I’m back from one of those tough rigorous trips that characterize law prof conferences: the annual conference of SEALS, the Southeastern Association of Law Schools, at the Ritz in West Palm Beach. Naturally, given the name of the association, the attendees come from schools such as Indiana, Seattle, Hofstra, Brooklyn, and Windsor. If there were a law school in Alaska, I feel sure it would be a SEALS member school. Cognitive dissonance aside, it’s a lovely conference — although maybe they should just call it the Association of Law Schools.
I spoke on Sunday on a panel about planning your scholarly career. The panelists, present company excepted, gave some excellent tips. In particular, if there are either law review editors or William & Mary folks among our readership, I hope they will encourage Professor Cynthia Ward to write up and publish her remarks. She spoke about “dead ends” in scholarship — a vital topic, common to just about everyone, but one that is insufficiently discussed, perhaps for reasons of superstition. Her remarks were superb — very thoughtful and helpful. One thing that came up quite a bit during this session was the common tension for juniors between writing what you want to write and writing what you are told you ought to write. I don’t know if this is as common as it once was, but there are still stories about one junior prof or another being told not just to choose a different topic for his or her first articles, but an entirely different subject matter than the one he or she actually wants to write about. While there was no actual support for this on the panel, I did think some panelists emphasized the question of tenure more than others. I did not; for a variety of reasons, including both one’s personal integrity and the simple fact that it is easier to get tenured at a law school than to actually get a teaching job in the first place, I don’t think tenure should be a big factor in deciding what you want to write about. At the same time, of course I don’t think every choice a junior makes is necessarily the right one, and I don’t want to jeopardize anyone’s tenure chances as such; every institution is different, and these kinds of questions may have different salience at different schools. I think the best way to dissolve this tension is to distinguish between choosing a topic, and an approach to that topic, for reasons of career strategy, and doing so for reasons of prudence and humility. I don’t think junior profs (or anyone else, for that matter) should make decisions about research and writing based solely or primarily on what they think will get them tenure, any more than I think — what with the FAR forms being just about due — that one should try to get a job at a law school by being willing to teach absolutely anything and everything. If you have a passion for a subject matter, you should pursue it, and be willing to do so in the face of some (minor) risk to your chances of getting a job or tenure. After all, neither a job or tenure are guaranteed even if you do take this strategic approach; and if you do succeed, you may find you’ve bought something you didn’t really want in the first place. Then you truly have reached a dead end. But that is not to say your first piece should be a grand unified theory of the field. I do think there are dangers in junior profs writing too “small” — more on that in a future post. Surely some ambition is appropriate even in an early piece. But there is always a role for prudence and epistemic humility — a sense that you do not yet know everything about your field, and therefore that there are reasons to be a little more circumspect and circumscribed in your early work. That doesn’t mean you can only write a piece that takes a narrow doctrinal approach to a narrow doctrinal question. But it does mean that the breadth and confidence of your argument should be somewhat cabined, and your claims should be developed against the backdrop of a certain humble recognition that you are just entered upon your scholarly career and shouldn’t try to do everything at once. Of course, humility is a virtue in scholarship at every stage of one’s career, and even as you get more confident and knowledgeable about your field, you should retain this quality in your work. But the more you do, the broader the boundaries of your work will become. The nice thing about this advice, I think, is that it too serves the end that some panelists and juniors are concerned about — namely, getting a job and/or tenure. Even if you refuse to accept someone’s strategic advice — say, that you should write about bankruptcy rather than con law — you can still write in a measured and humble way that will advance your prospects for success. But you will have done so for the right reasons, and in doing so you will have absorbed good habits rather than habits of thinking “strategically” and fearfully about your career in a way that risks a career that either dead-ends or is an unhappy one. And, of course, unlike strategic advice that purports to be about how to get tenure and then either runs out of usefulness after tenure or inculcates career-long bad habits, this advice is good for your entire scholarly life.
Posted by Paul Horwitz on August 5, 2009 at 10:41 AM
Comments
Paul, you are far too humble; I found your comments to be very helpful and you stood out on a panel of outstanding and insightful speakers. After rewriting much of your post in my own words, I’ve edited it down to this comment: I think this blog post is right on. My sense is that scholarship particularly early on should be about developing a system, figuring out what is most effective and productive for you, and figuring out how to channel your passion into productivity. I think one of your panel comments was “respect the streak.” Very true, I think, and similar to my thoughts that you have to figure out what kind of scholarship energizes you. Subject-wise for sure, but also what mode. Empirical? Biographical? Normative? Comparative? What gets you going so that when you’re hot you’re hot and when you’re not your still able to stick with it? Then again, what do I know? But I’m glad someone else is thinking along the same lines. So thanks again for your panel comments and this post.
Posted by: David Cleveland | Aug 6, 2009 12:50:02 AM