From Both Sides Now: The Job Talk’s Role in Matching Candidates with Law Schools

Abstract

In the heavily competitive law school teaching job market, the so-called “job talk” has assumed increasing importance in the ultimate hiring decision. Nevertheless, there is little published information to assist a law school faculty in structuring or evaluating the job talk and a similar paucity of information for candidates to guide them in creating and preparing for the presentation of their talk. This article is intended to fill that void. The article guides the preparation of faculty and candidates for both the job talk itself and for the crucial Q&A period that follows the talk. The article represents the authors’ collective 87 years of experience seeing both successful and unsuccessful job talks, as well as the experience of 15 colleagues around the country who reviewed our initial draft and commented on it from the perspective of their various law schools.