What Is a Professor of Legal Writing?
Legal writing professors are the specialists who teach legal writing to law students. Because writing is a big part of practicing law, legal writing professors usually begin their legal careers as litigators or transactional lawyers. However, they often see the difficulties that beginning lawyers face with legal writing, and it gets them interested in becoming legal writing professors. While the requirements may vary, most legal writing professors are expected to have a strong educational background and experience in legal writing, and come from top schools.
There are some schools outside the United States that teach law in English, and as such, they also employ legal writing professors. When looking for legal writing teaching jobs outside the United States , applicants should keep in mind that English and civil law tend to be used more often. Having an understanding of civil law, along with English and American common law, may be advantageous for those applying to be law professors in foreign countries.
Legal writing professors have many responsibilities, but their top priority is helping students become better legal writers. This involves creating syllabi for their classes, organizing course materials, and teaching students to create and organize legal documents. It is their job to teach their students how to write documents that will be useful in a variety of contexts, such as internship placements, clerkships, and day-to-day tasks they will face as working attorneys.
Requirements for Professors of Legal Writing
To become a legal writing professor, one must hold both academic and professional qualifications. In terms of academic requirements, employers typically seek a J.D., and/or an LL.M. in legal writing or another related field. Legal writing programs invariably require a J.D., and many prefer applicants who have completed and passed the Bar exam. A demonstration of scholarly research and distinctiveness, such as publications in law reviews or journals, will distinguish candidates from others, although schools vary in their assessment of this criterion. Professional qualifications are integral to becoming a legal writing professor as well. Tenure-track legal writing professors are likely to have superior scholarship and a record of publications, among other requirements that coincide with the hiring procedures at their specific schools. Non-tenure track legal writing professors typically have significant and relevant substantive and procedural experience in the private or public sectors relating to the respective area of the writing course that they will teach (e.g., litigation, regulatory practice, or non-profit law). Some schools prefer that non-tenure track professors receive a contract for an indefinite term. Other schools may require non-tenure track faculty to have prior teaching experience and some prefer that these types of faculty have past experience as law school adjunct instructors. Some schools also strongly prefer that prospective applicants have published articles, books, or book chapters.
Career Options for Professors of Legal Writing
Legal writing professors have a variety of career paths available. In the academic realm, they typically teach in law schools, but they also may have opportunities to work in other post-secondary institutions, such as master’s degree programs or community colleges. Writing programs, particularly at universities that are not home to professional or graduate schools, sometimes hire legal writing experts as well. Some lawyers or law school graduates may wind up teaching legal writing in high schools or other alternative venues.
Legal writing professors who do work at law schools will typically be associated with the school itself, and they pursue opportunities within that law school. Legal writing professors from other educational institutions may some opportunities at private educational institutions or within the federal education system.
If you are considering a career as a legal writing professor, it is vital that you gain experience in academia. "Experience" here means more than just a degree or even a post-doctoral fellowship and includes experience as a teacher or researcher.
Job Trends for Professors of Legal Writing
The market for legal writing professor jobs continues to be strong, with many law schools seeing an increased need for legal writing faculty to teach still-mandated first-year legal writing courses and upper-level bar prep courses. This trend follows the American Bar Association’s removal of a deadline for the implementation of bar exam cut scores. Many states no longer have a definitive standard as to what will be sufficient to pass the bar, leaving it to individual law schools to keep their graduates’ bar passage rates above a level set by their state bar. These mandatory bar passage minima are a factor in both the law school rankings and the viability of the law schools themselves. The creation of What the Bar Tests is designed to equip law school faculty with an easy way to determine which academic program material is covered by the bar exam, and help them teach the skills necessary for their students to pass their bar exams.
Several of my recent blogs have discussed the trend towards loosening the standards for law school teaching qualifications. The current market is thriving for all types of legal writing positions, which means that the increasingly high barriers to entry for full-time law teaching positions may shift as law schools require more classes to be filled. The best way for law schools to fill classes is to use full-time legal writing professors who have experience in teaching, but the barrier to entry for these positions remains extremely high. While the trend towards a reduced standard for other law school professors might mean more law schools are willing to hire full-time legal writing professors, the competition for positions remains extremely strong and would require even more clearly-defined grading criteria and exam guidance outlines. This trend was highlighted in 2006 by Professor Anne Enquist in her article, Schema-Theoretic Analysis of Legal Writing Courses, wherein she stated: I see a lack of defining rigor in the legal writing job market as a red flag. Competition for legal writing jobs is already fierce…and with the competition will come the pressure on law schools to produce future lawyers who can write well and think like lawyers. Law schools will raise the bar gradually. The writing applicants who cannot meet that bar will find it increasingly difficult to land legal writing jobs.
Other blog posts have suggested that the legal writing profession may actually be an endangered one, and that some of the skills taught in legal writing programs may actually be better left to other courses in the law school. Dr. Stephen Sezov’s article, Legal Writing Pedagogy: On the Brink of Extinction, points to innovative solutions, such as eliminating barriers between legal writing and legal skills faculty and blending the skills and legal writing faculties together in order to prepare students for their new roles as attorneys. Legal writing professors hope to pirate their way to better states of existence in order to avoid the extinction that awaits other professionals. By engaging in more collaborative teaching and less insular individual course creation, legal writing professors will be able to adapt to changing law school needs and remain relevant to law school education. With law schools increasingly focused on pass rates and bar prep, legal writing professors must focus on their strengths and abilities to keep legal writing programs strong and endure into the future.
Compensation and Benefits for Professors of Legal Writing
Research by the Association of American Law Schools suggests that the average salary for a legal writing professor in the U.S. is between $60,000 and $132,000 per year, with the majority of professors making somewhere in the $90,000s range. Yet, the salary range for legal writing professors varies greatly depending on the school type—law schools that are part of a university’s law school system (LS) have lower starting salaries than stand-alone law schools (SL), and the lowest salaries are found at non-accredited law schools.
The following table combines salary data recently released by the New York City Bar Association with salary information from the AALS. It shows that an LLM or JD with five to six years experience working as adjunct-ls at Harvard Law School can expect to earn $15,000 more per year than a tenured legal writing professor at Yale Law School. The same LLM at Columbia or the University of Chicago who teach one class per semester can expect to earn over $40 , 000 per year. Salary figures are even higher at NYU, where salaries for legal writing professors with two to four years’ experience in 2013 ranged from $106,5000 to $115,000. Finally, a legal writing faculty member working at an LS such as Berkeley, Texas, or UCLA may earn approximately $125,000, and Professor James Cleary of Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego topped the list in 2012, earning $137,803. Notably, the highest paid legal writing professor, earning $150,000, is currently employed by the University of Michigan, which has been continuously ranked by US News & World Report in the Top 10 of U.S. law schools since 2001.
Benefit packages for professors generally include legal writing professors, who often receive partial legal coverage and tuition benefits for their family members to attend their own institutions.
How to Become a Professor of Legal Writing
I was recently asked by a journalist with the National Jurist whether legal writing professors make more or less than the averages in the legal industry. He was comparing the salaries of clinical law school faculty with those at non-clinical law schools, and he thought legal writing professors fit into that paradigm somehow. Of course the answer was no because legal writing professors typically are not clinical law school faculty unless they teach advanced legal writing, whereupon their salary is on the same pay scale. The question got me to thinking about the challenges of landing a position as a legal writing professor. Although the market has improved sharply since the recession, there is still a struggle to land such positions. I already discussed this phenomenon in Professor Jones Needs a Job Too, from 2011, but now that the market is recovering, things will be even more difficult. Not only are there are more law schools, but the number of tenured faculty is also increasing. What’s a lawyer to do?
Legal writing has a different hiring cycle than other faculty. Faculty get hired in the spring for positions that start the following fall. Legal writing faculty get hired later, sometimes even into the summer or fall as demand dictates. In either event, the process starts earlier than the traditional faculty position. Legal writing jobs – whether traditional legal writing positions or clinics – typically require candidates to apply before mid-November of the preceding year for the following academic year. For example, for the next academic year, the job search starts sometime in September or October of this year, continuing into January or even February of the next year. It is not unheard of to be offered a legal writing job in the summer.
Since the window for applying is much different from traditional faculty positions, candidates who want a traditional legal writing professor gig should get started as soon as possible. That means dusting off that prospectus and handling other issues first, like getting any advanced degrees finished. Of course if you need a letter from your current employer that could take longer to get. Since legal writing professor qualifications require teaching experience, an advanced degree, scholarly background, and publication history, and a spotless employment record, that means you must get started early. Again, as with traditional hiring cycles, you’ll need your letters of reference and scholarship packet, and a minimum of four weeks to receive a response to your application.
That said, the best way to get a legal writing position is through networking. Finding opportunities through referral from colleagues is one of the most effective ways to land a legal writing job. Networking is also the best way to find traditional faculty positions. Having a legal writing pedigree is often not enough to land a traditional business law or advanced writing position, although that fortune also seems to be changing. Applicants with JD/Journalism degrees are finding more creative writing positions, for example. Also, be sure to have a resume and letter of interest ready when a position comes open. That means looking into the types of information typically required for legal writing professor positions in your target legal writing professor ground. The best way to do that is to contact legal writing professors at your target law schools during distressing times in your employment. They will probably be feeling very generous, and willing to advise you on your application package and process. Good luck!
Pros and Cons of Becoming a Professor of Legal Writing
Teaching is a demanding profession on the best of days, but for legal writing professors, the hurdles are often even greater. Beyond the complexities of teaching law students how to write, there are curriculum issues, research requirements, grant activity and scholarship management. It’s worth noting that scholarship for legal writing professors is increasingly essential, as many institutions now require legal writing faculty members to publish frequently as part of their tenure agreement.
Legal writing professors regularly note that they must cover multiple subjects in a single semester, an issue that isn’t unique to legal writing professors at all law schools (with faculty members who are likely to be tenure-track or tenured). With upwards of two dozen or more students in each class, grading can also prove remarkably hectic.
All of this work isn’t without reward, however, as most law schools regard legal writing professors highly. Those who succeed in the profession soon find that they are esteemed both by their students and peers, both within the legal writing community and on their campuses. Many legal writing professors even experience incredible academic freedom in their classrooms. While those who are untenured are often beholden to the same university-wide command structure as other untenured professors , once tenure is accorded, their employment security increases significantly.
With law school enrollment remaining steady and a greater empirical understanding of the role lawyers play in broader society, legal writing professors find themselves more vital than ever. Law students are taught that one of the keys to success is to develop professional networks wherever possible, essentially expanding the school’s network beyond the law school. But once law students complete their legal writing classes, they might re-negotiate their relationship with their professors and again think of them in terms of their career.
For those with an interest in legal writing professor jobs, the market for these posts is remarkably strong, with schools experiencing a consistent need for talented professors. It’s also true that like many professors of specialized subjects, legal professors are often afforded an incredible degree of freedom in the classroom. While legal writing professors must often meet scholarship requirements, they don’t have to establish relationships with powerful legal insiders in order to advance their careers. In reward for their hard work, many legal writing professors experience great satisfaction in their roles.