- Practice your job talk before friendly law professors before doing it live. This was very helpful to me.
- If you do get interviews after AALS, think VERY carefully about their sequencing. You will likely improve your interviewing and job talk skills after doing it a few times, so you may not want to schedule your top choices in the early part of the process. Timing is also important; being the last candidate interviewed on-campus can be a favorable position.
- Have your job talk generally well-thought-out before your first screening interview. You’re likely to be asked about the talk in some detail at screening interviews.
- Get a set of law professors as consultants. Multiple professors are better, because each professor has their own perspective on the world. They can help you understand the sometimes perplexing experiences you’re having and, in some cases, run interference for you when you need a neutral source of information.
- Be flexible about your willingness to teach courses that aren’t popular to teach. Professional responsibility is an obvious choice.
- There is a huge element of luck involved in getting a position through AALS. Don’t let your self-worth be influenced (down or up) by the vagaries of the process. Any failures—or successes—you experience are not likely to be based solely on the “merits.”
From Timothy Glenn:
Do One or More Mock Job Talks Before Your First Real Job Talk. This is not because you don’t know what you are talking about – if you don’t, practice won’t help. It is because, despite your knowledge, you need to be able to 1) communicate your ideas effectively in a short period of time and 2) answer questions from, and engage in give and take with others who may see your subject through entirely different lenses. The only way to ensure that you are doing these things is to practice. Your best option is to arrange a mock with a group of professors (your mentors or others). If you can’t, put together a panel of colleagues, and make sure they know to interrupt you with difficult, wide-ranging questions within about fifteen minutes and to critique you at the end. BTW, now is the time to set this up if you have not done so already.
Do Get to the Point Quickly. When discussing your scholarship in an interview or while giving your job talk, remember that you will have less time than you want. While background is important, getting out your main point – your new conceptual framework, finding, approach, normative takeaway, etc. – is essential. How you do this will depend on the circumstances, but consider moving right to your conclusion after describing the problem or inquiry, and then developing the details thereafter.
Do Answer Questions (and Answer the Questions Asked). Answering questions will consume most of your interview time and probably most of your job talk. You will get questions you have a hard time answering because you don’t understand them, you have never considered them before, they are completely out of left field, or there is no answer. There are some questions you ought to understand and be able to answer. For all others, if you don’t have the answer, that is okay. First, it is perfectly acceptable to ask for a clarification (in different ways at different times). It is also acceptable to respond that you don’t know the answer. But don’t be defensive about it – and complimenting the asker about the acuity of her insight isn’t a bad idea (okay, this is sucking up, but . . . .). And where appropriate, take this opportunity to talk about the question and what you do know, e.g., why you chose not to explore that particular aspect of the problem, how you might approach finding the answer, your plans to explore related matters in later scholarship, or why an answer might be difficult to find. What is unacceptable is not answering the question by, for example, obfuscating or answering instead the question you wish had been asked.
From Daniel Solove: "Law Teaching Interview Advice: How to Ace the Job Talk"
From Brian Leiter:
Advice on Job Talks
Daniel Solove (George Washington) makes a number of sensible points. One thing he doesn't mention, which is crucial, is to find out in advance of the job talk what the format will be! It's true that the normal format is 20-30 minutes of presentation, followed by 30-40 minutes of discussion. But confirm that with each school! Also, find out whether you should circulate a paper in advance, whether it is reasonable to expect the audience to have read a pre-circulated paper, whether the school is equipped with whatever AV needs you have for your presentation, and so on.
Advice for Your Job Talk
It's hiring season at U.S. law schools. Candidates are now visiting campuses to present job talks. Many candidates would like some straightforward advice on how to give a job talk. That advice is now available, thanks to an article by Anne Enquist, Paula Lustbader, and John Mitchell (all of the Seattle University School of Law). The article is called From Both Sides Now: The Job Talk’s Role in Matching Candidates with Law Schools, and you can download a copy for free by clicking here. Here's the abstract:
In the heavily competitive law school teaching job market, the so-called “job talk” has assumed increasing importance in the ultimate hiring decision. Nevertheless, there is little published information to assist a law school faculty in structuring or evaluating the job talk and a similar paucity of information for candidates to guide them in creating and preparing for the presentation of their talk. This article is intended to fill that void. The article guides the preparation of faculty and candidates for both the job talk itself and for the crucial Q&A period that follows the talk. The article represents the authors’ collective 87 years of experience seeing both successful and unsuccessful job talks, as well as the experience of 15 colleagues around the country who reviewed our initial draft and commented on it from the perspective of their various law schools.The article has helped a good number of candidates already and will likely be a popular article for years to come.
