A Quick Plug for VAPs and Fellowships for Aspiring Law Professors

As I mentioned in my post on callbacks, one way to increase your ability to land a job as a law professorship is to work as a Visiting Assistant Professor (VAP) or to obtain a fellowship aimed at those who wish to transition into the academy.  A number of institutions now have such programs (including my law school, Arizona State).  Paul Caron (aka TaxProf) does a great job collecting the programs here.

While I have occasionally seen criticism of these programs --- not that the programs themselves aren't helpful, but that it is a big burden on aspiring law professors to take a short term job in a different city often for less pay --- as someone who benefitted greatly from the Climenko Fellowship at Harvard, I think these concerns have been overstated.  Accepting a job as a law professor will almost always require a move to a different city and a loss of pay, so I guess I don't see why it is unreasonable to impose that burden for a VAP or fellowship if it is a burden that most candidates will ultimately have to bear . . .

Comments

[Bernie Burk]

Because to take a VAP before a tenure-track position, you have to move twice. And moving twice in two or three years is quite hard on spouses and children. Moving once is hard enough.

[Anon]

Taking the Climenko is one thing. Taking a VAP at a lower ranked school is another. Climenko places pretty much everyone in jobs, so it's just a matter of how many times you want to move. At most other schools, taking a VAP is a calculated risk with a real downside.

I was a VAP at top 100 school. I enjoyed it, and found a great job. Some of my fellow VAPs, similarly qualified, struck out at the hiring fair. I know of other lawyers on their third or fourth VAP, having sacrificed promising law firm careers for a try at academe. Net result: they moved, took a pay cut, worked like dogs, and damaged their employability as practicing lawyers.

That this could happen in the current market is pretty obvious. It didn't happen to you, and it didn't happen to me, but I am capable of respecting the concerns of those who wonder if it is good judgment to make the leap, and capable of feeling empathy for those who tried it and ended up with career and personal challenges.

[Christine Hurt]

Carissa, I think that you are right. Anon's friends didn't strike out at the hiring conference because they took a VAP; if they had interviewed while still in practice they would probably have struck out then, too. The cold, hard fact is that most of the folks that you are competing against are coming out of VAPs or fellowships where they have had ample time to write and learn the lingo of being a law professor. (Note that a 'VAP' that works you to death so you don't have time to write is just a school trying to get a cheap teacher, not place you on the market.) Folks call me every year and want advice on being a law professor, and they all say "I only want to move once," usually for family reasons. I just don't think that works very often in academia any more. Of course, maybe I'm the wrong person to ask because I have moved my family around quite a bit!