Advice for Academic Job Seekers
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What do you need to find out now that you’ve gotten a tenure-track offer?
MOVING TO FRONT, SINCE SCHOOLS ARE MAKING OFFERS (ORIGINALLY POSTED NOVEMBER 24, 2009–I HAVE UPDATED CERTAIN NUMBERS)–SEE ALSO THE COMMENTS, WHICH HAVE HELPFUL ADDITIONAL SUGGESTIONS With luck, some of you seeking law teaching jobs will have gotten offers of tenure-track positions. What then? Here’s roughly what I tell the Chicago job candidates we work with
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Lawsky’s Law School Hiring Information
Professor Lawksy has created a website with all the information she has been helpfully collecting over a number of years now. Definitely bookmark it if you’re an aspiring legal academic.
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This is a more plausible “ranking” of law reviews…
…based on an aggregation of various metrics. I would disregard the ordinal order entirely, and think solely in terms of "clusters." This is certainly more sensible than the bizarre Washington & Lee ranking of law reviews (which is part of this aggregation, but whose weirdness is neutralized by some of the other metrics used here).
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406 candidates in the first FAR distribution for 2025-26…
…which is the highest number since before the pandemic, and an increase of almost 15% since last year.
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18% decline in jobs in first AALS jobs bulletin compared to last year
These are individual postings for entry-level, tenure-track law teaching jobs: 143 to 118. I had expected a "tightening" last March due to the Trump war on the universities, but it looks like the countervailing force (strong applicant pools and law school enrollments) may have helped avert a total collapse. One unknown is how many, if
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Faculty hiring freezes?
At my philosophy blog, I'm collecting information, please contribute there.
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How will the Trump Administration’s attack on the universities affect next year’s law teaching market?
A prospective candidate elsewhere asked me about this, in light of the various financial pressures universities are under due to the Trump Administration's actions (many of which are illegal, but we'll see–Columbia's capitulation certainly didn't help). The only law schools that are fiscally autonomous are free-standing law schools (like Brooklyn Law School, for example). Most
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UC San Diego (which does not have a law school) is suspending all faculty and staff hiring for the indefinite future…
…because of financial concerns related to the loss of NIH funding. This will happen elsewhere before too long I suspect, especially at schools that get a lot of NIH dollars. Many of these schools have law schools as well. In light of this, I think those with offers in hand should inquire about whether there
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Total law school applicants up 25% this year (and applications are up 35%)!
A "Trump bump" no doubt! This is good news for those who expect to be looking for law teaching jobs next year: since most schools are tuition-dependent, a significant increase in applicants means schools can plan to hire.
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The new timetable of the law school hiring market
Because I've been working with Chicago alums and fellows on the teaching market since 2008 (and doing the same at UT Austin before that), I've been witness to the changing timetable since the pandemic killed the "meat market" in Washington, DC (thank goodness!) and Zoom took over. Here's my perception, but I've opened comments for
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