Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T13:22:57.617Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Law Professors: A Profile of the Teaching Branch of the Legal Profession

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Donna Fossum
Get access

Abstract

In the United States, law schools provide the principal route of entry into the legal profession. Indeed, education in a law school is the only experience that virtually all members of the modern legal profession have in common. The gatekeeping function of law schools places the nation's law teachers in a most influential position. Although law professors play a vital role in selecting and molding the members of the profession, little research has been done on them. This article presents the results of the American Bar Foundation's first major study of law teachers. The author finds them to be a most highly credentialed group of lawyers, the overwhelming majority of whom are graduates of a small group of elite law schools. She also finds that possession of a degree from one of these schools appears to be not only highly determinative of who become law teachers but also of the nature of teachers' academic careers.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Bar Foundation Research Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , Summer 1980 , pp. 501 - 554
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 1980 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Auerbach, Jerold S., Enmity and Amity: Law Teachers and Practitioners, 1900-1922, in Donald Fleming & Bernard Bailyn, eds., Law in American History (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1971); id., Unequal Justice: Lawyers and Social Change in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976).Google Scholar

2 A recent treatment of Litchfield and his early law schools throws some doubt, however, on the novelty of Langdell's approach. See Goetsch, Charles G., The Litchfield Law School: A Modern View (paper presented at the 1979 conference of the American Society for Legal History, Williams-burg, Va.).Google Scholar

3 Auerbach, Enmity and Amity, supra note 1, at 552.Google Scholar

4 Id. at 552-53 (emphasis in original).Google Scholar

5 Id. at 552.Google Scholar

6 Alfred Zantzinger Reed, Training for the Public Profession of the Law 198-99 (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1921).Google Scholar

7 Magali Sarfatti Larson, The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis 46 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).Google Scholar

8 Fossum, Donna, Law School Accreditation Standards and the Structure of American Legal Education, 1978 A.B.F. Res. J. 515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 E. Gordon Gee & Donald W. Jackson, Bridging the Gap: Legal Education and Lawyer Competency, B.Y.U.L. Rev. 695, 711 (1977).Google Scholar

10 Auerbach, Unequal Justice, supm note 1, at 90.Google Scholar

11 Even the court is not such an institution. Dan C. Lortie, The Striving Young Lawyer: A Study of Early Career Differentiation in the Chicago Bar (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1958).Google Scholar

12 Hazard, Geoffrey C., Jr., Reflections on Four Studies of the Legal Profession, 13 Soc. Prob. 46, 50 (Summer 1965 Supp.).Google Scholar

13 Barry B. Boyer & Roger C. Cramton, American Legal Education: An Agenda for Research and Reform, 59 Cornell L. Rev. 221, 282 (1974).Google Scholar

14 Information from the Delaware Law School was received too late to be included in the AALS Directory of Law Teachers, 1975-76 (St. Paul, Minn.: West Publishing Co.).Google Scholar

15 There is a discrepancy between the number of full-time law teachers included in this study (3,850). based on AALS figures (see text at p. 503 supra), and the number given in the ABA Annual Review of Legal Education for 1975 (3,584). The 3,850 figure represents 90 percent of the 4,260 full-time teachers listed in the AALS Directory of Law Teachers as holding tenure track positions during the 1975-76 school year whether or not they were actively engaged in teaching that academic year. The 3,584 figure includes all full-time teachers actively engaged in law school teaching programs during the 1975-76 school year whether or not they held tenure track positions. In addition, the 3,850 figure is based on data from only those MA-accredited law schools conferring the J.D. or LL.B. degree located in one of the 50 states, while the 3,584 figure is based on data that also include accredited law schools that conferred only graduate law degrees as well as accredited law schools in Puerto Rico.Google Scholar

Clinical assistant professors, clinical associate professors, and clinical full professors were included in this study. Clinical lecturers and clinical instructors were not.Google Scholar

I employed tests of significance throughout the analysis of the data on law teachers despite the fact that the data in this study represent the universe of law teachers rather than a sample thereof. As Stinchcombe and others have noted, tests of significance provide estimates of measurement as well as sampling error and therefore should be used with both universe and subgroup data. See Stinchcombe, Arthur L., Creating Efficient Industrial Administrations (New York: Academic Press, 1974). For that reason, I used tests of significance where appropriate in this study.Google Scholar

16 ABA, Standards for Legal Education VI (1943).Google Scholar

17 ABA, Standards for Legal Education VII (1947).Google Scholar

18 ABA, Standards for Legal Education VIII (1969).Google Scholar

19 ABA, Standards for the Approval of Law Schools 402 (1973).Google Scholar

20 ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, memorandum 7778-27 from James P. White to Deans of ABA-approved Law Schools regarding the interpretation of the law school accrediting standards 18 (Feb. 1, 1978).Google Scholar

21 Figures are for 1977 and come from U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States 1978, at 419 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1978).Google Scholar

22 Projections of figures are from American Bar Foundation, The 1971 Lawyer Statistical Report 7 (Chicago: American Bar Foundation, 1972). That is, 1 calculated a conservative approximate age distribution of the legal profession in the mid-1970s by adding the appropriate number of years to the 1970-71 ages of lawyers contained in the report.Google Scholar

23 ABA, Standards for the Approval of Law Schools 401 (1973).Google Scholar

24 ABA-accredited Puerto Rican law schools and the Delaware Law School were not included. Information from the Delaware Law School was received too late to be included in the Directory.Google Scholar

25 Columbia University, Cornell University, George Washington University (then called Columbian University), Harvard University, University of Illinois, University of Iowa, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, New York University, Northwestern University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Wisconsin, and Yale University (see 24 ABA Reports 576-77 (1901)).Google Scholar

26 University of California at Berkeley, University of Chicago, Duke University, Georgetown University, Stanford University, University of Texas, and University of Virginia (see ABA Reports (various years)).Google Scholar

27 The Order of the Coif is the national honorary society for law schools; its membership is restricted to those graduating in the top 10 percent of their classes.Google Scholar

28 Although in general educational terms the J.D. degree is usually a graduate degree in that a baccalaureate is a prerequisite, in terms of legal education the J.D. degree is the basic “undergraduate” or professional law degree. The LL.M. and S. J.D. degrees are graduate law degrees, the former being the master of laws and the latter the doctor of the science of jurisprudence.Google Scholar

29 Class standing by prior LL.M. degree: χ2= 8.93, df= 1, p= .05.Google Scholar

30 These three categories of career experiences are the end product of an elaborate data reduction process. The data on the early career positions of law teachers had initially been coded so that each position a teacher had held had a separate code for personal status (e.g., assistant professor in a law school, associate in a law office, etc.) and work setting (e.g., law firm, federal government, law school, etc.). The first stage of the data reduction process involved combining the personal status and work setting codes for each position into a single coded unit and then placing these units into related groups. This regrouping or collapsing continued until there were only 10 categories of experiences. They were: (1) non-tenure-track teacher at a law school, (2) law clerk at a court, (3) student, (4) private practitioner (solo and firm), (5) legal aid lawyer or public defender, (6) position in government (includes all departments and agencies), (7) nonlaw position in academe, institute, or association, (8) house counsel, (9) military service, and (10) other. The next stage of the data reduction process involved determining whether there was a relationship between what a law teacher had done during his or her early career and the length of that early career. Using a variety of analytic techniques I found that with the exception of clerking, there was no clear relationship between the nature of the activity pursued and the length of time devoted to it. Once I ascertained that time was not a major factor in the analysis of early career activities, I was able to reduce all the various early career activities that teachers had engaged in to a single coded category. For example, it was easy to code teachers' experiences if they had only been in private practice, but how could their activities be coded if they had been in private practice, worked for the government, and clerked for a judge before entering tenure track teaching? After considerable work, I found that the early career activities of virtually all law teachers fell into 17 categories of experience representing various combinations of the 10 activity codes listed above. I analyzed these 17 categories to determine their discreteness, and I found that the many types of law practice were not distinguishable in terms of the credentials and/or careers of the law teachers who had engaged in them. Consequently, I was able to collapse categories 4 (private practitioner), 5 (legal aid lawyer or public defender), 6 (position in government), and 8 (house counsel) into the single category “general practice.” In addition, I collapsed categories 7 (nonlaw position in academe) and 9 (military service), which had very few teachers in them, into the general “other” category. The category “student” proved to be redundant with the advanced law degrees possessed by teachers and non-tenure-track teaching positions at law schools, so I collapsed it, too, into the “other” category. In the end, the number of activity codes was reduced to 3 (practicing, clerking, and non-tenure-track teaching), plus the category “other.” The variable that I ultimately used to describe the total early career experiences of law teachers contained 10 codes (7 that represented the combinations of the 3 activity codes plus the category “other”; see table 4).Google Scholar

31 Of those who had practice experience, 74.4 percent (1,925) had engaged in private law practice (firm or solo), 37.4 percent (967) in government practice (mostly federal agencies and departments), 8.8 percent (228) in legal aid and public defender work, and 9.3 percent (241) in house counsel work for some organization. The figures add up to more than 100 percent, as some had engaged in more than one type of practice experience. I found no significant differences among the types of law practice in terms of the status of the law school that a teacher with a particular kind of experience had attended or the status of the law school where the teacher obtained a tenure track position (see discussion infra.)Google Scholar

32 This study did not include those who entered tenure track teaching, left for some reason, and did not return to tenure track teaching.Google Scholar

33 Frances Kahn Zemans & Victor G. Rosenblum, The Making of a Public Profession (Chicago: American Bar Foundation, in press 1980).Google Scholar

34 Kelso, Charles D., The AALS Study of Part-Time Legal Education: Final Report (Washington, D.C.: Association of American Law Schools, 1972).Google Scholar

35 Christopher Jencks et al., Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1972).Google Scholar

36 Peter M. Blau & Otis Dudley Duncan, The American Occupational Structure (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1967).Google Scholar

37 Law School Admission Council, Law School Admission Research: Reports of LSAC Sponsored Research: Volume 1, 1949-1969, at i (Princeton, N.J.: Law School Admission Council, 1976).Google Scholar

38 Seymour Warkov & Joseph Zelan, Lawyers in the Making 54 (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1965).Google Scholar

39 The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 423 (1971).Google Scholar

40 Only the effects of possessing the LL.M. degree were considered in this analysis, for the LL.M. degree was more likely to have an impact on one's early teaching career (see discussion of differences between the LL.M. degree and the S.J.D. degree at p. 507 supra), and they were by far the most common advanced law degrees obtained by law teachers. The effects of possessing the S.J.D. degree on law teachers' careers were considered separately and are discussed later in this section.Google Scholar

41 The mean LSAT of the first group was 636; the mean LSAT of the second group was 658 (t= 10.44, df= 1,131, p≤ .001).Google Scholar

42 Zemans & Rosenblum, supra note 33.Google Scholar

43 In 1967 President Johnson issued Executive Order 11,375 (reprinted in [1967] U.S. Code Cong. & Ad. News 3519) amending Executive Order 11,246, (reprinted in [1965] U.S. Code Cong. & Ad. News 4416) to prohibit sex discrimination in employment and mandate that affirmative steps be taken to hire and promote women by all recipients of federal contracts. An estimated 80 percent of all colleges and universities came within the scope of this law, as did the vast majority of the nation's law schools that were divisions of such colleges and universities. See Davidson, Kenneth M., Ruth B. Ginsburg, & Herma H. Key, Text, Cases and Materials on Sex-based Discrimination 870 (St. Paul: West Publishing Co., 1971).Google Scholar

44 In 1965 President Johnson issued Executive Order 11,246, supra note 43, to prohibit racial discrimination in employment and mandate that affirmative steps be taken to hire and promote racial minorities by all recipients of federal contracts. The vast majority of the nation's law schools came within the purview of this law.Google Scholar

45 It is interesting to note, however, that when I compared the academic ranks of men and women controlling for the total length of their legal careers (i.e., the number of years since the receipt of the J.D. degree), the group of women who had been out of law school six or more years generally held disproportionately lower ranks than their male counterparts (see table):Google Scholar

This suggests that either the prior professional experience of women was not counted equally with that of men when determining appropriate academic rank or that women indeed had fewer total years of professional experience, perhaps as a result of interrupting their legal careers to meet family obligations.Google Scholar

46 Carlin, Jerome E., Lawyers' Ethics: A Survey of the New York City Bar (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1966).Google Scholar

47 Stevens, Robert, Law Schools and Law Students, 59 Va. L. Rev. 551 (1973).Google Scholar

48 Zemans & Rosenblum, supra note 33.Google Scholar

49 Gee & Jackson, supra note 9.Google Scholar

50 The question on the AALS questionnaire that elicited information on courses taught contained the following caveat: “You should list only subjects (1) which you are now teaching or (2) in which you are an experienced teacher and wish to continue to be recognized.” Consequently, the repertoire of teachers' courses included both those that they were teaching in 1975-76 and those that they had taught in previous years.Google Scholar

51 The total number of courses taught in each basic area counted multiples of the same course title and courses with different titles.Google Scholar

52 Gee & Jackson, supra note 9.Google Scholar

53 Id.; Ronald M. Pipkin, A Paper on Law School Curricula from the Law Student Activity Patterns Project (draft 1977).Google Scholar

54 Gee & Jackson, supra note 9.Google Scholar

55 χ2= 114.72, df= 1, p≤ .001.Google Scholar

56 See Auerbach, , Enmity and Amity, and id., Unequal Justice, supra note 1; Robert B. Stevens, Law Schools and Legal Education, 1879-1979: Lecture in Honor of 100 Years of Valparaiso Law School, 14 Val. U.L. Rev. 179 (1980); id., Two Cheers for 1870: The American Law School, in Fleming & Bailyn, supra note 1; Harry First, Competition in the Legal Education Industry (pt. I), 53 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 311 (1978); Joel Seligman, The High Citadel: The Influence of Harvard Law School (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1978).Google Scholar

57 In recent years, AALS has sponsored an annual faculty recruitment conference whose sole purpose is to bring those lawyers interested in teaching in contact with those law schools interested in hiring new faculty members. This process has not replaced the informal network for placing and hiring law teachers, however, for in 1978 only 155 of the 640 new teachers hired by the nation's law schools for the 1979-80 school year had attended the AALS recruitment conference. Elizabeth A. Ashburn & Elena N. Cohen, The Integration of Women into Law School Faculties (National Institute of Education grant G-79-0075) (forthcoming report, Aug. 1980).Google Scholar

58 Albert P. Blaustein & Charles O. Porter, The American Lawyer: A Summary of the Survey of the Legal Profession (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954).Google Scholar

59 Lortie, supra note 11.Google Scholar

60 Carlin, Jerome E., Lawyers on Their Own: A Study of Individual Practitioners in Chicago (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1962).Google Scholar

61 Edward O. Laumann & John P. Heinz, Specialization and Prestige in the Legal Profession: The Structure of Deference, 1977 A.B.F. Res. J. 155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62 Zemans & Rosenblum, supra note 33.Google Scholar

63 Carlin, supra note 46.Google Scholar

64 Hubert J. O'Gorman, Lawyers and Matrimonial Cases: A Study of Informal Pressures in Private Professional Practice (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963).Google Scholar

65 Smigel, Erwin O., The Wall Street Lawyer: Professional Organization Man? (New York: Free Press, 1964).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

66 Ladinsky, Jack, The Impact of Social Backgrounds of Lawyers on Law Practice and the Law, 16 J. Legal Educ. 127 (1963); id., Careers of Lawyers, Law Practice and Legal Institutions, 28 Am. Soc. Rev. 48 (1963).Google Scholar

67 Handler, Joel F., The Lawyer and His Community: The Practicing Bar in a Middle-sized City (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967).Google Scholar

68 Quintin Johnstone & Dan Hopson, Jr., Lawyers and Their Work: An Analysis of the Legal Profession in the United States and England (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1967).Google Scholar

69 Arthur Lewis Wood, Criminal Lawyer (New Haven, Conn.: College & University Press, 1967).Google Scholar

70 Donnell, John D., The Corporate Counsel: A Role Study (Bloomington: Bureau of Business Research, Graduate School of Business, Indiana University, 1970).Google Scholar

71 Rosenthal, Douglas, Lawyer and Client: Who's in Charge? (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1974).Google Scholar

72 Jonathan David Casper, Lawyers in Defense of Liberty: Lawyers Before the Supreme Court in Civil Liberties and Civil Rights Cases 1957-66 (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1968).Google Scholar

73 Erlanger, Howard S., Social Reform Organizations and Subsequent Careers of Participants: A Follow-up Study of Early Participants in the OEO Legal Services Program, 42 Am. SOC. Rev. 233 (1977).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

74 Harno, Albert J., Legal Education in the United States: A Report Prepared for the Survey of the Legal Profession (San Francisco: Bancroft-Whitney Co., 1953).Google Scholar

75 Stevens, Two Cheers for 1870, supra note 56.Google Scholar

76 Auerbach, Enmity and Amity, and id., Unequal Justice, supra note 1.Google Scholar

77 Johnson, William R., Schooled Lawyers: A Study in the Clash of Professional Cultures (New York: New York University Press, 1978).Google Scholar

78 Leflar, Robert A., The Law Teacher's Place in the American Legal Profession, n.s. 8 J. Soc. Pub. Teachers L. 21 (1964).Google Scholar

79 Pound, Roscoe, Some Comments on Law Teachers and Law Teaching, 3 J. Legal Educ. 519 (1951).Google Scholar

80 Tinnelly, Joseph T., Part-Time Legal Education: A Study of the Problems of Evening Law Schools (New York: Foundation Press, 1957).Google Scholar

81 Auerbach, Jerold S., What Has the Teaching of Law to Do with Justice? 53 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 457 (1978).Google Scholar

82 Ayer, John D., Isn't There Enough Reality to Go Around? An Essay on the Unspoken Promises of Our Law, 53 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 475 (1978).Google Scholar

83 Himmelstein, Jack, Reassessing Law Schooling: An Inquiry into the Application of Humanistic Educational Psychology to the Teaching of Law, 53 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 514 (1978).Google Scholar

84 Griswold, Erwin N., Teaching Alone Is Not Enough, 25 J. Legal Educ. 251 (1973).Google Scholar

85 Silverman, Hugh W., The Practitioner as a Law Teacher, 23 J. Legal Educ. 424 (1971).Google Scholar

86 Wellman, Richard V., Law Teachers and the Uniform Probate Code, 24 J. Legal Educ. 180 (1972).Google Scholar

87 Bergin, Thomas F., The Law Teacher: A Man Divided Against Himself, 54 Va. L. Rev. 637 (1968).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

88 Costello, John L., Jr., Another Visit to the Man Divided: A Justification for the Law Teacher's Schizophrenia, 27 J. Legal Educ. 390, 391 (1975).Google Scholar

89 Alfred Zantzinger Reed, Training for the Public Profession of the Law: Historical Development and Principal Contemporary Problems of Legal Education in the United States with Some Account of Conditions in England and Scotland, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Bulletin No. 15 (Boston: Merrymount Press, 1921).Google Scholar

90 First, supra note 56.Google Scholar

91 Crotty, Homer D., Law School Salaries-a Threat to Legal Education, 6 J. Legal Educ. 166 (1953).Google Scholar

92 Nicholson, Lowell S., The Law Schools of the United States: A Statistical and Analytical Report Based on 136 Completed Questionnaires and on Inspections of 160 Law Schools (Baltimore: Lord Baltimore Press, 1958).Google Scholar

93 Goldman, Alvin L., More on the Economics of Law Teaching, 19 J. Legal Educ. 451 (1967).Google Scholar

94 Ferguson, William D., Economics of Law Teaching, 19 J. Legal Educ. 439 (1967).Google Scholar

95 John J. Siegfried & Charles E. Scott, The Determinants of Academic Lawyers' Salaries and Non-institutional Professional Income, 28 J. Legal Educ. 281 (1977).Google Scholar

96 Id., The Economic Status of Academic Lawyers, 1 Legal Econ. 26 (1976).Google Scholar

97 Special Committee on Law School Administration and University Relations, Association of American Law Schools, Anatomy of Modern Legal Education: An Inquiry into the Adequacy and Mobilization of Certain Resources in American Law Schools (St. Paul, Minn.: West Publishing Co., 1961).Google Scholar

98 Alfred Zantzinger Reed, Present-Day Law Schools in the United States and Canada, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Bulletin No. 21 (Boston: Merrymount Press, 1928).Google Scholar

99 Richard, William L., Faculty Regulations of American Law Schools (a Survey), 13 Clev.-Mar. L. Rev. 581 (1964).Google Scholar

100 Ryman, Arthur E., Jr., A Pilot Study on Law School Promotion, 24 J. Legal Educ. 364 (1972).Google Scholar

101 Harper, Stanley E., Jr., Caution, Research Ahead, 13 J. Legal Educ. 411 (1961).Google Scholar

102 Auerbach, Enmity and Amity, supra note 1.Google Scholar

103 Cavers, David F., “Non-traditional” Research by Law Teachers: Returns from the Questionnaire of the Council on Law-related Studies, 24 J. Legal Educ. 534 (1972).Google Scholar

104 Weyrauch, Walter O., Hierarchie der Ausbildungsstatten, Rechtsstudium und Recht in den Vereinigten Staaten, Juristische Studiengesellschaft Karlsreche No. 129 (Heidelberg: Mueller, 1976).Google Scholar

105 Fetner, Gerald, The Law Teacher as Legal Reformer: 1900-1945, 28 J. Legal Educ. 508 (1977).Google Scholar

106 Carrington, Paul D., The University Law School and Legal Services, 53 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 402 (1978).Google Scholar

107 Nicholson, supra note 92.Google Scholar

108 Siegfried & Scott, supra note 96.Google Scholar

109 Jones, James E., Jr., Employment Discrimination. Minority Faculty and the Predominantly White Law School-Some Observations, 4 Black L.J. 488 (1975).Google Scholar

110 Shirley Raissi Bysiewicz, 1972 AALS Questionnaire on Women in Legal Education, 25 J. Legal Educ. 503 (1973).Google Scholar

111 D. Kelly Weisberg, Women in Law School Teaching: Problems and Progress, 30 J. Legal Educ. 226 (1979).Google Scholar

112 Carl C. Hetrick & Henry A. Turner, Politics and the American Law Professor, 25 J. Legal Educ. 342 (1973).Google Scholar

113 Leslie W. Abramson & George W. Moss, Law School Deans: A Self-portrait, 29 J. Legal Educ. 6 (1977).Google Scholar

114 Gee & Jackson, supra note 9.Google Scholar

115 Kelso, supra note 34, at 157-61.Google Scholar

116 Weyrauch, supra note 104.Google Scholar