Law schools are moving to a model where the path to a tenure track job increasingly runs through a job as a fellow in a prestigious program such as the Climenko fellowships at Harvard or through a stint as a Visiting Assistant Professor.
The VAP path is the route I took when I finally figured out after a misspent middle age that teaching law was what I had wanted to do all along. For me, being a VAP was a wonderful experience – the work was stimulating, the pay was more than fair, and every time the administrators or tenure track profs could help me, they did.
That said, a conversation I had the other day made me think a bit about whether the shift to VAPs as an entry point is good either for some candidates or for the legal academy. The conversation started with what Brian Tamanaha has skeptically called the “law professor mantra” that law professors should be paid more than other professors because they could make more in law practice. I wondered whether this has any validity given the modern world of practice. I reached out to Larry Latourette, a former big law partner who now is a principal in the legal headhunting firm of LateralLink, to see if law professors these days really have any options in private practice.
As I suspected, there wasn’t much of a story there. “Law professors are not marketable,” Latourette said. “If they think they are they are kidding themselves.”
For law firms, the main reason is that no one gets hired as a partner without a portable book of business. “About 98 percent of getting hired is the book of business,” Latourette said.
Even aside from that, path dependency and skill sets provide a barrier. Law firms and law departments can pick from a big pool of people who have stayed in practice long enough to have highly developed, specialized skill sets, and especially on the law firm side there is a tendency to pigeonhole people into the work they’ve done before, he said.
He did note there were exceptions – someone like Larry Tribe could move to a firm, or someone with mature gravitas could fit a situation where a troubled institution needed a white hat. Professors with active consulting or expert witness practices might persuade firms their marketability was proven. He also argued that people with the capabilities of your average law professor should find a role somewhere, even if the structure of the legal field made finding a private practice job difficult.
He acknowledged that at the outset of a teaching career the pay scales of private practice matter – the pay has to be enough to justify foregoing the higher pay of private practice.
Even there, Latourette said, “Law schools could pay less.”
His point was that many professor candidates weren't giving up that much because even in a pool of those with the very best academic records the odds of making partner were long. By the statistics, most law firm associates with law professor level credentials do not make partner. The skill sets and mindsets of teaching and practice are very different, and unblinking desire for the brass ring of partnership is a critical factor. “You have to want it very badly without thinking about whether it is worth having,” he said.
The could-pay-less point brought me around to VAPs and fellows, because that’s exactly where law schools do pay less. Pay varies by school, of course, but at many schools temporary professors are brought in on lower pay scales, with the candidates hoping this will provide a path into the teaching profession. Potential professors want the job enough that they take the jobs at lower pay, even without the additional benefit of being on a tenure track. The process gives potential professors a chance to get some articles written and to see if they like the academic world.
I think this trend has systemic costs for the academy as a whole. As schools move to this model, it has to reduce the diversity of the candidate pool. Not everyone can move temporarily to a job or take the pay cut for an uncertain future, and those who cannot suffer in comparison to those who can spend two or three years polishing an academic resume. Candidates from wealthier backgrounds thus have an edge. It can disadvantage students, because no one teaches a course as well as they possibly can the first time they teach it. There’s also something about creating a floating body of non-tenure track faculty that makes me feel queasy.
The costs also can be great for the candidates, and Latourette helped bring this home. In today’s teaching market, a lot of candidates might be left standing when the game of musical chairs ends. What happens to a VAP who doesn’t get hired? Can they go back to big law?
“They are basically useless to me,” said Latourette. “Just the act of stepping off the path is enough. Law firms want people who run the path hard and have no other goal. If they pursue the VAP that indicates they have a different goal than most firms are interested in.”
On reflection, Latourette walked that back a little. There’s a point in years out of law school – something less than ten years – when a candidate has enough miles on the meter that going in as an associate no longer is possible and going in as a partner either requires unique skills or a book of business. Even government lawyers with highly marketable skills have sell by dates.
If a VAP can get in and out of the academic experience in a year, maybe two, and still be fresh enough to market as an associate, Latourette saw some hope, especially at boutique firms that highly value academic pedigrees.
While Latourette knows the current big law market better than I ever will, I think there may be some counter examples out there. Latourette also does not profess to speak about other kinds of legal employers, which may be of much more interest to many potential VAPs. I know one Climenko fellow who turned down teaching offers to go as an associate to a top Wall Street firm. I know another case, a veteran lawyer with the proven ability to develop and try big cases, who moved from several years of being a VAP to being a partner with a small firm.
I think law school hiring committees should think seriously about the path the academy is heading down as it makes VAP or fellowship experience a near prerequisite for getting hired for certain categories of candidates. By requiring the kind of experience and output a VAP or fellowship allows, the academy devalues other experiences, disadvantaging those who stay in practice and those unable to afford the gamble.
I also think potential VAPs and fellows should understand the risks and costs. Not everyone lands a permanent teaching job, and candidates need to do some serious research and thinking before jumping off the ledge.
For those who have been frustrated by the willful blindness that so many professors have exhibited regarding the job prospects and debt levels of their students, this is an important post. It recognizes that a major part of the solution to the cost problem is that law school faculty will have to be compensated on the same scale as the sociology department, and not be treated like the physicians at the medical school
I was on the market a few years ago when the academic hiring market cratered mid-hiring season (I had ten or so AALS interviews, and only one of those schools actually hired someone that year). I knew several VAPs/fellows who also struck out. They all ended up finding something in practice, though it took a while for at least one of them. Some went back to their firms. Some went to new firms (though these tended to be the people who were in government prior to going on the market). Some went to government.
To address another aspect of the post, I agree that there has been a heavy move toward a VAP model of hiring, and I think it is probably a mistake. The impetus for this drift in hiring practices seems to be an attraction to the Ph.D. faculty development model of other academic disciplines. But this strikes me as a poor model to emulate. First, Ph.D. programs have nothing to boast about. By and large they seem increasingly to produce narrow, highly specialized people with a good knowledge of how to manipulate certain professional tools but, in my experience, not much of a grasp of the big picture that might give them some insight how to use those tools productively. They come out of their programs with an academic agenda, to be sure, but it seems rarely to be an interesting one. Second, this model is an especially bad idea for law, since it seems to produce people who are largely cut off from the profession itself, and thus are doubly disabled from doing professionally useful scholarly work, to say nothing of the sometimes disabling effects of this kind of training on their ability to teach professional students credibly and effectively. I have nothing against any faculty hiring some people with this kind of background — diversity in law faculty professional backgrounds is to everyone's advantage — but I sense an excessive rush to repopulate faculties with individuals cut from this particular cloth.
I think that the decision to leave a partnership track for any type of non-practicing career is one that should be made only after a serious weighing of the potential downsides and upsides, whether that next step is academia, business, or child-rearing. For the reasons you cite, law firms are sometimes loath to take back associates who have gone in-house. (The joke at one of my old firms was "What do you call someone who comes back to the firm after going in-house? Permanent Associate.) Whether or not your skills had increased or decreased during your time away, you would be seen as not willing to make the sacrifices a partnership-track associate would need to make. I even had a friend who went to the D.A.'s office from a big law firm after two years, and they wouldn't take her back after three years as a prosecutor, when she had actually been trying cases and getting great experience.
That being said, I saw at least three VAPs at Illinois return to sophisticated practices after leaving a VAP after one year. These were highly-regarded attorneys (two associates and one partner), and their discussions with their firms upon leaving were more like "if this doesn't work out, call us." If the person who is leaving was biding their time in practice and wasn't on track anyway, then the decision not to re-hire is too easy for the law firm to make. If structured and used in the right way, a VAP can give some lawyers a chance to see if academia is right for them.
Requiring a VAP or equivalent will also disproportionately hurt female candidates, because — at least for those who are straight and married, especially if they have kids — they are probably less able (less willing?) to disrupt their families by relocating to someplace that will mostly likely be only temporary. There are still more men with stay-at-home or otherwise mobile wives than there are women with stay-at-home or otherwise mobile husbands. Ergo, male profs are more likely to be willing and able to risk having to move twice in two or three years.
"He also argued that people with the capabilities of your average law professor should find a role somewhere, even if the structure of the legal field made finding a private practice job difficult."
He contradicts what he said earlier (except for the fact that 'find a role *somewhere*' is not much of a statement).
He started out stating the the book of business was 98% of being hired, and added the fact that law firms have access to a very broad and very deep market of people who are *experienced* in whatever sub-specialty is needed.
Those two factors would work hard against almost all law professors (superstars, of course, live in their own world).
Law profs are not employable as practitioners??? This is news??
No one ever truly bought the argument that law profs should be paid more because they could make so much more in practice.
Law profs were paid more because law schools could command the tuition that they did from students and pass most of that money on the law profs. Deans saw salaries, stipends, etc. as a way to placate faculties.
At all the law schools in which I worked, professor salaries were 50%+ of the school's annual budget.
Those days are over, kids.
Law professors are useless to Latourette because he has a cookie cutter business model which involves moving pieces around the chess board of a certain set of firms. Talented people with good skills – granted not all law professors ever generated the skills – can get hired in firms or in house and government and elsewhere is the macro environment is strong. Based on the pattern of calls I have gotten from headhunters over the years it depends largely on the robustness of that market. Granted at a certain age point the story changes – the institution has to need/want a leader or someone with the "gravitas" factor.
The law prof salary issue has always been misconstrued in this debate. It is not about the fact that a university might lose you to the private sector but it is about how competitive the university remains to pull people out of the private sector. And the market has spoken on this issue – salaries increase pretty much in proportion to research productivity. If schools pay lower salaries they clearly do not want a certain kind of academic faculty member.
CleverAnon: Huh???
Keeping in mind that his field is big law and a few boutiques that compete with big law, I asked Larry if he was willing to give a read to people, whether heading out of VAPs or considering heading in, as to how marketable they might be in his world. Larry would be delighted to speak in confidence to anyone with questions on their law firm marketability and can be reached at llatourette@laterallink.com
CleverAnon: "The law prof salary issue has always been misconstrued in this debate. It is not about the fact that a university might lose you to the private sector but it is about how competitive the university remains to pull people out of the private sector. And the market has spoken on this issue – salaries increase pretty much in proportion to research productivity. If schools pay lower salaries they clearly do not want a certain kind of academic faculty member."
Two things – first, they don't have to pull so strongly. A candidate for law professor who has three years of practice is in the top (probably) 10-20% for years of practice. I read that half of law professors have no practice experience, and that the other half has a median of less than two years.
Yet at 3 years in, an associate is still a few to several years from making partner, and the odds are strongly against them. At that point, making the jump to academia would be a reasonable move, even if the salaries were much lower.
Second, even frankly lousy law schools have been able to pay what would be rock star salaries (in other fields), because they could charge ridiculous prices, and still fill large lecture halls. Take the Median School of Law (rank, #100). It might charge $30K/year or more, yet the job outcomes are lousy, and the salaries worse. If one took a magic wand and bumped their placement up to 90%, it'd still be a bad bargain.
These schools are going to have to cut their costs by a large amount, and still have far smaller class size (a few are chosing to admit any warm bodies, but that will bite in a few years).
I believe that faculty hiring has already gone to a fraction of what it was back in 2010, and it will stay so. This means that the jobs:candidates ratio has dropped, which means that the typical salaries will fall.
To my understanding, the real reason for higher law school faculty salaries is because if you set the salary at English professor levels, many law professors would spend much more of their time consulting. Those entering academia wouldn't cut ties with the firms they are leaving, but would try to continue in some sort of "of counsel" role. This is the norm in places like Australia where university faculty are unionized, and thus all get paid the same regardless of department (or so it was 20 years ago). There are still some professors who spend a lot of time (more than the ABA allows) consulting, and some new professors who don't break their ties to their old jobs completely. But despite those exceptions, the norm is that law professors are paid to have a full-time job, and to consult only a little if at all. Whether the world is a better place because of this is another question, but I can tell you that if full professors were making 75K instead of 150K, the response wouldn't be to quit and try to get a job as a partner at a law firm, but to try to get paying part-time gigs within the scope of the professors' expertise.
Barry, please identify the mythical lousy school that pays rock star salaries. And once again salaries do not reflect market power of current faculty but need for universities to attract top tier talent out of other gigs. Granted if the bottom of the trough continues a downward shift could occur.
I think most of these comments miss the most basic reason why law prof salaries are where they are. It's a market, folks. But law schools are not just (or not even primarily) competing with law firms for the best and brightest; they are competing with *other law schools* for top talent, as academia defines it. If my law school pays its new hires significantly less than other comparable schools, we will lose candidates to those other schools. That is a fact! You can argue about whether we should or should not be competing, but once we decide to compete, the level of salary necessary is more or less out of our hands. The solution to this problem is an illegal one! Coordinate among law schools to reduce competition in the entry and lateral markets.
Schools like Wash U, NYU and so on chose to pay very handsomely to win the inter-law-school competition for faculty, and as a result they now have faculty of a very high quality, by legal academic standards, who are paid very handsomely. Whether those expenses are sustainable in the new environment is in question (I understand that Wash U is particularly over-extended and facing very serious budget issues–they will have to lower faculty salaries, fulfilling Tamanaha's wishes), but those schools chose to compete in the market, and, for a while, they "won" very smart professors, who publish in top journals, and their USN rankings soared. The high salaries were an institutional choice, and not obviously an "irrational" one at the time.
How to adjust in the current environment is of course the main problem. Tenure and civil service protections means you can't shed workforce as easily as you can in the private sector. You can always start offering new hires less money, but no one is hiring, and anyway you still have a large overhang of professors whose salaries were set under different market conditions. But deans still have some covert tools to "encourage" faculty to leave over the short term (and in case of real financial difficulty, most law schools will be able to invoke "financial crisis" as a justification for firing professors or, more likely, reducing salaries across the board), and over the medium term anyway, doesn't it seem like the problem will solve itself? No raises means the real value of salaries deflates; highly paid senior faculty retire (and are not replaced, or are replaced by juniors at new, lower, market rates), and the system stabilizes at a new "market price" for lawyers.
So I think a lot of the hand-wringing about law profs being paid "too much" wrongly implies that its the law prof's "fault", and it exaggerates the difficulties of a market correction to the current situation of "high salaries".
I dont understand CleverAnon…
I think Jason Yackee's comment misses the reason why law profs salaries are where they are: unlimited student loans made available by the federal government that allow schools to charge tuition that bears no relationship to the value received by students earning a juris doctor degree. Without the exorbitant tuition and the influx of students being led to believe that borrowing tons of money for law school is a terrific idea, schools would not be able to compete for law prof talent by offering ever increasing amounts of money.
Professor Yackee chose Wash U and NYU as examples of law schools that pay their professors well. Wash U is ranked #18 and NYU is ranked #6 according to US News. This is a familiar strategy of law profs when discussing law school issues: choose some elite or semi-elite schools and use those as examples of law schools in general, despite the fact that they are within the top 10% of schools overall. What about the other 90% of law schools? Can some law profs at decent schools like where Professor Yackee is employed discuss why tuition and law prof salaries are what they are at average to poor law schools, given the dramatic drop-off in student outcomes between the elite and the rest?
How about a hypothetical: what would happen at the bottom 90% of law schools if the federal government were to require that law schools place at least 80% of graduates in long term, bar required jobs, funded by an outside employer (not the law school itself), within 9 months of graduation in order to qualify for federal loan money for incoming students?
Jilly
Excellent suggestion. This standard would work for me even at the 50% level.
And, make sure that at least 25% of the law school tuition revenue comes from sources other than federal loans.
The profs's salary issue will then take care of itself, and, if applicants get wise to the VAP game, law schools will then need to confront the consequences of the sort of unethical games they have been playing with adjuncts, VAPs, etc. (i.e., pay exorbitant, mainly unjustified salaries to underperforming tenured faculty and stiff all the rest to make up the difference).
Jilly, what will happen is that law schools will begin to fail a significant percentage of their matriculatees after the 1L or 2L year. Those failed students will not get their money back.
Jilly, I don't see the conflict between what Jason Yackee wrote and what you are saying. Jason is saying that salaries were set in the boom times when schools were flush with cash and were competing to retain faculty talent, and you're saying that schools were flush with cash because of unlimited federal loans. Can't both be correct?
On the other hand, I'm interested in hearing more from Jason about this paragraph:
*******
Deans still have some covert tools to "encourage" faculty to leave over the short term (and in case of real financial difficulty, most law schools will be able to invoke "financial crisis" as a justification for firing professors or, more likely, reducing salaries across the board), and over the medium term anyway, doesn't it seem like the problem will solve itself? No raises means the real value of salaries deflates; highly paid senior faculty retire (and are not replaced, or are replaced by juniors at new, lower, market rates), and the system stabilizes at a new "market price" for lawyers.
********
What are the covert tools you have in mind? Also, while highly-paid senior faculty will retire eventually, that can take decades: That sounds more like a long-term dynamic than a medium-term one.
SillyJilly
Excellent! And, as a result of the want of their tuition dollars, shuttered.
This is not a problem, SillyJilly, this is an objective means to discipline law schools that refuse to wake up: reform or go out of business.
As the ABA won't do its job, it is up to the feds to regulate underperforming/unethical law schools out of existence by means of controlling their access to federal student loan money.
Let's not lose sight of what you are describing when you say that law professors have expiration dates that would make it impossible for them to, in most cases, move into practice. What you describe strikes me as a culture of age discrimination. Why would a law firm be willing to hire a newly-minted lawyer but not someone work worked for years as a law professor or a VAP (and may even have taught the newly-minted lawyers the firm hires routinely)? Surely most professors have significant knowledge of legal literatures, which should be a major plus in the practice of law, the ability to do first-rate legal analysis, and the ability to write well. Why must someone be hired as a partner (with a book of business) or not at all, merely because the candidate has been out of law school for several to many years? For what reason, other than because law firms have "tracks" because, well, they just have "tracks," couldn't a former law professor or former VAP join a law firm as, say, a third-year associate? It's not like one can't learn by doing, like all the associates do, in a law firm. It's not like one can't start to develop a so-called "book of business" while an associate at a law firm, as associates who become partner often do. Indeed, a law professor, because of his/her experience, would have a particular knack in many cases for learning new areas of specialization.
So look at the statement, “They [former VAPs] are basically useless to me. Just the act of stepping off the path is enough. Law firms want people who run the path hard and have no other goal. If they pursue the VAP that indicates they have a different goal than most firms are interested in.” Why is this anything more than empty blather that justifies not hiring people because of their age?
AnonProf
Stunning. One can only say "How dare you?"
Have you reviewed the AALS hiring stats recently? Sort by date of graduation from law school.
The law academy not only practices age discrimination, it PRIDES ITSELF on it. I have personally heard it, over and over, so please, don't claim otherwise. If you are law prof, you know this is true.
Really, a certain amount of bs on this site is to be expected, but your comment deserves a special prize for hypocrisy and obliviousness.
That the blatant age discrimination practiced by the law academy in hiring is tolerated is a shameful and despicable circumstance. This practice is especially disgusting because one expects "enlightened" individuals to know better.
The fact that law professors are not marketable outside of academia is a shame to our students.
You can't view the VAPs are useless to me as an age discrimination claim. Most VAPs are well under 40. Frankly its the other way round….if you are over 40 and have never written a serious academic article your chances of getting into a tenure stream position are quite limited except in a clinical setting. All that the recruiter is really saying is that in a certain phased of the market he can't easily place or does not need to recruit VAPs. But I have known VAPs who have decided not to go into teaching permanently or who have not been successful in transitioning out of practice who have gone back into the market.
anon: I'm not a law professor; I just play one on tv. Does that change the validity of my argument, in your eyes?
"Barry, please identify the mythical lousy school that pays rock star salaries. And once again salaries do not reflect market power of current faculty but need for universities to attract top tier talent out of other gigs. Granted if the bottom of the trough continues a downward shift could occur."
Posted by: CleverAnon
All schools in the bottom 150. Remember, my definition of 'rock star salary' is in comparison to other fields. $150K is a major salary in almost all other fields, and that's in the top 20 or so departments.
Jason Yackee: "It's a market, folks. But law schools are not just (or not even primarily) competing with law firms for the best and brightest; they are competing with *other law schools* for top talent, …"
Jason, for Harvard, I'd accept that. For T14's, I'd accept that. For Case Westerm? Thomas Jefferson? UC Irvine? For the 100-150 schools which frankly are never going to get top talent (or keep it), I don't accept that.
And going on, when the VAP:job ratio is several to one, *after* discarding those who shouldn't even have gotten a VAP in the first place, there's no way.
"Jilly, what will happen is that law schools will begin to fail a significant percentage of their matriculatees after the 1L or 2L year. Those failed students will not get their money back."
I expect some schools to do this, and they'll buy a few years, but the feedback from that will probably get back to undergrads even moreso than lousy job prospects.
AnonProf: "What you describe strikes me as a culture of age discrimination. "
Yes. Which is the world we live in.
"Why would a law firm be willing to hire a newly-minted lawyer but not someone work worked for years as a law professor or a VAP (and may even have taught the newly-minted lawyers the firm hires routinely)?"
Well, right now they don't like to hire new grads, since laterals are so cheap and available. Perhaps you should check your school's placement rates.
" Surely most professors have significant knowledge of legal literatures, which should be a major plus in the practice of law, the ability to do first-rate legal analysis, and the ability to write well."
No, not surely, and likely not even probably.
"Why must someone be hired as a partner (with a book of business) or not at all, merely because the candidate has been out of law school for several to many years? "
Because hiring somebody who doesn't have a book of business means (a) diluting partner profits and (b) taking a large risk that the new hire won't pull their own weight over the next few years.
OhsocleverAnon
"if you are over 40 and have never written a serious academic article your chances of getting into a tenure stream position are quite limited except in a clinical setting."
No, if you are over 40 (or 50) your chances of getting into a tenure stream position are not only "quite limited," these chances approach nil.
Again, review the AALS stats and sort by date of graduation from law school. Let's stop soft peddling it. Let's drop the BS; the law academy is one of the most egregious in its blatant and open age discrimination, and everyone who cares to inquire knows about it. Check out the quotes from prominent members of legal academia in the NYT, "What They Don’t Teach Law Students: Lawyering," November 19, 2011. The facts are facts. There is no secret about this.
Further, your comment demonstrates another technique that is considered "ever so clever" (and valid) in the legal academic community: your argument goes something like this:
"I heard …" "I know an example of …." "My spouse knew someone who …" "I'm not an expert, but my colleagues who are inform me that …" etc.
In other words, bs anecdotal evidence, hearsay and rumors disguised as reasonable argument and fact.
Using the VAP as a ruse is just another disgusting way that legal academia is making its mark in the public consciousness.
"What are the covert tools you have in mind? "
Orin, I suspect things like low-cost loans (which are in many cases later "forgiven") and the like.
"but your comment deserves a special prize for hypocrisy and obliviousness."
I don't think these two can peacefully coexists, so I vote the latter.
Can one be oblivious to one's own hypocrisy?
Perhaps.
Concerned_citizen, I think Jason was referring to covert tools used by Deans at the professor's current place of employment, not ways Deans can try to lure laterals to their school.
AnonProf:
You may not be aware of it, but BigLaw (or even mid-law) will rarely hire, unless they have an incredible pedigree like a Supreme Court clerkship or a father that is a S&P 100 CEO, "a newly-minted lawyer" who is over the age of 30 or so. They are considered as unlikely to be willing to put in the hours that a 23-24 year old "newly-mint" would, especially for 10 years. This detail has been blithely ignored by many professors and law schools (especially I suspect yourself) when recruiting from "non-traditional backgrounds" those who can sign the loans to pay the tuition for at least the last 15-20 years. It's not fair, it is probably wrong – but it happens and the law schools are doing it too. Indeed law schools discriminate against lawyers with too many years of practice experience, a fact that defenders of the law school status quo have alluded to, which can be seen as age discrimination (if a extremely perverse form of such discrimination.)
Practicing lawyers have also dealt with the "new mints," so in many instances saying a professor taught them what they know about the legal field they want to enter – well let's say that that is not a positive point in most instances. As for "most professors have significant knowledge of legal literatures, which should be a major plus in the practice of law, the ability to do first-rate legal analysis, and the ability to write well," were you being ironic, facetious or serious? I can't tell…
As for "it's not like one can't start to develop a so-called "book of business" while an associate at a law firm, as associates who become partner often do," you do understand why so many BigLaw associates, 90% plus depart big law within their first 5 years is that they don't develop a book of business and are transparently unlikely to. In fact very very few associates develop a book of business (many partners cannot either.) Very few associates develop a book of business that would justify a partner's pay check in BigLaw, that is the hard reality. I've built a book – it is hard, damn hard.
As I said, I am not sure if your post was a joke, a sort of satire on the by now clichéd oblivious and hypocritical law professor, or a genuine if clueless crie de coeur. Can you elaborate?
Orin:
It is interesting – although the legal concept is not found in all US states, at what point do covert means become "constructive dismissal?"
Someone has probably said this already. I tried to read all the comments but may have missed it. Law profs are paid more at the outset because when they enter law teaching they have an option. This is especially true with respect to the closed universe of people eligible to be hired as law profs. Ten years later they still make more than other academics but probably less than others who could have but did not enter law teaching. The higher salaries ten years out cannot be explained by a need to pay them not to return to practice because very few could find anyone to pay them their law professor salary. So, why the higher salary? To me it is payment for being willing to forgo the path that could have lead to much hire salaries. In effect, it is a lifetime payout based on taking the less lucrative path.
"but probably less than others who could have but did not enter law teaching."
Nope; I would suspect that most non-equity-partner lawyers who started out in biglaw ten years ago currently make less than the average law professor. Law professors willfully refuse to discount projected salaries they could have had ten years out by the high percentage they would have washed out of the partner track, like most biglaw associates eventually do.
Right. Every law prof sees himself or herself as a "rock star" who was the "best athlete" at the "meat market."
They literally use comic book phrases to describe themselves.
Very special snowflakes, indeed.
twbb:
To be fair, ideas about what BigLaw partners are earning are very much driven by the AmLaw numbers – and I have heard a lot of at least anecdotal evidence that the AmLaw numbers are complete bullshit – up there with USNWR placement statistics for law schools for many of the same reasons. Law firms fear the consequences of not being seen to be as profitable and successful as their peers. The danger is when law firm leaders "drink the KoolAid®" and start making choices to match their supposed peers success by for example offering astonishing guaranteed packages to lateraling partners (cf Dewey).
Of course it does seem from time to time that many law professors believe the impression given by AmLaw, which in a curious way makes them similar to law students lured in by the USNWR data, while faculty pay also seems to be driven by this impression.
Also, in a "get off my law[n]" harumphing mode, I think it would be entertaining and indeed instructive for many who read this forum to have a totally ruthless and sarcastic thread in which everyone piles on to demolish clichéd lawyers (partners, associates, prosecutors and defenders), law professors and indeed judges as portrayed in popular media – TV in particular – going back to LA Law. I think it could in fact be potentially provide educationally useful material.
It reminds me of a rather grizzled Army sergeant who gave my teenage reservist (with my peers) a protracted lecture at a firing range where they had a wide variety of vehicles and materials (assorted wall types up to steel plate) riddled with holes – I'll try to remember how it went (it was 30 years ago):
"now listen, wha' yez see in the movies is complete shite – the detective hidin' behind a car door – most bullets will go right through a car door, walls – plasterboard (drywall) stops almost nuttin, clapboard feck-all" .. and so on showing us examples "Dat stuff on TV gets people kilt…" By the way with respect to the gun instructor killed in Las Vegas when he let an 8-year old fire an Uzi on full auto (see YouTube), he also (long before that blackly funny event) stated two basic rules with respect to submachine guns – "never fire on full auto like in da movies (burshts, burshts)" and "never stand to the left of some eedgit firing on full auto."
He was a man who had seen considerable violence in 20+ years of UN peacekeeping details and secondments to the UN as an observer (which had invalided him to the reserves) and had a bit of a thing about unrealistic media portrayals of violence. Maybe we all need to have a thing about popular media's portrayal of the law.
Ray, you've been invited over for a conversation:
http://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2014/10/vapid-vaps-and-delusions-of-lawprof.html
True, and I tried to qualify it by specifying equity partner but even then I suspect a lot of putative "equity" partners have a minimal share in firm profits. And while I accept that a lot of law professors may be misled by AmLaw, the big difference between them and students misled by USNWR data is they actually benefit from the mismatch, since the law professors who become administrators and make compensation decisions appear to suffer from the same misperception.
In any event, whatever motive in the past there was to pay law professors huge salaries has pretty much evaporated, though doubtless they will protest en masse that out of a vague sense of fairness they should be set for the rest of their lives. I suspect a lot of the current law and economics clique will get a lot less so when it comes to allocative efficiency in regards to their own salaries.
twbb:
I am a pretty strong critic of law schools – but it is also worth considering the impact that data like the AmLaw numbers have on those thinking of going to law school. If law professors and administrators perceive these numbers as the norm for the profession, don't you think they are also a big influence on those considering going to law school?
Don't get me wrong – I think the USNWR numbers are a disgrace, the way law schools have fiddled their reporting to goose their employment data and salary reporting outrageous and unethical. But I also think that there is too much misinformation out there about the legal profession in AmLaw, on TV etc. The law schools have done little to counter that misimpression (and many have positively encouraged it), but the false idea of legal practice that attracts so many people wrongly into law school (either wrong people or wrong reasons) is not something just the law schools created.
Jeff: "Law profs are paid more at the outset because when they enter law teaching they have an option. "
That option has a very, very low value. They are generally hired with 0-2 years in practice. This means that their chance of making partner were 10%? 20% at best?
If they didn't make partner, they'd be on the street with the 85-90% of other associates who didn't make partner, which means that their expected incomes are bad.
And that's before going into the differences in make-up between a partner and a legal academic.
twbb
You've hit on a very important point.
The bs that the "law and economics" folks have been peddling of late (which has helped to inflate corporate salaries and destroy whatever was left of Wall Street regulation) must now be applied to their own weird world of incompetent hacks. That is a world in which the unknowing speak to the ignorant in incomprehensible, illogical and illiterate ways (as many are not economists at all, but rather JDs posing as such, sometimes paired with a real "economist" to get some basics that are beyond their comprehension close to being correct).
Hopefully, this form of "law and …" will simply go away. It has done little good and too much harm. Then, and returning to the subject of this thread, perhaps law schools will be able to afford to stop engaging in the VAP ruse, which is almost designed to abuse the time and skills of persons hired to do the real work of a law school without really "hiring" them.
This very interesting thread makes me wonder about an interesting larger tension (and I do mean this in all sincerity).
Graduation speeches always say that you should pursue your dreams rather than merely staying on a particular track because it's expected of you. They also say, to the point that it's become a cliche, that failure is a good thing and that we should all welcome it and embrace it. But if taking a VAP without converting it to a faculty job can, absurd as it sounds, lead to one being essentially unemployable in law, as Ray's post states, then isn't all this standard advice wrong? Should graduation speeches and advice books/articles instead insist that one, for security's sake, not advance in the direction of one's dreams, and not ever risk failure, but be sure to stay on the narrow and traditional path, because any deviation will likely be a career killer? Maybe not in Steve Job's case, to be sure, but in the common run of cases?
AnonProf
Your questions implicate the point that is so often debated in this forum:
TO what extent do those who "run" law schools owe anything to anyone other than a devil may care, caveat emptor, "I will abuse you to my liking and you can suffer the consequences or not as you choose" attitude?
Law profs, in this debate, tend to take two different tacks in defense.
First, "we" have no control over any of this. "We" didn't lie about employment prospects, "we" don't engage in the VAP ruse, which is almost designed to abuse the time and skills of persons hired to do the real work of a law school without really "hiring" them, etc.
Of course, all the comment threads by law profs claiming that they must be permitted to "run" the law school give lie to this nonsense.
The second basis for defense is what you are suggesting: law profs need have no scruples because the fault is never the con's, it is the mark's. Naïve young people may be induced to go into ruinous debt with terrible prospects by means of shameless "buy now" pitches because, after all, we are law profs. Leading VAP candidates to believe that their position will lead to employment, to induce them to give everything up for a one year stint, is perfectly ok. After all, we are law profs. We may discriminate on the basis of suspect classifications to our hearts content, after all, we are law profs.
It is this latter attitude that has caused the sharp decline in applications. There have been tough employment markets before. What is different is this crop of legal academics – inexperienced in life and the law, emotionally immature, lacking in basic empathy and care for anyone other than those who belong to their chosen subgroup of special preference, have reacted to discovery of malfeasance with a degree of arrogance that would make a thief on Wall Street blush.
Accordingly, outside agencies are required to reign in the fiasco created by this group. Student loans must be curtailed, law school hiring must be subjected to the federal law on discrimination, administration of faculty work load and requirements for tenure must be imposed from without.
Otherwise, the terrible reputation of legal academia will, one suspects, become even worse.
@Barry
Can you refer me to where you are drawing your "the VAP:job ratio is several to one, *after* discarding those who shouldn't even have gotten a VAP in the first place" data from. I'm not doubting that you have a source. I just haven't seen a semi-comprehensive study, other than George & Yoon, breaking down faculty hiring that way and I'd like to read it if you have one.
@AnonProf
In re: graduation speeches, I honestly think that the stock "reach for whatever dream you like" graduation cliche ranges from useless advice (for students already reaching for known dreams) to affirmatively bad advice (for all the people being encouraged to do something that they haven't prepared for prior to graduation).
@MacK
If you ever get that thread on things the media gets wrong about the legal profession going, let me know. I've got some contributions.
Just a question raised in my mind by this comment thread (particularly with respect to the equity partners vs. law professors part):
Law school critics: What do you think the average law school professor salary is?
Between $110k and $160k for lower ranked schools outside major metro areas, $150-$220k in upper tier schools in major metros – with some rare outliers heading for $300k+ that's for tenured exclusive of benefits.
Untenured and legal research and writing and bottom tier schools $60-120k
Of course once you factor in tenure, benefits (pension, tuition assistance from some schools) it is a better package than most lawyers have.
ATLprof
For one, my answer would be:
The answer is irrelevant.
What is relevant is whether those salaries reflect in too many instances a culture of privilege that rewards scant performance standards for profs and terrible outcomes for grads – a culture supported by taxpayers' money funneled thru the hands of unwitting students fleeced by shameless pitchpersons peddling demonstrably false and misleading claims.
What you and others don't seem to understand is that the day of reckoning has already arrived.
One knows that some law prof salaries, bolstered by bogus claims to status as "Ass't" or "Associate" Dean for Lunchtime Schmoozing or whatever, get their compensation well over two hundred thousand, even at the lowest rated schools in the country.
anon @5:57PM
Yes, it is relevant if we are actually trying to have a discussion. If you are just interested in gleefully reveling in "a day of reckoning" then maybe it is not relevant to you.
I was asking those people who have said in the past they were interested in constructive conversation.
There are many professor who make over 200K, primarily at elite or elite wannabe schools. But not at the lowest rated or even lower rated schools. Not even top 100 mid-tier schools.
The mean overall for law professors across all schools is in the neighborhood of 150K. That means half of all law professors make less than 150K, and given that salaries at some schools are significantly higher, many law professors make significantly less. There are schools where no professor makes 150K. There is a fair amount of public data available on this. In some cases, it is available through public disclosure laws (which require in most cases salary AND add-on stuff). Others are available through the SALT survey (which almost always tend to actually overstate compensation).
I asked the question because I didn't see how commenters could say that law profs made as much or more than equity partners. Law profs, on average, make less than senior associates in major metropolitan areas, let alone partners. Sure, there are exceptions, both individually and by school. But if we are going to discuss the market, opportunities that profs have or have not "given up", etc., then people may need to make distinctions between the top end and low end of law professor salaries.
Just to be clear, I'm not arguing employment outcomes are not bad; I'm not arguing law schools are not too expensive. I am not arguing that a bunch of schools are not getting ready to go out of business (or continue laying off large numbers of profs).
But I am interested in constructive conversation about the SYSTEM that produced it and how we might fix it. I am not interested in creatively imagined mustache twirling villains that some seem fixated on.