How long are the odds for alumni becoming law professors?
At first glance, the numbers look daunting. There might be as many as 1,000 applicants for entry-level teaching jobs each year, and maybe 150 of those will get jobs. But for Harvard graduates, the odds are a lot better. HLS places more of its graduates in teaching than any other school—yes, including Yale—and in recent years, Harvard J.D.s have accounted for 15 to 20 percent of all hires. I think that any HLS grad who is serious about an academic career and has done the basic things necessary to prepare for the teaching market—securing one or two faculty recommenders, writing at least one scholarly paper, and developing some familiarity with the scholarly literature in the field she wants to teach and write in—can expect to land a good teaching job. How important is scholarship relative to teaching experience? Well, most people who get jobs as professors don’t have any law school teaching experience. Interviews and the job talk presentation, where a candidate presents a scholarly work
