Law Professors, Law Schools

Moneyball, Law Professor Style

What do you care about more -- the promise of greatness or actual greatness?

By LawProfBlawg & TempDean  
on

Job woman hiringIt’s that time of year when faculty members turn toward the holiday gift-giving spirit.  Namely, they will give the gift of employment.  Faculty hiring is not for the faint of heart.  No one leaves a hiring committee and says, “Well, I can see perfectly how I was hired!”  Pick your metaphor:  It is the sausage being made, the wizard behind the curtain, but it ain’t Moneyball.

For those of you who have not read the book or seen the 2011 movie, the Oakland As utilize a non-traditional sabermetric methodology to bring forth a winning (at least during regular season) baseball team.  The method they utilize is eventually picked up by the Boston Red Socks, which, to the great disdain of friends of mine in New York, won the 2004 World Series.  Then the Moneyball guys from Boston eventually moved onto Chicago and did it again in 2016.

We don’t play Moneyball in law schools very well.  That would require some careful scrutiny, thoughtful reflection, and serious commitment.  Instead, we play a game we’ll call “Miss Congeniality.”  That’s where the prize award goes to someone who has the proper résumé, says the proper things, does the proper things, and therefore is “traditional.”  In the movie, it was embodied by the fact that all contestants had to utter “World Peace.”

Law schools recruitment usually follows the traditional metrics of quality.  Let’s call these the “World Peace” points:

  1. Did they go to a good school (Harvard, Yale, Stanford)?
  2. Did they go to an okay school but do really well (NYU, Chicago)?
  3. Are they Supreme Court clerks? (mostly Harvard or Yale again)?
  4. Did they publish in good law reviews (preferably Harvard, Stanford, or Yale)?
  5. Did they have a fellowship, say from Chicago? (A fellowship from Chicago boosts Chicago’s standing, unless candidate has J.D. from Chicago).

These may be all predictors of success as an academic, assuming by success we mean being a good teacher, writing innovative and useful articles, and perhaps doing all those things we’ve mentioned in last week’s column.

But there is something tremendously wrong with this system.  Most of us are probably comforted by it, because many of us have benefitted from it.  After all, we got the jobs, right?

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But the problem is that this is not a way to foster diversity in the faculty, nor is it a particularly good way of assuring future productivity.

First, no matter how much you like yourself, no one wants to work with a bunch of people who look, act, and think exactly the same way.   The strength of learning comes from diversity of views, experiences, and knowledge.  If you work with a bunch of clones, then you’re school is likely embarking on a self-fulfilling path to mediocrity.

Second, it is a hiring nightmare.  All of the schools looking for the World Peace factors are competing for a small number of candidates who fit that.  Ultimately, the higher-ranked schools are the winners.  What should the lower-ranked schools do?

That’s where Moneyball comes in.  Picking the players no one wants, yet who will outperform the World Peace players, is not easy.  But it is rewarding.  There’s less competition for them, they will work incredibly hard, and they will raise the ranks of your school.

So what to do if you actually want to play Moneyball hiring?  Figure out what you actually care about, say teaching, and then figure out whether the candidate can actually teach.  Unless you read someone’s mind or the future, the best indication that someone will teach well is that they already have taught well.  Preferably in a law school.  That normally means being a lateral, an adjunct, having had a fellowship, being a VAP, or having taught in some related field.  Why guess when you can simply figure out whether the candidate is any good at what they claim they want to do for the rest of their life?

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The flip side is that, without E.S.P. or a crystal ball, you simply can’t assume that having a Supreme Court clerkship or Biglaw firm experience means the candidate is likely to be a good teacher (plus it is not like we provide new teachers with a lot of guidance).  They might become great teachers over time, but being a Supreme Court clerk, or working for Biglaw, by themselves don’t answer that question.  Plus these types of positions are all actually the same thing, mostly reflecting that the candidate did really well during their first year at a name brand school and had a mentor who could guide them to the clerkship, firm, or agency of their dream.

Now let’s play Moneyball hiring on scholarship.  This is the hard one because it requires actually reading the candidate’s scholarship and not just checking their c.v. for where they published their articles.

Law professors are usually pretty good consumers, and often producers, of legal articles and books.  Most candidates claim (plausibly or not) that they want to do scholarship for the rest of the life.   Don’t guess, or rely on the flawed judgment of a newly minted second-year law review editor somewhere up the U.S. News food chain.  Read it yourself.  Is it lucid?  Is it well written? Is it original?  Does it go beyond description to offer something of promise to make the world a better place (even if it’s just a suggestion for a state-level administrative law process)?

Has the candidate continued to write after their cookie-cutter student note on the latest Fourth Amendment case in the Supremes?  What have they published since they graduated law school?  Does it seem to be their passion or a dutiful check the box on their way to AALS after having been told their future isn’t bright at their current position?  Both TempDean and LawProfBlawg care a lot that a candidate has managed to publish good, and increasingly better, work of increasing scope while holding down an actual job at a fellowship, public interest organization, government agency, Biglaw, or otherwise.

Both TD and LPB also really like lateral hiring, particularly in the early stages of a career, since it takes all the guesswork out of hiring.  Go hunting among the schools ranked below you or located in less desirable areas and see who is kicking ass.  You don’t have to guess whether a fancy résumé means it’s likely the candidate will be a great teacher, great scholar, and decent colleague — you just see if they already are.

Some schools have already gotten very good at law professor Moneyball. Others cling to the World Peace model.   It’s up to you.  What do you care about more — the promise of greatness or actual greatness?  As you pore through your law school’s faculty profiles, however, it should be easy to tell which your school employs.

TempDean is an anonymous interim administrator and professor at a top 100 law school.  Email him at lawprofblawg@gmail.com if you must.

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

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