Why All This Lateral Hiring By Elite Schools?
Einer asks the question, why are the elite schools doing more lateral hiring now, especially of younger professors, than they used to? One possible explanation rests on two factual assumptions. First, that the credentials typically relied upon by elite schools for entry level appointments--e.g. elite law school diploma, stellar grades, law review, Supreme Court clerkship, job with top law firm--simply did not reliably enough produce superstar legal scholars. Second, that the unwillingness of elite law schools to deny tenure to anyone who was able to publish one or two massive "tenure pieces" prevented elite law schools from weeding out the nonproducers. As a result, elite law schools were stuck for life with lots of former-superstar law students who underperformed as legal scholars. The solution to this situation has been obvious for some time: let other law schools assume the risks of entry level hiring, while the elite law schools skim the cream by hiring laterally those who prove themselves to be great scholars. In other words, if the elite law schools could not use the probationary period of pre-tenure to weed out those who were not going to be successful, then it is prudent to let other schools take the chances.
The problem with implementing this strategy was that, to become a great scholar, one had to say something in print--usually a sustained something--and that something was likely to annoy one or another faction of the faculty at the elite school, who would then block the appointment. Far easier it was for elite faculties to agree to to hire entry-level candidates with little or no scholarly track record but lots of "promise." This is why, in Harvard's case, Elena Kagan's deanship has been so important: she has been able to break the "collective action" logjam at the faculty level and thereby allowed Harvard to pursue its true self interest in the lateral market--as Yale, NYU and others have been doing for considerably longer. In Yale's case this began in earnest with Guido Calabresi's deanship and at NYU with John Sexton's. If the numbers of lateral appointments are increasing beyond the huge numbers of appointments made recently by Harvard, it may be because this strategy is proving over time to be successful for the elite schools.
Undoubtedly, there is more to the story--like the fact that because more and more law schools at all levels are hiring entry levels for their scholarly promise, there are more prospective lateral candidates at less prestigious schools to be cherry-picked by the elite--but this seems like at least part of it.
The problem with implementing this strategy was that, to become a great scholar, one had to say something in print--usually a sustained something--and that something was likely to annoy one or another faction of the faculty at the elite school, who would then block the appointment. Far easier it was for elite faculties to agree to to hire entry-level candidates with little or no scholarly track record but lots of "promise." This is why, in Harvard's case, Elena Kagan's deanship has been so important: she has been able to break the "collective action" logjam at the faculty level and thereby allowed Harvard to pursue its true self interest in the lateral market--as Yale, NYU and others have been doing for considerably longer. In Yale's case this began in earnest with Guido Calabresi's deanship and at NYU with John Sexton's. If the numbers of lateral appointments are increasing beyond the huge numbers of appointments made recently by Harvard, it may be because this strategy is proving over time to be successful for the elite schools.
Undoubtedly, there is more to the story--like the fact that because more and more law schools at all levels are hiring entry levels for their scholarly promise, there are more prospective lateral candidates at less prestigious schools to be cherry-picked by the elite--but this seems like at least part of it.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Why All This Lateral Hiring By Elite Schools?
- The Exploding Laterals Law School Market.
- Doctrinalism and the Legal Academy:
- The Death of Doctrinalism and Its Implications for the Entry-Level Job Market at Law Schools.
- Sabermetrics and the Future of Legal Empirical Studies
- Twombly -- The New Supreme Court Antitrust Conspiracy Case
- Will Basic Legal Subjects Become Globalized?
- Einer Elhauge, Guest-Blogging:
This logic seems very persuasive to me. I've often thought that the same reasoning should apply to law firms, yet they continue to pay substantial salaries to first year lawyers and rarely hire associates or even contract partners laterally. I wonder what institutional considerations prevent them from following your logic.
Think of the "other" law schools as "the minors."
Another is that high first-year salaries are a drop in the bucket in terms of a firm's overall costs, compared to the cost to a school of having an unproductive tenured faculty member.
The problem that occurred to me, FWIW, is, how do you find out that some other firm's lawyer is a good prospect? "When he's on the other side &causes you to lose a case," was my first answer. Seems like a costly way to evaluate talent.
True enough. However, large firms still need non-partners with experience to handle the mid-level or even management of cases. It would seem to make more sense for them to use other firms as "minor leagues" and hire contract partners rather than to incur whatever training expenses they have now to get a few fifth year associates to fill the same role. All the more so if we assume they eventually get rid of most of their associates anyway. My guess is that they could hire some pretty decent contract partners for not much more than they pay first year associates and they wouldn't need to write off any time.
Yeah, that occurred to me too. On the other hand, the problem of identifying real lawyers out of law school graduates seems to be even greater.
Obviously, all this depends on how much the firms would have to pay for, say, a good 10 year lawyer with no real business. I'm guessing it's not all that much.
Bean, I think you have it exactly backwards. As a general rule, top law schools pay junior faculty better than do lower-ranked law schools. Further, lower ranked law schools will often pay a "star" lateral much more than a top school will pay the same person. Thus, if your goal is to make as much money as possible through your salary, the smart move would be to start at a top school and then make a lateral move to a lower-ranked school. (Actually, the really smart move is to pick a specialty that allows for lots of paid consulting, but that's another matter.) Of course, that assumes that your goal is to make as much money as possible, which is usually not what law profs are looking to do.
This statement, and the reasoning in the rest of the paragraph premised upon it, is dead-on. Certain Harvard Law School professors will admit, off the record, that because the school's lateral hiring suffered greatly for about 10 years (due to infighting and politicking), it was forced to give tenure to younger profs whose academic credentials and single "tenure piece" never translated into impressive subsequent scholarship -- profs the school is now stuck with. And they'll tell you that only with the uptick in lateral hires (starting slowly under Clark, and increasing dramatically under Kagan) has HLS returned to a position of being able safely to say that its faculty comprises superstars of academia across the board.
This ripple effect means that, for each new position at HLS and CLS, several senior people at several different law schools will move. HLS and CLS are creating at least 40 new senior positions between them, and if each causes just three moves then that means 120 lateral hires that would not have occurred without the expansions.
I don't know about Harvard, but Columbia's hiring spree is likely to go on for several years. CLS is about to add a new floor of faculty offices to its main building, and will probably gain several floors in a building it now shares with the business school when the B-school moves a few years down the road.
If my explanation is correct then the number of laterals should return to normal after all the new slots at Columbia and Harvard are filled -- unless other top law schools follow suit and expand their own faculties.
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And [Harvard proessors will] tell you that only with the uptick in lateral hires (starting slowly under Clark, and increasing dramatically under Kagan) has HLS returned to a position of being able safely to say that its faculty comprises superstars of academia across the board.
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Well, they can say that safely, but they can't say that accurately. Person for person, the Harvard faculty is still pretty weak. It's not as bad as it was 5-10 years ago, when it was sort of an open joke. But it's only maybe in the top 5 on a person-for-person basis. Better quality faculties would include Yale, NYU, Chicago, &Stanford. Plus, a bunch of Harvard's recent hires have been mediocre.
That's part of the irony with Elhauge's blogging about the new Harvard entry-level standards: Harvard has hired a bunch of people that are not very good, and that are very likely to prove themselves duds. So sure, Harvard will hire like that for a while. It will be the new big thing, and the Harvard faculty will feel very good about it. But eventually they'll see it's not working for them, and in another 10 years they'll pick a different approach.
in other academic fields for many years. They hire young asst.
professors who have little if any real chance at tenure, and then
build their core superstar faculty by poaching the rising stars from
the bush league schools.
For the record, Harvard has not awarded tenure to a US Historian
since 1959. Every other tenured prof. has been brought in from
outside. They have famously denied tenure to Alan Brinkley (an
award winning historian and good teacher who is now provost
at Columbia) and Patricia Limerick (a MacArthur "genius" recipient).
I don't know how it is in law schools, which I suspect are different,
but this so-called "star system," whereby faculties are expanded via
lateral hiring and the core of the teaching is done by non-tenured
faculty and adjuncts, is leading to a sorry situation in which most
students never get an opportunity to learn from the same faculty
about which the admissions office brags so much. That is, bringing
in these superstars is solely for the purpose of having big names,
not for the purpose of having great teachers, which is what the
students at these schools deserve and for which they are paying a
hefty sum. Of course, that's a much wider problem, but the lateral
hire issue contributes its fair share to it.