Did Your Legal Writing Professor Go to Harvard?: The Credentials of Legal Writing Faculty at Hiring Time

Abstract

In this article, we share the results of the first comprehensive study of the credentials of today's legal writing professors. Legal writing professors have been working for many years to improve their status within the academy, and this study confirms that many legal writing professors hold impressive credentials comparable to typical tenure-track hires. The article situates our findings within the context of the previous research on the credentials of law professors, and calls upon the academy to explain why it has not conferred the privileges of membership (e.g., equal salary and status) upon a group of professors who have traditional professorship credentials. It also suggests that gender bias and purposeful mommy-tracking of women faculty candidates may explain some of the discrepancies.

Keywords: law professors, legal writing, legal education, gender discrimination