Legal Commentary

As conversations this week with a number of the great fellows we have here at Harvard who will soon be going on the market have reminded me, the biggest question about getting ready for the job market is not only the "what" I should be doing, but the "when."  To that end, I thought I would take a rough stab at presenting a sort of timetable for the job market.

A couple of caveats before I start.  I don't mean this timetable to be some kind of orthodoxy, this is just what I aimed for and what seems to me to make sense.  I would very much appreciate the views of others in the comments section.  Second, and relatedly, do not panic if your own timetable is totally out of whack with the one I detail here; there are multiple successful paths to the job market.  All times are in terms of the Faculty Recruitment Conference (FRC).

1.5-2.5 yrs before the FRC: Consider doing a fellowship. I posted extensively on this during my last blogging stint so I will just refer you to that.  Eyeballing the interim hiring data reported by Larry Solum this year so far, it seems as true as ever that (especially at top schools) a fellowship or a PhD has become an important aid in securing a job.

1 yr before the FRC:  (1) You need to pick a job talk paper and start working on it.  This will realistically give you enough time to write it, circulate it, get feedback on it, revise it, mock job talk it, etc.  In an ideal world it would actually give you enough time to write two major papers, one to put into the submission cycle in the Feb/March before the job market, and one for the job talk itself.  That, however, is an aspirational goal. The  job talk paper is what you cannot do without.

Figuring out what to write about is actually a very difficult and important part of the process.  There are many things that are good papers, but not good job talk papers.  For example, they are too doctrinal (or not doctrinal enough), they don't fit well enough into the type of academic you claim you want to be (you say you are interested in health care law, but you look like a con law person), or they are likely to piss off some important constituency at the law school who may be a gatekeeper of your candidacy, etc.

Other possible job talks seem promising but turn out to be, as Plato put it in the Theatetus, "wind eggs".  There, Socrates describes himself as a midwife who delivers ideas rather than babies, but some of them turn out to be wind eggs, an empty egg that does not lead to a successful birth under anceient Greek embryology.  You discover too late that the ideas are preempted, it is  too long or short for a job talk paper, or it just "doesn't write."  You need to build in time for all of this, which is why I recommend the long time frame.

(2) Network. Many sub-specialties in law have their own conference or conferences.  For example, the health law teacher's conference is happening in June.  This can be a great opportunity to meet people in your field, and get on people's radars as a promising person in your field.  Generalist conferences can also be good, although possibly less bang for your buck.

6 months before the FRC: Line up your recommenders, which I posted about in more depth earlier. If possible, it is great to have your recommenders look at a draft of your job talk paper, so they can really speak authoritatively on what you are up to.  The earlier you complete drafts of various things (the job talk paper, the research agenda, etc) the more likely you can get your busy recommenders to give you feedback.

3-4 months before the FRC: (1) Do a draft FAR form (the 1 page biographical form you submit to AALS). You should do a draft one and circulate it to your recommenders.  Much of the FAR form is quite intuitive (one tip that I learned is to use the comments block after various sections to add or clarify -- I used mine to list other recommenders, other publications, and to expand on courses in the health law sector i wanted to teach).  Other parts still remain very mysterious to me even now (e.g., I still am not sure what "law and medicine" is as opposed to "health care law" and "bioethics").  There is also lots of strategizing that goes into where to place things in the tiers of preferences, how many "big" (esp. 1L classes) vs. specialized one, how well it coheres with your research agenda, etc, although it is not clear that there are "right answers" here.

(2) Get the list of all the hiring chairs at all the schools you are interested in. Harvard and Chicago, I know, provide their students on the market with such a list the schools compile.  Find out if your school does the same.  Prawfsblawg has in the past made such a list by voluntary chair self-identification.  Get the chairs' email and snail mail addresses.  You'll need this for both the "package" I will discuss next, and to give your recommenders to let them know with whom they may want to put in a good word.

(3) Prepare a "package" to send to hiring chairs.  The FAR form is short.  The package is the long form version.  It will definitely have a cover letter, your transcript, CV, a copy of one or more of your prior publications, a list of your recommenders.  It may also include a research agenda and your job talk -- this will depend on how far along you are with each. I did not include my job talk in my package, in part because it was not "there" yet, and almost all the hiring chairs contacted me in the two-three weeks pre-FRC to see if I wanted to send it along then.

There was considerable debate on this blog about the utility of these things.  The consensus, I think, is that it won't hurt, but it is not clear how much it will help (especially given the private cost to you of the photocopying and mailing, and larger cost to the environment), though I am a fan of them. 

There is also a question of how many to send out, to whom, and when. I sent about 35.  I sent it to the 35 or so schools I was most interested in, but I actually think these packages do the most work at schools that othrewise might not think you are interested.  If people want to interview you and they didn't get the package they will ask for it (and sometimes they may just want e-copies of all elements anyways to make it easier to circulate).

I mailed mine out in mid-August.

[The calls start coming in to do FRC interviews during this period from mid-August to early October]

1 month before the FRC: You should try to do both a mock interviews and  a mock job talk. You need to get used to having a 1-minute, 5-minute, and 20-minute version of the job talk, according to the setting. You also want to have practice answering both substantive questions about your work as well as questions about you, and your interest in the school.  For fellows, Harvard arranges a series of mock interviews and mock job talks with faculty giving feedback.  I think these are a wonderful asset, and more schools should consider doing the same if they want to promote their students on the job market.

2 weeks before the FRC: Try to take a small vacation, it may be the last one you'll get in a while.

The day before the FRC: Wander around the Woodley Park Marriot hotel where the conference is held to figure out in what tower different interviews are, and to practice getting back and forth between them quickly.