Prof. Hurt over at Conglomerate jumps into the ‘where should you go to school if you want to be a law professor fray’ and raises a very good point: it is important to consider current hiring practices and not just the practices of the past.

To respond to some points that have been raised in various comments on other sites:

1. Prof. Leiter notes: “It appears the person (My name is Dave, but you may call me Mr. Gulbransen –Ed.) surveying the Chicago-area law schools was counting clinical *and* academic faculty…” Personally, I don’t care about the distinction. I doubt outside of the cloistered world of the academy, that anyone cares. Undoubtedly it has career implications but I also suspect there are some who would prefer to be clinical faculty. God forbid people entering the field of higher education have different motives.

2. I don’t think it’s any more difficult to pursue an academic career in law than it is in any other academic field. In fact, I’m still surprised that people can get jobs in legal education with only a J.D. (Although, as Prof. Solum notes, and LLM, SJD, or PhD can an advantage.) I mean c’mon people–the scholarly publications of legal education are student edited journals. I do wonder how the world of legal scholarship would be changed if faculty submitted to peer edited journals. I know I’m not the first to wonder.

3. Publishing is lovely; however, there are those who would just prefer to teach–and there is value in that. Law professors would be wise to bear that in mind. Those who graduate, enter the real world, make their fortunes are those who endow the chairs that afford faculty the luxury of academe. They also tend to remember those who taught them best. (And yes, I’m aware that publishing and teaching aren’t mutually exclusive–but those who master both are as exceptional as the Tier 4 graduate professor.)

4. I never stated that I wanted a career in academics. I wouldn’t rule it out, but it’s not something I’ve given much consideration–it is certainly not why I decided to go to law school. Frankly, if I knew with 100% certainty that I wanted to be an academic, I’d get a PhD before I’d get a JD. I’m one of those freaks who went to law school with the notion that the law applies to so many areas of our lives that it would be worth having the degree–whether I practice or not–and whether I stay in my current career path or not.

I just hate to see members of a class (and “law professor” is definitely a class) crushing the dreams of anyone out there who may be wanting to pursue a career in academics. Yes, a healthy dose of reality is important to anyone–no one should be completely blind to the hurdles they may have to overcome to pursue a career in their chosen field. But to say that if you go to a school outside the top [insert arbitrary, self-serving number] then it’s hopeless isn’t doing a service to anyone because it is just not true.

That isn’t to say that someone who graduates at the bottom of their class from a Tier 4 school has a shot at academics; but that’s not really what’s being debated. None of the student voices I’ve heard lack the understanding that the more prestigious your pedigree the easier the road. But there are those out there who would be very comfortable ending up a faculty member at one of those Tier 2, 3, or 4 schools where they could teach students to be lawyers. And not all of those future professors need degrees from Yale to get there.

There’s a lot of talk about law school rank these days (I guess there always is)… however, one thing that caught my eye was David Bernstein’s post over at The Volokh Conspiracy. Law Dork and Divine Angst both had some interesting comments as well.
So, in the spirit of procrastination for a brief I’m working on, I did a “mini” survey. I looked at the “rankings” for the schools attended by some law professors who blog:

Blogging Professors
Number Surveyed	47
Average Rank	7
Top 10	37/47
Percentage Top 10	79%

Since I’m all about the City of Chicago, I also decided to take a look at all the law schools in the Chicago area. Here they are, presented in order of school rank:

Chicago	Rank: 6
Number Surveyed	58
Average Rank	6
Top 10	54/58
Percentage Top 10	93%

Northwestern	Rank: 10
Number Surveyed	88
Average Rank	16
Top 10	66/88
Percentage Top 10	75%

Chicago-Kent	Rank: 63
Number Surveyed	69
Average Rank	23
Top 10	35/69
Percentage Top 10	51%

Loyola	Rank: 67
Number Surveyed	47
Average Rank	37
Top 10	22/47
Percentage Top 10	47%

DePaul	Rank: 103
Number Surveyed	62
Average Rank	41
Top 10	24/62
Percentage Top 10	39%

John Marshall	Rank: 138
Number Surveyed	61
Average Rank	47
Top 10	23/61
Percentage Top 10	38%

Note: This was a very cursory survey, based on faculty listings on the school’s websites. I also threw out professors who had degrees from places like “Tokyo University” because I didn’t have a ranking guide handy for them. The other ranks are all based on the latest U.S. News ranking, since that seems to be the de facto standard–for better or worse.
If you want to see the full results–including a break-down by individual faculty members, I’ve put it here in an Excel sheet.
Apparently, there is some hope for those who would like to pursue a career in academics, but don’t have the Top 10 cred.
Would anyone be interested if I expanded this into a full survey/paper?