Over at CoOp, Dave Hoffman recently made an interesting prediction about the likely value, over the next few years, of having a Ph.D. to get an entry-level law teaching job:
There are more PhDs in the legal academy every year. They’ve all of the motivation in the world to demand the training as a credential for entry level hires, and as they age in their schools they will begin to flex their muscles. Looking ahead to 2015, I’d say that the current cutoff of schools that softly demand a PhD for entry level hires (i.e., 1-10 or thereabouts) will trend toward all of the top tier.
I’m not so sure. Such things are hard to measure, but my sense is that Ph.D.s are often overvalued in entry-level hiring right now. Hiring committees change every year, but some committees see them as a very big deal. Time will tell whether that perception is accurate. Right now that perception is based on a prediction about the kind of scholarship those with Ph.D. credentials are likely to produce — more serious and more important than those with just a J.D. But we don’t know if that prediction will pan out. Maybe it will. But maybe it won’t. And if it doesn’t, the preference for Ph.D.s. at some schools likely will soften. We may end up looking back at the present as a time when hiring committees overvalued the Ph.D. credential and schools tends to overhire Ph.D.s. Of course, Dave may be right that those on the inside will then want to replicate themselves. That much is human nature. But I suspect the track record of Ph.D.-versus-non-Ph.D. hires over the next decade will play a significant role in determining the long-term picture of how much the academy values the credential.
For more on these questions, Larry Ribstein has additional thoughts.
jimM47 says:
Out of curiosity, what do these profs usually have a PhD in? I was under the impression that an S.J.D. was the legal academy’s version of a terminal degree.
December 9, 2009, 12:26 amMark N. says:
My impression is that very few American lawyers get S.J.D.s at all, which Brian Leiter seems to agree with. I think we’re talking about having a Ph.D. vs. a regular J.D. as prerequisites for faculty positions, not a Ph.D. versus an S.J.D.
December 9, 2009, 12:46 amguest guest says:
jimM47: SJD is a phony degree granted by law schools; it requires substantially less than a real PhD; nobody but its holders treat as an equivalent to a PhD. It is mostly used by foreign-trained lawyers to enter the US academy. In my experience, neither hiring committees nor faculties at large take Americans with the JD-SJD combo seriously. Re most popular PhD fields for entry-level hires with JD-PhD: as I recall from Solum’s stats, those are Economics, PoliSci, Sociology, and English.
December 9, 2009, 1:42 amFC says:
The broader question is the value of a PhD for any academic post. Before the early 20th century, almost all professors in the English-speaking countries were hired with a MA as their highest degree. But then everyone realized that research is a better gig than teaching…
December 9, 2009, 1:59 amSoronel Haetir says:
So would an SJD be about equivalent to a Doctor of Fine Arts? I have a hard time seeing anything law related having the research component that is normally associated with a Ph.D.
December 9, 2009, 3:14 amMark N. says:
I could imagine a legal-history dissertation that’s as legitimate as any other history dissertation, to pick one example. Or someone in the law-and-economics area could do some empirical and/or theoretical research of the same size and significance typically expected for an economics Ph.D. Someone interested in the way the legal profession, or courts, works in practice could do sociological research. Someone interested in legal philosophy could do a philosophy dissertation. Etc.
December 9, 2009, 3:25 amJessica says:
What about those with LL.M. specializations in addition to their J.D. credentials? Where do they fall in the continuum and how is the LL.M. viewed by hiring committees?
December 9, 2009, 4:35 amSimon (391563) says:
If law schools will only or predominately hire PhDs, will they begin paying their professors like entry-level PhDs in cognate departments (history, political science, philosophy, economics)? Will these lower faculty salaries lead to lower tuition rates? Will lower tuition rates benefit students and the profession, or will it just be a rent transfer from law schools to mid-level associates?
December 9, 2009, 7:03 amAnderson says:
Law schools are basically trade schools, like those “colleges” where one learns how to be an electrician or a secretary.
I do not pretend to understand how “scholarship” is especially valuable for most law profs, so far as their students are concerned.
Now, certainly it’s good to have people studying the law and providing hornbooks and articles of some practical value, as does Prof. Kerr; but it seems it would make as much sense for them to teach in a “law department” at a regular university, as for them to teach at a law school.
What do y’all think?
December 9, 2009, 7:36 amWidmerpool says:
I agree that law schools should go back to the trade school model–but there’s a little thing known as “pride goeth before a fall.” No law school professor sees law school as equivalent to trade school. But lots of law school professors think that new professors should hold PhDs because, surprise, surprise, they hold PhDs. And they had to go to a lot of hard work and squander years of their lives getting them. So, dagnabbit, should everyone else. Never underestimate the ferocity of that dog in the manger.
December 9, 2009, 8:06 amSoronel Haetir says:
Mark N,
Those dissertations would make fine sociology, history or economics work, it would not surprise me if those departments would already accept such work by one of their students. Thus my naive(?) comparison of an SJD with a DFA.
The best I can come up with for an actual law Ph.D would be something like “Is law X beneficial?” or “What is the best policy in arena Y?” both of which are much more economics than law.
December 9, 2009, 8:56 amEric Rasmusen says:
I looked at Leiter REports a few days ago. He has a list of the top 10 scholars in each of the top law schools. I was surprised how many law-and-econ names I recognized . Many, perhaps most, don’t have PhDs, but it woudl be interesting to see how many do— and whether any of them are non-econ
December 9, 2009, 9:18 am“law-and” scholars.
billo says:
From the medical side of things, I’ve noticed that there’s an increase of academic physicians who have other degrees. It seems that larger and larger numbers of MDs who go into academic medicine also have other degrees, at least at the Master’s level. As a pathologist, I’m more aware of this in my own specialty, but it “seems” (and I have *no* numbers to back this up so I could be wrong), that there are increasing numbers of pathologists getting additional degrees — pathologists interested in medical informatics get comp sci degrees, forensic pathologists get JDs ,etc. In addition, many places seem to have programs to get people Executive Master’s in Administration for it’s Division/Department Chiefs. Thus, for instance, as a forensic pathologist interested in forensic image processing, I got a MS in computer science *after* I got my MD, and when I was hired to run a regional ME office, my employer sent me to get a MPA in Justice Administration (none of which, oddly, counted towards my continuing ed requirements).
Is the same sort of thing happening among JDs — getting “accessory” degrees in areas of interest? Do JD’s specializing in technology law, for instance, end up getting degrees in computer science, people specializing in torts about auto accidents get degrees in engineering, etc.?
December 9, 2009, 10:20 amMike McDougal says:
Scholarship is not important to students. Advanced issues are generally irrelevant to acquisition of the basics. My guess based on my experience is that advanced scholarship is only beneficial to students to the extent that professors are able to highlight potential practice issues to watch for.
December 9, 2009, 12:35 pmMike McDougal says:
Outside of some intellectual property fields, the answer is generally no.
December 9, 2009, 12:40 pmwws says:
How many students have actually benefited because they were taught by a PhD instead of a lesser mortal? I’m guessing a number between zippity and doo-dah.
PhD’s are what people get if they don’t want or need to get a job after 6 or 7 years of college. And it lets them play the intellectual’s version of “mines bigger than yours” when they pull out… their resumes.
Other than that, I see no value to them.
December 9, 2009, 3:49 pmegd says:
Unfortunately, some individuals who are otherwise unable to practice in some of those intellectual property fields somehow believe that they’re qualified to teach the subject matter.
How many law schools would allow someone to teach civil procedure without a JD? I think the answer is clearly few to none. Why then do law schools recruit “academics” who are unqualified to sit for the Patent Bar to teach patent law?
December 9, 2009, 4:24 pmChaim says:
Why does it require substantially less than a PhD? Because of the less time involved or the coursework? One can complete an Oxford DPhil or Cambridge PhD both in law in three years. Would you consider that less as the US PhD?
And a legal history dissertation is a legal history dissertation regardless of whether it was written as an SJD, a PhD in History or a DPhil.
December 9, 2009, 5:04 pmJay says:
“How many law schools would allow someone to teach civil procedure without a JD? I think the answer is clearly few to none. Why then do law schools recruit “academics” who are unqualified to sit for the Patent Bar to teach patent law?”
Since the “qualification” for the patent bar is straight-up credentialism (is your undergraduate degree in a science field), I’m not too impressed by this argument. The patent bar itself is a multiple choice, computer-based test with an astronomical pass rate. As with state bars, it’s a protectionist racket.
December 9, 2009, 5:10 pmJoseph Slater says:
I have a PhD as well as a JD, and I’m glad I did the PhD program, but for the life of me I can’t imagine why I would have “all of the motivation in the world to demand the training as a credential for entry level hires.” And in practice, I don’t make any such demand (nor do other PhDs in the legal academy that I know, although of course I only know a small fraction).
Us “no, not THAT kind of doctor” types still respect a whole host of other types of preparation, background, and accomplishments (just as law faculty members without PhDs sometimes value PhDs).
In a few interdisciplinary fields you can probably see some tension — some PhD legal historians think that you need a history PhD to do history properly, and I’ve heard rumblings from Law & Econ types about Econ PhDs. But heck, I’m a legal historian (among other things), and I hardly think that a majority (or even a substantial minority) of law faculty should be like me.
December 9, 2009, 5:13 pmegd says:
Do you <a href="http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2007/12/computer-based.html"consider 58% to be "astronomical"?
I would probably agree with your point that bar examination, of any type, is generally protectionist of ABA accreditation, but that’s not the point I was making.
The point I was making was that law schools equate qualification with accreditation (bar passage), for example not letting non-JDs teach basic legal procedures. If the law school’s position is that teachers should be qualified (accredited) to teach some subjects, the failure of the law school to apply that across the board is just that: a failure of the law school.
I think the reason for this is parallel to Prof. Somin’s point about Federalist Society membership in academia. Academics like to be around people of a certain mold, and a technical degree generally doesn’t fit that mold.
Whether that’s because BS & MS degrees mean that the individual can speak on topics other than esoteric crap or because BA & MA degrees mean that the individual can speak on esoteric crap, I’ll leave to the reader.
Prof. Kerr seems to be a notable exception to this rule. But then again, most of the conspirators do not fit the typical “Law School Professor” type.
And I still think labeling the em and strong tags “i” and “b” is silly.
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