"ON THE MARKET"

In August, the annual recruitment of new professors for law schools officially gets underway. Later this month, the AALS will release the first batch of “FAR” forms for the 2013-14 hiring season. This deceptively simple on-line questionnaire is just the beginning of what, for most candidates, is a grueling, months’-long process.

We thought it might be interesting and useful to talk with several candidates who are “on the market” this year, to see how they are thinking about the process, and what kinds of advice they have received.  Over the past two decades, I have been involved with this process from various vantage points, as a member or chair of hiring committees, as an adviser to graduate students in both legal history and American religious history. 

I interviewed three of this years’ candidates, each of whom has a law degree and one of whom has finished the Ph.D.  The other two are at various stages of work on the dissertation, one quite far along, the other less so, but still having made considerable progress on research and some writing.  Two are doing joint degrees; one has done the J.D. and Ph.D. degrees seriatim.
Factors such as these can make all the difference when deciding how to "market" oneself, including which basic law school or history courses one will teach, etc. It is also worth noting that each of our three candidates has a partner with some geographic restrictions; one is a new parent.

All three said that they found filling out the FAR form took careful thought and planning.  Two felt that the form allowed them ample space to cover the material they thought was most relevant, one called it a “rough and inaccurate frame,” and all three said that being strategic about teaching choices guided their response.  They suggested both basic first years courses they could teach and more advanced doctrinal courses, in addition to legal history.  None of them, in fact, listed legal history first in their “courses would like to teach” section of the FAR form.

All three have publications to report on the form, ranging from one to three major pieces.  One of the three is also planning to go on the history teaching market.

Each mentioned that they had been advised that the law school hiring market is tougher now than several years ago.  One stressed that legal historians have to justify themselves to law school audiences – they may well be viewed as a “luxury hire” in a climate of scarcity.  Others were more optimistic, but used words like “guarded optimism” and “uncertainty” to describe their sense of the market.

Each felt that composing a “research agenda,” a must for law school hiring but not expected by history departments, was a useful if time-consuming exercise (most successful candidates attach well-developed agendas to their FAR forms during the first “drop”).  One said that the reading for general exams made the process much easier, because preparation involved mastering large sweeps of historiography and situating their own work in a broader field.  Another said that the Ph.D. process forced intensive consideration of a research agenda, so that the document flowed far more easily than for non-joint degree candidates.

All are hard at work on job talks and the papers underlying the talk.  They are planning moots, getting lists ready, and generally trying to navigate the Byzantine structures of the hiring process.

Readers, what is your sense of the prospects for legal historians in law teaching and in history departments?  Perhaps you have recently been on the market, and have wisdom or cautionary tales to share.  Or perhaps you are involved in hiring, and can help these and other legal historians succeed “on the market.”