The Job Talk

It's that time of year, when faculty candidates are visiting law schools and giving "job talks."  Now comes a paper on the "job talk," co-authored by three law professors at Seattle University:  Anne Enquist, Paula Lustbader, and John Mitchell.  The paper is entitled "From Both Sides Now:  The Job Talk's Role in Matching Candidates with Law Schools."  Here's the abstract (from SSRN):

In the heavily competitive law school teaching job market, the so-called “job talk” has assumed increasing importance in the ultimate hiring decision.  Nevertheless, there is little published information to assist a law school faculty in structuring or evaluating the job talk and a similar paucity of information for candidates to guide them in creating and preparing for the presentation of their talk.  This article is intended to fill that void.  The article guides the preparation of faculty and candidates for both the job talk itself and for the crucial Q&A period that follows the talk.  The article represents the authors’ collective 87 years of experience seeing both successful and unsuccessful job talks, as well as the experience of 15 colleagues around the country who reviewed our initial draft and commented on it from the perspective of their various law schools.

Comments

[Anon]

A quick perusal of the piece indicates that it's not much more value added than an old blog post. Not worth the download...

[Joe]

Wouldn't it follow many of the same tips people give for interviews and meetings?

[Anon]

In what way does this paper break new ground?

With all due respect for good intentions, I'm confused how the authors claim "a ... paucity of information for candidates to guide them in creating and preparing for the presentation of their talk" while they do not even cite Danielle Conway's journal article on the same topic, published already ten years ago.

Conway, Danielle M., A Recruit’s Guide to the On-Campus Interview Process and the Job Talk (Spring 2000). Michigan Journal of Race & Law, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2000. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1559364.

I've been recommending the Conway piece to first-time candidates for years.