Osler's Razor

My friend and colleague Tom Featherston sent along this fascinating piece describing a lecture by Harvard Law Professor Daryl Levinson about contemporary law school hiring. Obviously, the general disdain for practical experience does not apply at Baylor, where most of the faculty (including myself) had significant work experience in our fields before entering the world of teaching and scholarship. Here is Professor Levinson's take (in part) on what has changed in the past two decades:

"So what exactly do law schools look for in an entry-level professor? A quarter century ago, the answer was clear. Historically, law schools looked to the traditional indicia of academic achievement: high grades, membership on the law review, and prestigious clerkships. However, this has long since ceased to be true. As law schools discovered that high grades were not good predictors of whether a candidate would produce good scholarship, and as the forms of scholarship valued by the legal academy shifted, the qualifications for candidates changed. Even practical legal experience is not a good predictor of scholarly ability, and, Levinson noted, "is pretty nearly disqualifying." Levinson pointed out that today's younger professors have no significant practical experience, and that if they tried to become involved in the world, "the world would probably recoil in horror."

Instead of fancy grades, clerkships, and practical experience, the modern credential of choice for law school hiring committees is a graduate degree in an allied field such as economics, political science, and even English or psychology."

[Note: The photo depicts "The Genius," my all-time favorite professional wrestler. He would clobber his opponents over the head with his Harvard diploma, which inexplicably was made of metal]