I apparently shocked some people by offhandedly noting in a previous post that USSC clerkships were somewhat overvalued on the teaching market. I could say more about this topic, but I'll leave it to Dean Jim Chen of University of Louisville law school, who is himself a former Supreme Court clerk:
The Supreme Court clerkship remains the most elite credential available to an American lawyer. Law firms are willing to pay substantial bonuses to associates who bring the experience or perhaps just the cachet to work. But to what extent does a Supreme Court clerkship predict success in legal academia?
I strongly suspect that the Supreme Court clerkship, in the mind of a MoneyLaw-minded academic talent scout, has become the law school equivalent of the 270-foot dash that Billy Beane won when he entered the baseball draft. The story is vividly recounted in Michael Lewis's Moneyball.
The 270-foot dash measures raw speed, specifically over the maximum distance that a baseball player is likely to run on an ordinary play. It's nice to be that fast, and speed over 270 feet translates into more triples and more reliable scoring from first base on doubles hit by a player's teammates. On even rarer occasions, speed over 270 feet means scoring from first off a single (in a play most famously associated with Enos Slaughter). The related skill of covering 360 feet with extreme celerity raises the probability, however slightly, of the inside-the-park home run.
But these baseball plays are spectacular precisely because they are rare. As a result, the 270-foot dash measures something that is probably more salient in the mind of the talent scout than it is relevant to the business of trading runs for outs. Billy Beane finished his major league career with more strikeouts than hits (80 to 66) and a woeful OPS of .546. OPS, by the way, stands for On-base percentage Plus Slugging percentage. Baseball traditionalists will more readily understand Billy Beane's lifetime .219 batting average, dangerously close to the Mendoza line and flatly unacceptable for an outfielder. It was no fluke; Billy took the better part of six seasons to compile this wretched record.
If the foregoing is sabermetric gibberish to you, no amount of linking now will help you. Perhaps I shall explain in a future MoneyLaw post. Suffice it for the moment to observed that Billy Beane, first-round bonus baby, winner of the 270-foot dash at his combine, basically ... pardonnez-moi, je cherche le mot juste en français ... sucked.
This is not to suggest that the Supreme Court clerkship should be devalued altogether as an academic credential. Nor would I conclude that the clerkship hangs like an albatross around the neck of a law professor so unfortunate as to have spent a year of her or (more likely) his life working at 1 First Street N.E., Washington, DC 20543. Like any other factor that correlates only weakly, if at all, with ultimate success, the 270-foot dash, the Supreme Court clerkship, the newly fashionable brand name Pee-Aitch-Dee, and other rough guides to future performance are just that: rough guides. For every Billy Beane, there are other first-round draft picks whose careers have resembled that of B.J. Surhoff (overpaid mediocrity), Chipper Jones (marginal Hall of Fame candidate), or Alex Rodriguez (probable Hall-of-Famer, barring injury). So it is in law and law teaching. Predicting 40 years of productivity on the basis of an individual's appeal to a Supreme Court Justice at the age of 27 or 28 is at best a perilous pursuit.
I would simply add that the attributes that get a 28 year-old to the Court are very much correlated with all sorts of professional success, including in academia. But the relevant question is, if you took two candidates with identical c.v.s (law school, class rank, references, publication record, lower-court clerkships, etc.), except that one had landed Supreme Court clerkship, and the other did not, can you predict that the former clerk will be a "better" law professor, on whatever metric one chooses to use? That, as I understand it, is when Chen would argue that the clerkship is a "factor that correlates only weakly, if at all, with ultimate success," yet some hiring committees would give the former clerk a significant advantage.
He said something interesting to me once about baseball players in "the majors." I can't quote it, but basically he said that the worst player on the worst team was better than several million people trying desperately to put him back on the bus.
-TF
Hanging one's hat on a Supreme Court clerkship makes sense because of the absence of any other valid metric. You've got to having something to look for or all that time is wasted. From what I hear from law students, the best predicter should be the ability to tell a story well. Let's face facts, it doesn't take brilliance to teach a first year law school class, but it does take the ability to engage students, hold their interest and communicate well.
Perhaps law schools could learn something from Last Comic Standing?
DB, that was faux shock on the part of many, who come after you because you are you. By presenting Dean Chen instead of speaking in your own voice here, you are denying those "fans" of yours a cathartic opportunity.
get the best person that can teach because that is important.
The students want the second one and the faculty want the first because a good research reflect well on them also.
totally differnt strokes that depend on what you actual goal is not the one put out by admissions.
I'd guess not. Would you have written more or better articles by now if you'd spent a year mostly writing cert. memos?
Let's face it: Law professors are NOT expected to teach 1st year law students, or any other law students. Law students teach themselves, and the law students who don't teach themselves don't learn. And the law students who imagine that the professors are going to teach them don't learn well. The only thing of value that a law professor does is create (and grade) a final exam to determine whether the students have learned what they were supposed to have learned.
Most law school classes are a waste of time. The lawyer who does not admit to occasionally having seen going to a class as an interuption to figuring out the law is not telling the truth, or maybe never did figure out the law.
The only purpose I ever found for classes was that it was a time to get to know other students and to interact (some) with them. AND, to have some excuse to talk with the professor outside of class and to interact with him.
IF a brilliant mind happens to be able to entertain law students while they are forced to sit through the ABA-mandated number of class sessions, that's fine. However, that's not reason for hiring someone on to join the firm. And THAT is what a law school is -- a law firm. The students are almost incidentals.
This sentiment seems to be common among lawyers, but I find it hard to believe that many or most law schools have such poor faculty. I know that my experience has been much different -- in my five semesters of law school, I can (thankfully) say that only one of my professors has been a sub-par teacher. Most of them have been extremely insightful, bringing to the table much more than I could ever have gleaned from simply reading the cases on my own. They weave together the doctrines and discuss theories that help one understand the cases.
My experience may be atypical. But even if for some reason the professors at my school are significantly better at explaining concepts and are more dedicated to actually teaching students than faculty at other institutions, I doubt that the professors at other schools are quite as miserable at their jobs as people like Name Withheld would have us believe.
"Mr. ___, tell us about Smith v. Jones.
"I didn't read the case."
"You aren't prepared for the class?"
"Why should I be, when you never are?"
(Entire class glares at lecturer in support of student). Then at the last lecture, when the custom was to applaud the instructor until he exits, we got up and walked out in total silence.
That'd suggest pretty strongly that we expected to learn from the lecturer, and were quite angered when he had little to give.
David is right that the traits needed to obtain a clerkship are very correlated to lawprof success. However, that doesn't seem to be the point of the Chen's post.
Chen is likely wrong to think that the clerkship "correlates only weakly, if at all, with ultimate success[.]" Although I have no empiracal evidence for my claim, it seems unlikely that, all other factors being equal, a clerkship would have a negative or no correalation. The tone of his post belies his argument.
To extend the baseball metaphor, a clerkship is not like a 270-yard dash. GM's are forever on the lookout for the fabled "5-tool" player: hit for power, hit for average, baserunning, throwing, and fielding. The 270-yard dash is but a measure of one of those tools. This is why there are no olympic sprinters on baseball teams (more likely WR in football). Ability in one area, no matter how great, can not make up for severe deficits in others. SCOTUS clerkships, on the other hand, require a well rounded skill set to succeed (I'm just guessing here).
Plus, the point of Beane's story was to argue that exhibiting super skills in the minors did not necessarily translate to the majors because of the mental adjustment that is so great. Many players just choked and couldn't do perform on so big a stage. No analogous situation applies. Recieving lifetime tenure to research scholarly topics of interest is unlikely to cause a clerk to "choke" and not perform to his full abilities.
Chen's argument makes more sense if SCOTUS clerks are viewed as equivalent to the first overall pick in the draft. Greatness is expected of 1st pics, not mere competence. They have excelled at every level and show all indications of continuing their trajectory. However, expectations are usually bloated to the point where the median clerk or 1st pick can not reach.
The hypothesis about the top 100 legal scholars may be true but has a serious selection bias problem. Historically, the top law schools hired heavily from the ranks of SC clerks and, face it, just being at a top law school significantly elevates your publishing opportunities.
Second, one problem with the 270-foot race analogy is that a 270-foot race does not teach a baseball player anything relevant to baseball-playing. By contrast, I contend that having an intimate involvement with the actual business of the Supreme Court does in fact help make one a more skillful and nuanced analyst of Supreme Court behavior, which constitutes the professional agenda of lots of law professors. How much value-added there really is is of course difficult to measure, but I think it's more than this discussion has been generally giving credit for.
Therein lies the difference in expectations. Law professors want to be recognized scholars. Students want to be taught by professors who can teach. The comments here reflect the dissatisfaction on both sides, together with an ugly cynicism of some toward the whole experience of law school.
The only thing missing is the realization that courts no longer pay attention to law review articles, eliminating the need for law professor scholars and, if their job is not to teach, rendering them superflous.
Is there really so much difference between SCOTUS Clerks and former appeals court clerks in this regard? If so, I've failed to observe it. Indeed, many top fed cts scholars did not clerk at the court, FWIW.
Law is the most snobbish profession. On the present Supreme Court, there are five Harvard Law School grads and only one grad of a non-Ivy League law school. The two last justices to leave the court graduated from Stanford Law School. Law journal articles written by law students are called "notes."
The only thing that will keep ARod out of the HOF is misbehavior on his part. I.e., steroids, felonies, b3tting on baseball.
He has so far exceeded a HOF career already that no performance-related, or lack-of-performance-related, issue can keep him out.
It's not even close, really.
I would say the issue is information costs
Other clerkships are values for similar reasons-when hiring it is too expensive to figure out who is actually any good so acheivements that narrow the applicant pool are very important
Are Rhodes Scholars overvalued as professors? Probably. So what unless one can offer screening criteria that promise to do a better job.
Keep in mind: the vast majority of SCOTUS clerks have otehr screening achievements as well, e.g., highly ranked schools, other clerkships, etc.
In fact, if one could control for all the other factors, it is not clear to me that the SCOTUS clerkship adds all that much to the resume
None of this goes to measure the scholarly quality/impact of SCOTUS clerks, however. It's easy to publish a lot. To publish something that is original, smart, and useful is another matter. Too many professors manage to do only one or two of the three, and I do not think that a Supreme Court clerkship is likely to distinguish anyone in standing out of the pack in this regard.
The other problem with Supreme Court clerkships as a credential is that they reflect the Con Law/Admin/Fed Courts prestige bias at many law schools. Con Law (broadly defined) is sexy, no doubt, let's remember that law schools (with the exception of Yale, which is basically a legal theory ABD program) are ultimately trade schools and most lawyers earn their bread and butter from corporate and commercial business, not from constitutional law issues.
I think you devalue the practical experience that clerks get. I would much, much rather have a professor who has worked with judges who actually decide cases than one who has not. And SCOTUS clerks generally worked with at least one court of appeals judge first.
As to "whatever metric one chooses to use," I choose the metric that measures actual knowledge imparted on students. A law professor who started teaching right after law school and has no experience other than writing law review articles is a lot less valuable as a teacher than one who has spent time clerking or, preferably, represented a real client or two.
Scholarship + experience beats pure scholarship any day.
I don't think this is true. Unlike the case with business firms, scholars do not "go out of business." Especially after they have tenure. Furthermore, biased law reviews can perpetuate biased scholars.
I am all for the marketplace of ideas. It sort of works, especially for questions where there is a "right" answer based on an agreed upon metric. But, on the other hand, there are enough unfalsifiable ideas out there that I think the analogy to a marketplace, while reasonable, has severe limitations.