Now that we're not in the middle of the appointments season, it's not a bad time for those of us who spend a significant amount of time on hiring committees to think about hiring strategies in the abstract. I personally find this useful because too often one ends up talking about strategy/approach to hiring in the context of voting on one or more candidates, which is obviously a more politically charged context than early summer when hopefully hiring is at a lull.
One question that comes up again and again is whether it's best to go for "curricular fit" candidates or "best athlete" candidates. Obviously a lot depends on where a school is at a particular point in time, what its needs are, how many slots are open etc. And I suppose another variable is how willing existing faculty may be to change their course packages to accommodate new hires. But I'm always concerned that too much focus on curricular fit can be very limiting, particularly in the entry level market where candidates are generally able to pick up one or two new subjects that could fit curricular gaps.
And then there's those other questions we blog about all the time – entry level versus mid-level lateral versus senior lateral, permanent hires versus visitors, look-see visitors versus podium visitors. And of course, what do you do with any empty chairs? Use them for hiring? Or focus on retention of (or recognition of) existing faculty?
Any appointments aficionados want to weigh in on appointments strategy in the abstract? I've been mulling this over while trying to think of a good comment for Tim's post on the worst books ever. I wanted to say the fourth Twilight book (Breaking Dawn), but that would mean admitting that I kind of liked the other three, despite the very valid criticisms others have made about the characters and structure.
Jacqui – I actually tend to think that curricular need should be the primary driver of appointments. I think it's just a very rare school that can actually say to a candidate, "You're great, we love you, so come here and teach whatever you want." Most schools just don't have those kinds of resources. So if there's not some curricular overlap, either the new hire (or existing faculty) get pushed into courses they don't want to teach or the curricular needs continue to go unmet (requiring future hiring), while one fewer faculty line remains open. Though it may be hard to find the best scholar who is also a curricular fit, I think there are scholars in all fields that are good enough to meet the standards of most faculties, and the inability to hire someone appropriate in one year should just mean that the school waits for the right person to come along another year (as they would probably end up having to do anyway).
Of course, I think other factors should play a role in hiring too – but I just think curricular need should be the driving force.
Those are good points, Jessie. To draw from a related field, can you imagine a law firm hiring best athletes (instead of where their needs reside)? "Well, we really need someone to help in litigation, but he's SO qualified (read: credentialed) that we'll take a transactional guy this year. And like in the law firm world, there are many qualified candidates (in a school's curricular need areas) who still won't be hired in any given FAR season (as Demand far outstrips Supply) …
I think another primary driver should be prioritizing people who have doctrinal teaching experience under their belts. There are now quite a few VAP-type programs that practically ensure someone will hit the ground running. I think those programs are quite valuable (and much more so than most fellowships that only provide LRW experience). Of course, this may already be a primary driver at many schools.
It might be interesting to explore the question begged by the term "best athlete." What makes a best athlete? Someone with the right background credentials(ivy ba/bs, t-3 JD, law review, federal clerkship, PhD), someone with the right publications, someone with the right teaching experience? Is practice experience required; if not, why? These are interesting questions – especially which facets of a candidate's background are weighed most heavily.
Of course, it's probably obvious that if someone doesn't have a PhD, then where that person got their JD is the most heavily weighed criterion in this process.
Maybe I should explain a bit more about what I mean by "best athlete" because those are all points well taken. I don't mean hiring someone who is a total curricular overlap with an existing person on the faculty where there's no chance that the person will teach anything at all that: (a) the school needs; or (b) the candidate would ever in a million years want to teach. But I think that we sometimes over-emphasize curricular need to our own detriment. When I worked in Australia and in Britain (in academia), it seemed that faculties were not so set on curricular fit in the sense that there was one clearly defined slot and the candidate absolutely had to fit that slot with little to no flexibility on the teaching side at the margins. I get the feeling – and this was certainly true in the other countries I taught in – that people generally will have two or maybe even three areas they're interested in or at least willing to teach for a significant period of time. They may focus scholarship in one or two areas, but usually people are able to teach in two or three. So I would assume that would give a little more flexibility in hiring. I'm certainly not advocating the situation Jessie suggested ie hiring someone who completely overlaps with someone else on the faculty thus leaving a big curricular gap and a doubling-up in another area. I just assume that many candidates can fill a gap even if part of their interest overlaps with someone else. When I started teaching in Aus, I was a commercial lawyer, so I taught and wrote in banking law and contract law. I was also asked to pick up some con law tutorials which was a lot of fun. I did it for many years and it really assisted me developing my scholarship in greater depth because I had to think about issues outside my prime areas of interest. I think it also made me a better teacher as well, having to think about getting my mind around different kinds of issues to those I usually wrote about. My school had excellent mentoring for new teachers and as a result, I felt that I rapidly developed into someone who really enjoyed and was confident with the material that wasn't in my key area of interest.
Re Anon's point about the analogy with practice, I don't think it's a perfect analogy with academia. I think profs are a little more fungible in the sense that most of us cross two or three subject areas without having to take a body out of one department (eg litigation) and move them into another (eg corporate transactions). Because we're not departmentalized and specialized in the same way as a law firm practice group, it's easier to fit bodies in more flexibly – at least I would think so.
(And re the last Anon point, somewhat sadly I do think best athlete tends to refer more to scholarship than anything else – which is why I don't know that teaching is such a big deal. I wish that appointments committees in general weighted other things like teaching and service and collegiality – and even diversity – more heavily.)
I agree with Jacqueline that law professors are or should be quite flexible in terms of subjects they are able to teach. As such I would lean toward placing priority upon "best athlete" hiring, as long as the school and the new hire can agree on a teaching package that makes sense for the school. When I came to my current school, I was asked to teach contracts, which I hadnt thought much about since taking the bar exam many years ago. But I have now taught it for three years and am happy to carry on with it as part of my contribution to the curricular needs of the school, even though it has nothing to do with my research.
What I mean by best athlete is really mostly about research and publishing. I think that a law school should aim to collect the best scholars it can and let curricular needs be filled as a secondary priority (though of course still a priority), through agreement and assignment. If you are a good enough teacher to make it through the tenure process, you can teach most legal subjects if you apply yourself to the task.
Now, it may be that teaching preferences are so strong for some top scholars that they will refuse an offer from an otherwise desireable school if the teaching package on offer is not satisfactory. I suspect, though, that this will happen in only a minority of instances.
I'm really just saying that curricular needs can largely be filled through flexibility and agreement between new hires and the school, and that as such the priority should be on finding the best scholars.
For many candidates on the market, they'll teach whatever a school wants them to teach if it means landing a tenure-track job. So the extreme emphasis placed on the candidate's listed preferences on the FAR form does not necessarily equate with what the candidate is *actually* willing to teach if given the job. This, in turn, suggests that curricular fit should not be a major part of the hiring decision. If an otherwise strong candidate says that he or she will teach the Law of Brussel Sprouts, and the school has a need for a class in the Law of Brussel Sprouts, then why not hire that person? This is especially true given that many candidates are told to "game" the FAR Form by listing their teaching preferences strategically.
Given the competitiveness of the market, many strong candidates will teach any course to "get in the door." Just because someone *says* they will teach a particular course does not necessarily mean that it is their utmost preference. So why do hiring committees focus so heavily on this factor?
I guarantee that I "bombed" one of my AALS interviews because, when asked my curricular interests, I forgot that the school I was meeting with needed an admin. person, and I named courses other than admin. as my preference. I'm sure that that answer was one major reason I did not receive a callback from that school. But if they had said "would you teach admin.?" I would have given them an enthusiastic "yes." Is this really the best way to decide who to hire?