Hundreds of would-be law professors will arrive this week at the Marriott Wardman Park in Washington, dressed in conservative suits and clutching résumés and copies of the academic articles they have painstakingly researched. They will mill around nervously in the cavernous hotel lobby as they await their 25-minute interviews with law school hiring committees, which will be the centerpiece of the Association of American Law Schools Faculty Recruitment Conference the “law school meat market” to those in the know.
The conference happens every October, but it’s unlikely to prove business as usual this time around. Legal educators predict that entry-level faculty gigs will be especially hard to come by, given the dramatically reduced entering class sizes at many schools and uncertainty about the future.
