Maybe Law Schools Should Hold A Draft

The NFL draft began last night, and continues through today and tomorrow.  The draft is designed to create as much balance in the league as possible. Accordingly, the team with the worst record from the previous season has the opportunity to pick the best player available in the draft.

Maybe law school rankings, which are otherwise generally worthless, should be used to establish a system of faculty hiring.  The school ranked lowest by US News would be entitled to draft the best prospect from the AALS Faculty Recruitment Conference.  Top rated schools would have to wait until the end to make their choices.  Of course, it would never work because some schools would cheat on their numbers to achieve a lower ranking.

Comments

[Tim Zinnecker]

Richard, I've had the same thought from time to time. And let's add to the mix the "reserve clause" too, yes? Enough of this lateral climbing!

[Richard Gershon]

Tim,

I totally agree. it already seems like we have rampant free-agency!

[GJELblogger]

At the very least, it would make hiring more interesting. Why stop there? Let's use a draft for law school admission too! :)

[Ediberto Roman]

Hey Richard,

Thank fo the novel idea. BTW, I am a free agent an am willing to take he Latin discount.

[Kelly Anders]

I was just thinking about this topic this morning. It would also be interesting to see various schools negotiate to make selections at different times. Who would serve as commentators? Who would candidates speak with on the phone when their names were announced? It would be especially interesting to have budding law profs with agents. ;-)

[roger dennis]

many deans over a drink or two at the bar have planned a reverse draft..think of the possibilities of sending your least favorite faculty member to another school....think of u.s. news strategic plays that could be unleshed..r

[Eric Fink]

This proposal dovetails nicely with my idea to create a set of Law Professor Baseball Cards (with publication and other stats on the back).

[John Smith]

And maybe if there was a draft, new professors would actually be selected based on talent, not certain demographic information

[anon]

Notwithstanding that this proposal would represent my best chance to get a teaching job at Yale (maybe in the third or fourth round, when Yale is forced to hire whoever is still looking for work), I think the post fails to grapple with the most interesting issue: would it affect anything?

Me, I think Yale with the best students and the worst research faculty would still be Yale, and Harvard would still be Harvard, and so on. Employers aren't going to flock to school 187 just because the newest faculty members have some pretty nifty articles pending in their research agenda. They are going to go where the brightest students are, especially since many of them think that - setting aside the screening process - law schools don't add all that much value through what they teach. Students will continue to go the schools now ranked high because, for most of them, what they want from law school are robust career options, not access to seminars centered around a professor's most recent research project.

I think that would be true for a long time even if, like sports, the higher ranked schools were limited in their ability to hire away lateral talent from lower ranked schools. You could neutron bomb the faculty at any top institution without immediate impact on its ranking; the forces of institutional inertia are just too great. Over time, that last draft pick ensconced at Yale might even be seen to be the leading authority.

Add in free market lateral hiring, and it's pretty much what we have now. The schools with the big endowments and the big reputations will, like the New York Yankees, end up with the top skill players over time.