While currently in the midst of writing, teaching, and being my usual annoying self, of late I have also been in the throws of helping law faculty candidates with their upcoming AALS faculty recruitment applications---reviewing CVs, FAR forms, reading draft articles, and holding mock interviews. While several of you may already know of the Olivas Faculty Recruitment Initiative, I suspect most of you don't. Over a year ago, a few of us at the FIU COL started a program to follow in the footsteps of Professor Michael Olivas and his Herculean efforts to diversify the legal academy. Our goal was to create a network of legal academic mentors willing to assist non-traditional candidates enter and succeed in the academy.
In our short period of existence, we have over 50 faculty and law dean mentors, and have over a dozen mentees. Several of our mentees are in the market this year, and more are sure to come. I suspect a few of you have or will soon interview some of our young superstars. The Olivas FRI seeks to provide general mentoring for any and all interested non-traditional candidates, which include law students, recent grads, and foreign lawyers. While I do not turn away any interested mentees, my goal in starting the program was to increase the numbers of ethnic and racial minorities in our profession. If any legal academics here are interested becoming a mentor, please email me at [email protected]. If you know of promising upper-level students or recent grads, have them look us up at our page.
Interested mentees can of course can then email me at [email protected]. I typically have phone conference with them, and then pair them with a mentor.
I am also happy to chat with any and all recent grads and upper-level law students. They do not have to be certain academia is their path. As part of of our outreach efforts, we have sent mailings to BLSA, LLSA, and Native-American student organizations at the top 50 law schools, and will be expanding our efforts in the future. I personally work with any and all takers--but am brutally honest regarding the possibility of having to attain an LLM or other advanced degrees.
I hope some of you will find this program rewarding, and will consider forwarding our information to others. If you fundamentally disagree with what we are doing, as a potential mentor once told me when I was interested in the academy decades ago.... "oh well...." ;)
Comments