Is There Life Beyond Con Law?

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive your inheritance as your reward. Col. 3:23-24

Yes, there is life in academia beyond Con Law.

You can glorify God mopping floors, you can certainly glorify Him teaching Professional Ethics, Property, or Corporations!

Here are a few suggestions that I think are particularly useful:

I. Christians need to fly under the radar a bit in the secular progressive world of legal academia


-- Never forget that you are an exile in Babylon, seeking employment at Babylon School of Law. Consider who your audience is and remember that your goal as a job applicant is to win friends and get an offer, not to change minds nor win a debate. 

Quick Quiz: This is based on a true story about a young, Christian friend of mine trying to break into law teaching as a Con Law Prof. He was asked at a call back interview to name a Supreme Court Justice he admired. And he replied enthusiastically, "Justice Thomas." Good choice, true or false? Did he get an offer, yes or no? What am I telling you about myself when I say my favorite Justice is Clarence Thomas?

What do you think I told him to answer next time such a question was thrown at him? 

(Holmes is always a safe choice, and he had one of the best explanations of adverse possession ever spoken: "The true explanation of title by prescription seems to me to be that man, like a tree in the cleft of a rock, gradually shapes his roots to his surroundings, and when the roots have grown to a certain size, cannot be displaced without cutting at his life.")  Imagine if my friend had said Holmes and shared this quotation, rather than Thomas.



--Alan Dershowitz of Harvard once said that an out-of-the-closet evangelical Christian could not get an offer to teach at Harvard Law School. A lot of this has to do with the gay agenda--the CLS was driven from Hastings because of its views on unrepentant homosexuality, not because it excluded non-Christians from leadership

--it is hard to stay under the radar if you are teaching and writing about Equal Protection and the Right to Privacy; it is easy to stay under the radar if your subjects are Corporations or Torts or Secured Transactions under UCC Article 9.

II. Think about expressing your interest in teaching First Year courses and other basic law school offerings, such as Corporations, Professional Ethics, Article 9, and Bankruptcy.

--my original package was Property, Corporations, and Creditors' Rights. Although I have moved out of Corporations and Creditors' Rights, I still teach Property and it is a wonderful opportunity to teach lots of Con Law subjects such as religious land use (RLUIPA), Equal Protection (racially restrictive covenants and exclusionary zoning), and Takings. If you are a Christian Libertarian, as I am, what better course to teach than one that stresses the importance of property rights to ensuring that we are a nation of free men and free women.

--who better to teach ethics than one who believes in God's law.

--as in my case, once you have established yourself on the faculty you can express your interest in teaching Con Law if an opening should arise. Pay your dues first by teaching what needs to be taught, and then move on and let someone else pay her dues.

--sometimes, if you agree to teach 2 or 3 basic courses, the Dean will be happy to allow you to teach one course of your choice--and even if Con Law is not open, maybe a specialty course such as Religion and the Constitution would fit in the curriculum.

--Frankly, it may even be better to avoid teaching about abortion and same-sex marriage until you have been granted tenure. Christians sometimes need to fly under the radar in the secular, "progressive" legal academy.

III. Here is some good advice from others:

--From Orin Kerr:

What to do?   Well, it's hard to come up with a one-size-fits-all solution to this, but here's one answer that might work for some people.   Long before you go on the teaching market -- at least a year, better two or three or four -- take a look at the law school curriciulum at a  typical school and pick one first-year course and one vaguely-related upper-level course that you think would together be an interesting set of topics to teach and write about.  For example, you might pick contracts and corporations; or maybe torts and law & economics;  or property and legal history; criminal law and criminal procedure; con law and federal courts; civil procedure and professional responsibility, etc.    Start reading up on these two subjects, going over your notes and casebooks on them from law school, and pick one or two topics in those areas to write about.   By the time you go on the market, you'll have a specialty area and you'll more easily fall into a slot.

--From Mike Madison:

In your list of courses you’re willing to teach, don’t be so broad that you sound desperate; don’t be so narrow that you exclude yourself from all but a tiny handful of schools; don’t list a specialized seminar as your first choice; include at least one first-year course, preferably *not* Constitutional Law, unless that’s your core competence. Everybody wants to teach Constitutional Law, including a lot of my colleagues. I want to talk to the person who’s willing to get excited about teaching Torts, or Civil Procedure. Your group of “first choice” courses either should have some coherence to it or should be backed up by your record, and preferably both: Criminal Law and Professional Responsibility is coherent; Criminal Law and Commercial Paper sounds strange (at least to me), but maybe your background backs it up.

--From Peter Henning:

As an aside on the issue of specialization, I agree with many others that it's important to put down courses in which you have expertise and are willing to teach that fit in at least in part with the core courses every law school offers. It is usually the case that Deans & Associate Deans need people to teach first year courses, at least occasionally, so pitching one of those is never a bad idea. Given that we have at least 8 Con Law teachers on our faculty, there's a tendency here to see a desire to teach that (coupled with the usual interest in First Amendment, Jurisprudence, and International Human Rights) as a negative.

--From Ben Barros:

I've now seen the hiring process from both sides over the past two years. Here are a few thoughts:
(1) The "top line" on the AALS form (your top three teaching choices) is very important. The truth is that most schools are hiring to fill a specific need. If the school wants to hire, say, a property person, that school will choose to interview someone who has property in their first three choices over someone who has listed property as something they would be willing to teach if asked. My top two slots were property (what I write about) and corporations (I worked at a big firm). All of my interview schools were looking for either property or corporations. And, surprise, I now teach property AND corporations.

Look hard at your experience and think about how you can best market yourself. I've been stunned at the number of big firm associates who go on the market wanting to teach con law. How about corporations, contracts, secured transactions, sec regs, bankruptcy, UCC etc.? Sure, everyone really wants to teach con law. But this is a _really_ good job. People who really want to be law professors have a better chance of getting a job than people who only want to teach con law.

--from Tim Zinnecker

A personal comment based on what I've seen in the market over recent years: a candidate that has an interest in teaching (and has written in the area of) commercial law should be attractive, particularly if the interest extends to two or more of the following: secured transactions, payment systems, consumer bankruptcy, business bankruptcy, electronic commerce.

 --From Frank Snyder:

First, Professional Responsibility is a hot area because most law profs find it a god-awful course to teach. The rules are either so obvious you feel stupid talking about them ("don't lie, don't steal") or so technical that the students' eyes glaze over. There are some who love it, though, and if you do, it's a great addition to your package.
Second, the idea of the "package." You need to appear to be someone who has a definite niche, although you also want to make it clear you're a team player who'll do whatever the administration wants you to. Certain courses seem to run together, although they can be fitted together in different ways. A friend of mine who went on the market to teach family law had prepared herself by developing interests in property and estate taxation (both obviously related fields), which made her a powerful candidate, even though there's not usually a lot of demand for family law people. Another, who wanted to do employment law (where demand is usually weak) developed interests in tort and administrative law, both of which fit nicely with employment discrimination and greatly broadened her appeal. So try to think about what fits with the area you're interested in. You don't actually have to demonstrate expertise in these other areas if you can articulate the reason why you think they're important to your work and your commitment to master them.
Third, once you're on a faculty, and particularly once you're tenured, at many schools you'll get first dibs if a course you're interested in opens up. Where you start doesn't necessarily mean where you'll finish. (Although I'm a contracts/corporations guy, I've also taught Professional Responsibility, Family Law, Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, and Legal Research & Writing.) Nevertheless, if you think a field is "god-awful," don't even attempt to compete in it. There are people who really do think that, say, contracts and corporations are far more interesting than Justice O'Conner's views on affirmative action, and it's hard to fake enthusiasm.
Fourth, think seriously about the things you list at the top of the FAR form. I've never understood it, because I always assumed I'd teach whatever people wanted me to teach, but I've been at three law schools and at all three the particular courses noted were extremely important with respect to whether or not a candidate even got a screening interview. So of the top six "wish list" selections on your FAR form, I'd advise you to make sure five of them are bread-and-butter courses that schools regularly offer.

--From a law prof at UT:

I would second Orin's basic point about the importance of specialization. I've advised UT alumni on the teaching market for about 8 years now, and while there are always two dozen or so schools each year who seem to be looking for "the best athlete," without regard to specialization, the vast majority have very particular curricular needs that drive the process (though in some cases, these schools are content to get a "best athlete" who can teach the needed course, even if it is not a primary area of research interest). However, as Orin also notes, what those needs are change year to year. Still, my impression from the last half-dozen-or-so years is that the following areas have pretty steady demand: corporate law, securities regulation, tax, intellectual property, wills & estates. Note, though, that in each case, the candidates that fare the best are the ones with *real* qualifications in these areas, not those who throw it on the list of things they might teach. This is particularly the case, it strikes me, in IP, where far more candidates claim competence than have it.

--from an anonymous law prof:

Based on my observations, I think that "Property/T&E" is a package that a lot of schools look for. If you're thinking about property, and can credibly call yourself a T&E person too, that makes an attractive FAR form.

Here are some good links on course selection:

1. Orin Kerr, Getting a Teaching Job: The Role of Specialization (link)

2. Mike Madison's Advice (link)