Juniors versus Seniors

There has been a lot of talk amongst environmental law scholars about interactions among scholars. Sparked by the inaugaration of a new listserv for junior environmental law scholars, several of us have been examining the role of junior-only fora. This new listserv is one example,  but there are many others out there. For example, many schools (including Buffalo) have junior faculty lunches and workshops. Sometimes there are conferences dedicated to junior scholars and many bigger conferences (like SEALS or AALS) incorporate junior programs (special workshops, WIP panels, paper awards, etc.).

As some just entering her third year, I have always welcomed these opportunities to share work and meet other folks just starting out. Of course, it is also great to meet senior scholars and share work and ideas with them. [Excuse the use of junior/senior -- neither word meant to refer to someone's age. We can think of it more as pre-tenure and tenured but those terms seem clunkier.]

Once concern that I have heard voiced a few times is a worry that juniors hang out together too much (walling themselves off from seniors) and that they are perhaps overly tentative about sharing work with senior people.

Do any of you have experience with junior programs that you thought were either particularly helpful or harmful?

 

Comments

[Lloyd Mayer]

I found the annual Junior Tax Scholars Conference (really a very intense workshop) to be incredibly helpful both for vetting draft articles and networking. Originally organized by Miranda Perry (now Miranda Perry Fleischer), Vic Fleischer, and Lily Batchelder, each year it gathers approximately two dozen pre-tenure tax law professors, each of whom presents a paper and is expected to comment formally on two other papers. Everyone, however, is expected to have read at least the short version of every paper, and in practice comments come on every paper from most of the attendees. It has proven so popular that it can be difficult to be invited, although a number of slot open up each year as participants age (i.e., tenure) out.