After a longer-than-expected hiatus, I'm finally back with the fourth installment of my advice posts for those going on the legal academic job market. In the meantime, the 2023 hiring season seems to be settling down, with Sarah Lawsky recently posting her always-helpful entry level hiring report for the 2023-24 hiring cycle. It looks like hiring rates were slightly down and applicant numbers up in comparison with the prior hiring cycle.
Why have I taken so long between my prior posts on the job market and this post on the callback interview and job talk? Part of the explanation consists of the demands of the first year at a new institution (which included two new preps--one of which was a course I created from scratch). I've also tried to remain productive during the academic year, while also jumping into conference participation at what turned out to be a somewhat unsustainable rate. And summer teaching and course preparation have kept the last couple of months busy as well.
But my primary reason for delay was a lack of experience with the callback interview and job talk. When I went on the market, I threw my hat into the ring at the school where I was visiting. This, unfortunately, meant that I couldn't attend any of the candidate interviews of job talks that were going on that year. Additionally, I'd had very little experience attending conferences or workshops, giving me little background on the dynamics and unwritten rules of academic talks. My knowledge of interviews and job talks were therefore limited only to my personal experiences. While that's the theme of these posts, I realized that a year of attending job talks and seeing how candidates were received would help me better-inform readers. To that end, the following discussion takes into account both my own experience on the market, as well as insights from attending other job talks (and numerous conference/workshop presentations) over the past year.
My prior posts have discussed the initial decision to go into legal teaching, putting together one's application documents and FAR form, and the initial screening interview. This post moves beyond the screening interview to the callback interview. In doing so, I also talk more about the job talk paper which applicants are expected to submit and eventually present to those schools that call them back for interviews.
The usual disclaimer from my prior posts applies here: I'm primarily speaking from my limited personal experience going on the market last year, along with anecdotal evidence from others that I picked up along the way. I encourage all readers to reach out to those who have been through the process before, including professors who've recently served on hiring committees, alma maters who are often eager to help graduates out, and other schools' publicly available advice on the application process. Examples of these resources are included at the end of the post.
Callback Interview Basics
The only thing I can say about callback interview scheduling with much certainty is that you receive the invitation after your initial screening interview. From my limited experience, timing on the callback varies widely--I had some very quick requests, and some took a number of weeks. Other schools may do an initial round of callbacks but fail to fill their positions (either because they cannot agree to hire the candidates invited, or because those candidates secure positions elsewhere). This may lead to a further set of callback interviews--meaning that you may receive some callback inquiries months after your initial screener. Occasionally, scheduling conflicts and administrative hoops may lead to similar delays.
From this, a few lessons. First, if you do a screening interview and don't hear from the school for a while, don't assume that they've ghosted you. Second, if you never end up hearing back, or if you receive a note that the committee will not be moving forward with your application, you should not take this as a reflection on your strength as an applicant. A lot is going on behind the scenes, and the school's decision can result from considerations such as teaching needs, scheduling demands, budgetary or administrative constraints, and other considerations over which you have no control.
Callback interviews often take place over two days. The first day is typically a dinner with several members of the hiring committee which serves as an initial introduction and icebreaker. The second day consists of a series of interviews, introductions, and a paper presentation at the law school.
Callback interview events often include all or most of the following:
Group Interviews: You spend an hour or so in a conference room or the faculty lounge, where multiple members of the faculty will speak with you. Questions may raise from interview-like questions about your background, scholarship, and teaching interests, to more conversational topics like things to do around the city, background on the teaching and scholarly environment of the school, and other topics.
Student Interviews: Most of my callback interviews involved an interview with several students who would ask about my background, interest in the law school, and teaching strategies. I found that these interviews often focused more around pedagogy and teaching techniques than other interviews.
Dinner/other meals: Most callback interviews involve a dinner with several members of the faculty committee. The atmosphere at these dinners are often more relaxed than interviews throughout the day of the callback itself, but these interactions are often treated as a measure of how easy one is to get along with as well as an opportunity for both you and the committee members to learn more about one another. Several of my interviews involved a breakfast with faculty members as well before the day of interviews began. As with the dinner, these breakfasts tended to be more relaxed and informal.
Meeting the Dean: Most campus visits will include a meeting with the school's dean. From my experience, these tended to be informative discussions, with most deans primarily welcoming questions from the candidate and explaining the school's broader strategies and vision.
The Job Talk: You present an article and field questions from members of the faculty, typically over the course of an hour or so. Here, I'll discuss the talk itself. Elsewhere, I'll provide more detailed thoughts and suggestions on the job talk paper.
Other schools may include other events as part of their callback, but these are the common elements that I experienced when I went on the market.
Callbacks: The Interviews
While the interviews during a campus visit will vary by degree of formality, but keep in mind that they are all interviews. People will remember what you say, whether it's in a group interview, during a job talk, or at a dinner or breakfast. While you should strive to be conversational and approachable, avoid getting TOO comfortable.
Because you will likely have multiple rounds of interviews, the questions you'll be asked will likely run the gamut of subjects. At faculty group interviews, for instance, questions will likely range from specific inquiries about your research agenda and prior writings, to broader questions over why you are interested in academia overall. There will likely be a fair amount of overlap with the subjects covered in screening interviews, but here you will have more of a chance to flesh out your answers and address follow-up questions--which are often absent from the time-limited screening stage.
This overlap means that you can often prepare for these interviews by using your preparation for the screening interview as the starting point. Look over the questions you were asked at the screener, and think through how you can expand on those answers, as well what follow up questions your interviewers might ask. While I tried to skim over the backgrounds of professors on the hiring committee and others who worked in my areas of interest, I found this sort of preparation work to be extensive and easy to forget. It's impossible to predict who you will speak with at all of your interviews. While there's likely a greater chance that those who teach and research in similar areas will be there, the timing of the interview has just as much of an impact on who will attend.
I generally found callback interviews to be conversational. Frequently, interviews with faculty will be group affairs, and questions may just as well prompt comments from other faculty members. While you want to be sure to answer the questions that are asked, realize that these interviews are also a test of how easy you are to talk to in a group setting, and what you will be like as a colleague. To that end, act as naturally as possible, while remaining professional.
This may be easier to do if you keep the following in mind: callback interviews are an indicator of serious interest. It isn't cheap to fly someone out to a school, put them up in a hotel, and pay for their dinner. And it certainly isn't easy to align the schedules of the professors, deans, students, and others who will take part in the interview process.
Callbacks: The Job Talk Paper
The job talk is typically an hour-long process in which you present your job talk paper to members of the school's faculty and field their questions on the paper. Job talks perform a variety of functions. They serve as a window into the candidate's research agenda and scholarship. They indicate whether and how a candidate can distill complex concepts and arguments into something a general audience can understand. They also serve as an indicator of how a candidate may act as a teacher--including how they act in front of a crowd, whether they're clear and understandable, and how responsive they are to audience questions.
What sort of paper is presented at a job talk? While this can (and may) be the subject of its own post, some thoughts may be helpful for now.
To start, some basics. The job talk paper should be in final form. Paper proposals, works-in-progress, and early drafts may be appropriate for certain workshops and conferences, but they do not belong in an entry-level job talk (I specify "entry-level," because I've seen successful talks involving earlier-stage drafts at the lateral stage--but even these involve some level of risk). The paper should be complete and polished. While many at the hiring institution may refrain from reading the whole thing, there will always be a relentless nerd or two on the faculty who will take the trouble of doing so and likely communicate their impressions to their colleagues. Impress these weirdos!
While the paper should be complete, it generally should not have already been published. The job talk is meant to be a workshop in which faculty engage with the paper and provide substantive comments and suggestions on revisions or further potential developments. Coming in with an already published piece upsets these expectations and will likely be poorly received. Ideally, the job talk paper should be accepted with a journal but still in the editing stage. Does the journal placement matter? Word I've heard on the street suggests, unfortunately, that it does. Lots of law faculty talk a big game about how much of a crapshoot the submissions process is and how little they care about law review rankings. But when it comes to the job talk paper, placement will likely matter with at least a portion of the faculty making the determination. If a job talk paper hasn't yet been accepted for publication--it isn't the end of the world. There's a chance that it may not be viewed as seriously as an accepted piece, but I get the impression that applicants are better off presenting an unpublished, unaccepted paper than one that's already been published.
The substance of the paper should reflect your research interests and complement the substance of your research agenda. When I gave my job talk (and when I give most other talks), I spend a few minutes at the outset explaining how the piece fits in with my other work and broader scholarly agenda. As an audience member at job talks, I like seeing similar introductions--and these introductions may be helpful for those audience members who've neglected to look over the applicant's research agenda before the talk.
It may also be strategic to choose a job talk paper that might appeal to as wide an audience as possible. If you write primarily in criminal law, but a paper has potential implications in another field--say constitutional law--it may be worth using this paper and flagging those implications in the talk itself. Doing so can get the attention of more participants and prompt more discussion during the talk itself. The more that attendees at the talk get to hear themselves talk, the better off you will likely be!
More than anything, the job talk paper should be a piece in which you have confidence and which you are willing to work with at length. It's hard to love any paper after presenting it and having it get picked apart a half-dozen times. You can minimize this frustration and make it more likely that you'll communicate your enthusiasm and expertise if your paper is something you are proud of and addresses an issue close to your heart.
Callbacks: The Job Talk Presentation
As for the presentation itself, it is typically divided into two components: your presentation of the paper, and questions and comments from those in attendance. In my experience, the division between these components is pretty strict and you won't often get questions during the presentation itself, but it sometimes happens.
The presentation itself shouldn't last more than 30 minutes, and should probably be closer to 20 minutes. This won't seem like a long time for the presenter, but 30 minutes is a long time for an audience member--particularly if the subject matter is in an area beyond their expertise. I made it a habit to ask whoever brought me to the job talk room how much was typical of presentations, and I'd try to tailor my presentation based on what they told me. Even if you're keeping the presentation to a fairly short time frame, you should still give a thorough account of your paper's argument so that attendees who have not read the paper will be aware of what you are arguing.
The Q&A session of the presentation will test your ability to interact professionally with those in attendance and to think on your feet. Attendees will be looking to how presenters handle questions out of left field and whether they can work with pushback in a firm, but non-adversarial manner. Keeping in mind that a job talk serves to evaluate your teaching ability is a good technique for maintaining the appropriate tone of clarity and firmness, while avoiding overly defensive responses.
While it's important to be deferential and welcome feedback and suggestions, be careful not to be overly enthusiastic or phony. And when a question is truly out of left field, do what you can to engage with it, but have fallback language ready along the lines of, "that's an interesting point that I haven't considered. While my initial thoughts are [give it your best shot], I'd need to look more into the literature on that topic."
Preparing for the Job Talk
If you're in a visiting position or fellowship that gives you opportunities to present or workshop your papers, take these opportunities! These workshops will mirror what you're likely to expect at job talks and will be great preparation. When possible, I find it helpful to ask attendees or organizers to be particularly tough in their questioning and to provide feedback on the overall performance and what might be improved.
While some visiting positions and fellowships go out of their way to give participants the opportunity to present their work, others may not. This is particularly true of visiting teaching positions that focus primarily on filling a teaching post. Those who are going on the market from these positions may need to be a bit more proactive in seeking out preparation opportunities. I've listed possible strategies below, but this is far from an exhaustive list.
- If you are in a visiting position that focuses primarily on teaching, see if the school's research dean / dean of intellectual life / other equivalent position would be willing to let you present at an internal faculty workshop. I've found that these deans can be quite accommodating with setting the workshop earlier in the fall semester if one is preparing to go on the market.
- Speak with colleagues about holding a mock job talk (or several). Even if your school doesn't hold workshops (or cannot schedule them in time), you will likely be able to find at least a few others who are willing to listen to your presentation, act as questioners, and give you candid feedback on your performance. This may be an option for those applying to academia from nonacademic positions as well--while you may need to provide a bit more guidance on what sort of questions or feedback you are looking for, the questions that nonacademic colleagues ask probably won't be far off from questions you'll get from faculty who aren't experts in the field you're presenting on.
- Speak with your alma mater about arranging practice interviews and job talks. For me, this was probably the most helpful step I took in preparing for callback interviews. I got in touch with one of my professors who put me in touch with people at the school who had taken on the role of advising alumni interested in seeking academic positions. This, in turn, led to a practice job talk that was by far the toughest of any of the presentations I gave over the course of the job search. Your school wants to see you succeed, so reach out either to a former professor or the career office to see what resources are available!
- For all of these, don't be afraid to urge those participating in the workshops or practice job talks to take on particular roles that will be more helpful. I found tougher questions to be better preparation. You may also want to ask that participants drill down on certain areas that you think are most vulnerable. Work with others to make your preparation as effective as possible.
- If you are in a fellowship or visiting position with a law school, ask to sit in on job talks that your institution is holding for applicants. This can be a great opportunity to see what works and what doesn't.
https://nrgondwe.com/2023/08/02/the-legal-academic-job-market-5-tips-for-screening-interview-and-job-talk-prep/
How to Give an Academic Talk: https://pne.people.si.umich.edu/PDF/howtotalk.pdf
This thread from Dan Epps contains some good job talk and callback interview advice.