Legal Commentary

Over at Concurring Opinions, workplace blogger extraordinaire Paul Secunda is doing a series of guest posts on the elusive lateral hiring market (here and here).  I want to piggy back on Paul's illuminating posts by offering another possible explanation for how potential lateral candidates make it onto a school's radar for a lateral move.

Recall Liz Glazer's post on C.V. Surfing/Stalking.  As an admitted C.V. surfer/stalker, I spend a fair amount of time trying to keep up with other people's scholarship.  One trend I've noticed--and perhaps trend isn't the right word--is that professors sometimes lateral to schools shortly after they publish in or are accepted for publication by a school's law review.  For instance, take Professor Awesome, who is at School of Law.  Shortly after Professor Awesome either places or publishes an article in College of Law's law review, Professor Awesome leaves School of Law for College of Law, whether for a visit or a permanent position.

Although I could give more concrete examples, I hesitate to do so because not only do I not know any of these people personally, but also I can't say for sure whether there really is a causal relationship in any of these cases.  After all, as Paul's posts explain, it's impossible to pin down exactly how schools target potential lateral hires.

Of course, I could be way off base here.  It may just be a coincidence, or perhaps there is some other explanation.  Let's consider it a hypothesis.  Hopefully those of you with better information on the subject will share your thoughts.  So I ask, in the words Dave Letterman, is this anything?