Abstract
This essay examines persistent status issues that legal writing faculty face through the lens of Joan Williams’s “office housework” paradigm. Office housework includes tasks that are not valuable for career advancement, even when they are necessary for an organization’s success. Williams’s research shows significant gender and racial disparities across industries in who carries disproportionate burdens of office housework. These disparities mirror the disparities seen when comparing the composition of legal writing faculties to the composition of law school faculties generally, as well as the salary and security of position disparities between the two groups. Applying this paradigm, the essay argues that legal writing faculty disproportionately bear the burden of three types of office housework: (1) important but undervalued assignments (e.g. providing detailed formative assessment); (2) emotional labor (e.g. dealing with student upset by providing grades before our colleagues do); and (3) work that sounds impressive but is undervalued for salary or promotion purposes (e.g. service obligations and directing legal writing programs). The essay then offers preliminary thoughts on strategic solutions that law schools could use to rectify persistent status disparities faced by legal writing faculty.
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