Welcome To The 'Meat Market' (AKA The AALS Faculty Recruitment Conference)

Want to get hired as a law professor? Here are some tips and tricks from a law professor who's been there and done that.

If you are wanting to be a law professor for the first time, chances are you’ll be at the Faculty Recruitment Conference in Washington, D.C., next week. You have entered the hallowed halls of the Wardman Park Hotel, a two-tower hotel that allows you to have some serious cardio if your dance card is full, or to sulk slowly away if not.

The “meat market” isn’t what it used to be. Certainly not as many schools are hiring, given what’s happening in law school admissions. Why, it’s getting to the point that if you are at Harvard, Yale, or Stanford, you might actually have to go practice law for a while. Or, if you’re not from one of those schools, you might have to demonstrate superhero powers in order to land a job. Okay, I’m only partly kidding here. Most professors come from these schools, and therefore consider these schools the paragons of quality.

Let’s start with some basics to help you deal with going to D.C., dealing with the conference, and dealing with your interviewers.

  1. DO NOT TAKE THE RED LINE IF YOU ARE IN A HURRY. Just don’t do it. You’re asking for trouble. I was once in a hurry and took the red line, and that’s when two trains ran into each other.
  1. Remember the numbers of the towers, and where your interviews are located.
  1. Do your homework. As the hiring committee has probably spent a great deal of time reading your work, your CV, and dissecting everything about you, so too should you do your homework. Remember, schools tend to have massive inferiority complexes, so if you don’t seem interested, or invested, they aren’t going to like you.

Having said that, don’t act like the crazy date that wants to get married right away. The more desperate you seem, the more the committee is going to smell fear. You’ll at least have to have a few more interviews lined up. You can expect them to ask. If you do have multiple interviews from better ranked schools, better make sure you show them you’re still interested. If you act as if the interviewers are your third choice for prom date, they might grow resentful. It might bring back images of their proms (or lack thereof). No one likes a show-off (except the person showing off at the time).

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  1. Do not hang around the lobby of the hotel alone, on your phone, texting. If you are going to hang around the lobby, you should at least rent some friends and show that you are the life of the party, without doing something stupid like dancing on tables or wearing lampshades. Maybe rent some friends to lean in while you are giving an impromptu lecture on something.
  1. Watch the dynamic between the committee members and, if he or she is around, the dean. Do the faculty act like the Dean is Faye Dunaway in Mommy Dearest? If so, you might check some sources to see if the dean is a narcissist. Or a psychopath.
  1. You’re all about that scholarship (no practice). Some practice experience is sometimes good, but you want to show you’ve always been a scholar. If the hottest topic in your area of expertise is whether Aquaman is a superhero, by all means write on it. But you better link it to your overall body of scholarship. You don’t want to be accused of writing on topics that are timely and of interest to the broader legal community reactionary scholarship.
  1. The hiring committee usually asks you at the end whether or not you have questions for them. At this point, people usually ask about what the school does to support scholarship, what the school is looking for in a candidate, etc. Do that when you get the flyback. What I think you should do instead is ask questions about the committee members’ scholarship. For example, if the committee is comprised of an IP scholar, a labor law scholar, and an environmental law scholar, you can read their work and find some commonalities. Example: I notice you all write about the trials and tribulations of regulatory regimes in your respective areas. Is it just a coincidence that you all have similar views on Chevron deference? Bad example: I have read all your articles. It seems like you are all from the same school. Is that true?
  1. Watch for tests and keep your cool. One easy test is when they ask you about an article. They want to see if you can articulate succinctly what the article is about. If you drone on and on, you waste time and demonstrate you might be dangerous in a classroom. You might be tested to see if you are a pariah. They may push you on your scholarship to see how you think on your feet. Don’t be scary. No matter how much the article might be precious to you.

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  1. Remember what you put on your FAR form. Here’s mine as a sample. If you forget what you want to teach, then you’re probably in trouble.
  1. Don’t forget the basics. Relax, keep eye contact, make sure you look at and speak to everyone. Don’t sound like this if your last interview didn’t go well.
  1. Have fun. Even if things don’t work out this year, you get to meet some interesting people. And you’ll meet some professors, too!

LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. You can see more of his musings here and on Twitter (@lawprofblawg). Email him at lawprofblawg@gmail.com.