluminous writing will help, as Professor Wenger suggests, particularly if sufficiently well-placed and so on.  But people with non-elite JDs as a general matter will require more than "time to write" to ascend to the Celestial Rose.  They will require years spent in the purgatorial fire.  That may mean a Ph.D. or an advanced law degree at a very pretigious school or a fellowship or VAP (or two, or three).  It will almost certainly mean coming to know prominent and not so prominent law professors well enough that they know you, that they will have seen your purification at work in fires created especially for you.  The pace of ascent will be slower than that of your elite-JD peers, and there is always the unhappy possibility of remaining in Purgatory forever.  Dante was rather forgiving by comparison.  Difficult as it may be, then, it's worthwhile to come to love the fire, to be grateful for its refining properties.  It may even be that when you finally do make it to Paradise, you will continue to crave the fire.  

As before, this observation is almost certainly not generalizable in any systemic way; and it is surely true that factors like what one wishes to write about (public law probably adds an extra tricky little degree of difficulty) and what one's other, non-academic background adds to one's candidacy are extremely important.  So, too, will be many others.  I therefore disclaim any intention to offer this observation as "advice," lest I be cast down to the Infernal depths with Ulysses, Diomedes, and the other fraudulent counselors.