Report: Law Faculty Increasingly Drawn from Academia, Not Practice

Law schools looking for new faculty members are increasingly likely to value candidates with advanced degrees and publication records over those with professional legal experience, observers say.

The trend is said to be especially strong among top-ranked law schools like Harvard and Yale. Hiring committees are especially interested in candidates who hold advanced degrees in addition to a J.D. and who have published articles in scholarly journals.

A professor at the Vanderbilt University Law School noted that when she changed careers from practice to teaching, in the late 1980s, Vanderbilt required J.D.s to have a certain amount of practical experience before being hired as instructors. Now, she said, it's not uncommon to see new faculty members who have directly from their own studies into teaching.

Source: "Still Publish or Perish," Tracie Powell, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, November 30, 2006