Secunda on the Lateral Market for Law Professors
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw
Paul Secunda (left), who is moving from Mississippi to Marquette, has posted Tales of a Law Professor Lateral Nothing on SSRN. This is a combined narrative and “how-to” on moving from school to school once you have already climbed the ivy-covered walls and deposited yourself in legal academia.
You know, when you consider it, “lateral” as the descriptor doesn’t make much sense. Personally, I think “Upwardly Mobile Market” would be better. Or the most accurate would be the “Wannabe Upwardly Mobile Market Except When I Can’t Stand It Here So Much I’ll Take Anything or They’re Offering Me a Chair and a Lot of Money to Move the Other Way Market.”
My view on looking for jobs is that one should do it less frequently than one has colonoscopies. Anyway, here’s Paul’s abstract:
This Essay seeks to uncover themysterious world of the law professor lateral hiring market, which hasbecome increasingly important in the last number of years as lawschools seek to build their reputations in this U.S. News & WorldReport world through the hiring of prominent faculty members.
Althoughthe advice and guidance given in this essay are sometimes written withtongue firmly in cheek, I do attempt to accomplish two importantobjectives here. First, there has been scarcely anything written aboutthe lateral hiring market for law professors, as opposed to the cottageindustry that has been devoted to the entry-level law professor hiringmarket. This essay methodically takes the lateral-to-be professorthrough every step of the lateral process from the first-personperspective of one who has been on the market for three years andsuccessfully lateraled this past year.
Second, and perhaps moreimportantly, I want to contribute to the process of bringing back tolegal academic writing the form of the first-person narrative. Like mycolleague, David Case, I believe that, “the narrative voice is animportant, and perhaps underutilized, tool in deconstructing thearbitrary processes of the legal academic hiring market.” See DavidCase, The Pedagogical Don Quixote de la Mississippi, 33 U. Mem. L. Rev.529, 530 n.2 (2003).