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Deciding between graduate school in philosophy and law school

Brian Leiter

A recent philosophy graduate gave me permission to share his questions, which might be of interest to others:

I am currently deciding between graduate school in philosophy (I graduated in honors philosophy from [school name omitted] in 2015) and law school. In the long run I am considering whether to pursue philosophical or legal academia. I have benefitted greatly from your advice to prospective philosophy graduate students and prospective law school students with philosophical interests on Leiter Reports. Since I have a couple of questions that as far as I can see have not been directly discussed in a Leiter Report blog post I thought I would email them to you in case you have the time to answer them.

1. My primary area of philosophical interest is political philosophy. In the spirit of your post on the difference between the study of political philosophy in political science and philosophy departments, I am wondering about the difference between working in political philosophy in a law school or in a philosophy department. What would you say are the most significant differences that someone considering both options should take into account?

2. a. If one were to plan on obtaining a philosophy PhD and a JD separately in order to pursue legal academia, is there a significant difference academically in doing one of them first? For instance, would there be a significant impact on one's study of the subjects themselves? on job market chances?

b. If there is, is one course of study preferable? In other words, is it more beneficial to come to the study of law with significant training in relevant philosophical areas (political, moral, epistemology), or to come to the study of philosophy with philosophical questions arising from one’s study of law?

Here are my answers:

1.  At many good law schools (see this section of the PGR), there are serious opportunities to study political philosophy, but even at the best law schools, given that most of your studies will not be philosophy-related, you can't get adequate training to do professional work.  At best, you can acquire competence with themes, authors, and arguments, but you won't emerge as a political philosopher with a JD only.

2a.  I've known students who have done it in both directions, and had good success at it.  PhD programs seem, in recent years, to be keen to admit those with a good JD record, but those who come to the JD with a PhD in philosophy already have a set of intellectual and disciplinary skills that can help them thrive and do quite well in law school.

2b.  I don't think there's a one approach fits all answer to this question.  But I'm opening comments for thoughts from other readers.

 

 

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13 responses to “Deciding between graduate school in philosophy and law school”

  1. Grad Student

    This isn't a direct response to the above questions, but seems worth voicing nonetheless: I wonder if there aren't strong prudential reasons in favor of first trying to gain admittance into a top PhD program.

    First, it leaves your options open with respect to law school choice and may even make you more competitive for law school admissions. If you are in a PhD program or already have a PhD in hand, I imagine law schools will take at least some additional notice. (It is generally more difficult to get into a top PhD than a top law school.) You may even have a better shot of gaining acceptance into the law school at the university where you are working on your PhD (supposing they have a good one worth attending).

    Second, it puts you in a potentially much better financial position. Sometimes very generous funding is available for joint JD/PhD programs. But even if you decided to complete a program at a different school, there are strong financial reasons first to have completed most of the PhD. For example, if you end up taking out a lot of unsubsidized loans, then interest will be accruing over the life of the loan, including during your PhD studies. Assuming that you cannot make these very substantial interest payments while living on a PhD stipend, which is almost certainly the case, then that interest will be added to your loan balance and begin to compound to significant effect. Finally, the debt incurred in law school will put pressure on the JD-holder to go straight into big law rather than seriously consider trying for a PhD.

    Third, job market options are more open to someone who begins with a PhD. To start, interests change in grad school, so you may not end up pursuing legal academia. But even if you do keep on that path, then your options are still wide open. For one, getting any job in philosophy is tough, but if you specialize in law a JD isn't absolutely essential to getting a job at a law school. So you could still go on the philosophy and law markets to see what happens. In that case you could treat law school as a possible exit option in case of failure on the academic job market: either you complete a JD to simply become a lawyer and practice law, or else you do so to refresh your job market candidacy with the legal academic job market. But if you decide to exit philosophy in order to enter the regular law job market, and supposing your JD is even two or three years old, then I imagine it would be much harder to go the other way and secure a top job at a good law firm with a stale JD. Moreover, having done a PhD leaves other non-standard options open as well, like the one-year Yale M.S.L (https://law.yale.edu/studying-law-yale/degree-programs/graduate-programs/msl-program). And, in tandem with my second point, all of these alternative options (including going into a completely unrelated field in the regular job market) are still open to you because you aren't saddled with ludicrous amounts of law school debt.

    Of course, there is one big disadvantage to not going to law school before or early in the PhD: you won't have the legal knowledge as a basis for theorizing about law while completing a dissertation. But I'm not so sure that's enough to outweigh the above considerations. It might make sense if law school were fully funded, but that still wouldn't mitigate the concerns about your law degree going stale and thereby limiting post-academia job options.

    Reply
  2. Brian Leiter

    A couple of quick comments on the preceding:

    1. Having a PhD helps a bit, but not that much in law school admission, which is heavily driven by the numbers (LSAT, undergraduate GPA).

    2. The debt issue is important, and definitely worth keeping in mind. Most, but not all of those, who have gotten JDs and then gone on for a PhD that I have written for over the years did work after law school–for big law firms, and as judicial clerks. That practical experience is worth getting, especially if you want to get a teaching job in law schools.

    3. This is mistaken. There is not a single case of someone with only a PhD in philosophy getting a tenure-track job in a law school in the United States. Some very senior philosophers got appointments in law schools later in their careers. There is one PhD historian who got a tenure-track job in a law school in the U.S. (one!), and several Ph.D. economists. That's it. The JD is essential for a law teaching job as a junior person.

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  3. Grad Student

    That's fair! I had in mind more senior people with joint appointments when writing my third point. But I would have thought the gist of it holds true that in going from the JD to PhD one could be more constrained in terms of certain job market options and timing, especially considering some of the debt issues from my second point.

    Reply
  4. Matt

    The "stale JD" issue is a real one for people hoping to work as lawyers. This is so even if you did well in law school, clerked, etc. This doesn't necessarily make sense (though it's not crazy, too – skills degrade with lack of use, there are questions about motivation, etc.), but it's a real problem. It's not a problem that can't be overcome, but it will often involve the lucky use of connections, taking different sorts of work (perhaps less well paying) that one otherwise might, etc. So, people shouldn't get a JD and then go on to do a Philosophy PhD thinking they can always easily go back and work as lawyers if academic life doesn't work out (especially if they don't have significant prior work experience as a lawyer). It can be a difficult path.

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  5. Brian Leiter

    The number of senior people with only the PhD who are now appointed in law schools is also quite small, and in all cases they were 20+ years into their careers before this happened. It simply isn't a reasonable plan to think of getting a PhD and ending up in a law school: lightening could strike, but one can't treat it as a plan.

    Reply
  6. Incandenza

    This post is anonymous, for reasons that will become apparent. I used to be a “hot shot” philosophy graduate student. I made the decision to convert to law (as a commercial lawyer in a country outside of the USA). At the time, people looked at me like I was a bit crazy. But now, after 5 years, I am earning the equivalent of well over $1m per year. There are many bad things about the legal profession: it is far more stressful than philosophy, and somewhat less intellectually interesting (albeit less pointless than the abstruse metaphysical issues which used to occupy my attention). But unlike so many of my generation, I have complete financial security and freedom. I would strongly urge all millennials who are currently considering a career in academia (whether philosophy or law) to give serious consideration to a career in private practice as a commercial lawyer. It can be hell when you’re working on a written document at 2am, but at least you will be free from the pernicious servitude, degradation and insecurity that most junior academics suffer from.

    Reply
  7. Matt

    “ but at least you will be free from the pernicious servitude, degradation and insecurity that most junior academics suffer from.”

    Doesn’t really sound like you are free from any of those things…

    Reply
  8. Recent Philosophy Graduate

    I think I might have confused issues in #1 by mentioning the post on studying political philosophy in political science versus philosophy departments. My interest in #1 is focused more on the nature of working as a political philosopher/legal academic in a law school versus working as one in a philosophy department. From the outside, it seems to me that there is probably a difference. My impression is that political philosophers who are also legal academics (and therefore have legal training) would tend to focus more on philosophical analysis of concrete policy questions than political philosophers who are based in philosophy departments (and therefore only have philosophical training). Is this impression mistaken?

    Reply
  9. Matt

    "My impression is that political philosophers who are also legal academics (and therefore have legal training) would tend to focus more on philosophical analysis of concrete policy questions than political philosophers who are based in philosophy departments (and therefore only have philosophical training). Is this impression mistaken?"

    Just thinking off of the top of my head, I'm not sure if this is right. It's certainly true that a good number of philosophers working in law schools (w/ legal training) work on concrete policy questions. (A lot of my own work, though not all, falls into that category), but, it's not obvious to me that the work of, say, Jeremy Waldron, Stephen Perry, or Liam Murphy is "more concrete" than the work of Elizabeth Anderson, Michael Blake, or Aaron James, just to take a sample that came to mind quickly. (And this is to leave aside people I think of as doing more pure analytic jurisprudence.) I do think it's often an easier sell one's self to law schools if you can explain why your work has important implications for the law (and so, often, for "policy"), but as to a characterization of the work itself, I'm less sure.

    Reply
  10. Neophyte

    Brian,

    May I ask a different but not wholly unrelated question of you – one that you might consider opening up to your readers? How does a PhD or new hire (in one department or other) go about seeking a cross-appointment in Law (faculty) and Philosophy (department)? How is this usually done? Is it ever appropriate for a candidate to broach the topic with a hiring committee, a dean, etc?

    Thanks.

    Reply
  11. Brian Leiter

    I'm not sure there is a "usual." I would never raise this issue until after you have an offer, and then it will depend on university or unit rules about cross-appointments: some schools/units will have zero- or courtesy-appointments, some will not. After you have an offer, you can raise it, or raise it directly with the other unit if you have contacts there.

    Reply
  12. Law grad

    On a similar tangent, I was wondering if you could also recommend Graduate programs for law students who wish to enter Philosophy academia. I recently graduated with an LLM in Legal Theory from a top law school and have found myself wholly attracted to Moral Political Philosophy. Other than applying for a JSD program (and making a super strong case on why my area of interest has important implications for law, per se) are there any masters programs suited for a career change to Philosophy? I don't have a background in Philosophy and most of the American universities seem to require a solid undergraduate education in the subject.

    Reply
  13. Brian

    Terminal MA programs in philosophy in the US often take students with promise but little philosophy background. See:
    http://34.239.13.205/index.php/m-a-programs-in-philosophy/

    Note that Tufts, which has a very strong faculty, has the least satisfactory financial aid of any of the good terminal MA programs. Someone coming from law, and interested in moral/political, should look in particular at Georgia State, though not only that program.

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