Yes, the tone is quite unusual. Some level of ridicule isn’t too rare, but the style here is pretty unique.
I mean it’s kind of an endpoint if you’ve been knife fighting your way to the top of the legal portion of the “meritocracy”. Most cash in for a couple of years at large firms (often after two clerkships), but even then they have to keep their focus on the hiring track and related hoops. $200k to think about and teach law is pretty solid.
I thought that’s what becoming a judge was for.
There’s no meritocratic route to becoming a federal judge.
I say this somewhat in jest, but I heard a federal judge quip that we should defer to magistrate judges (kinda assistant judges) because they are hired on merit after a competitive process. He also said playing college football gave him a leg up in being confirmed.
I feel like if you’re that good at law you could make way more than that? I know I’m probably wrong, I’m just not sure how.
Not necessarily federal judge. That would like being a professor at Yale. I’m thinking of much lesser judgeships.
I think Simp is saying you do it after you’ve made your money.
Na, they only make what they missed by taking clerkships, and only for 2-3 years. Real money is a partnership, but that takes 9 years and usually the ability to attract high paying (almost always corporate) clients.
Law profs don’t have clients, which is worth the pay gap (for many).
Both. And Holden ended up fine after the novel ended anyway. Probably became an author and wrote coming of age stories about fictional characters similar to himself, maybe spending the second half of his life as a recluse in some small New England town.
Mostly I’m just giddily stirring the class warfare pot.
But there’s also a serious point about how certain types of people get their stories told far more frequently than other types of people, and the quality of their respective tales is not the reason why.
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So you’re saying that law profs make about the same as big law associates? If that’s the case, I can definitely see the allure.
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I feel like John Kennedy Toole needs to be worked into the discussion in a way that ties together the Salinger and Wallace topics, but I can’t find a way to do it.
They are also allowed to moonlight with some paying gigs, but mainly post tenure and subject to arrangement with the school. I know of some law profs associated with law firms or economic/expert witness firms.
There’s also law profs who don’t get tenure and shuffle down to the next tier or two of law schools, and probably 33-50% of teaching hours are by done by adjunct professors with a specialty. My professional ethics class was taught by a large law firm partner (likely getting recruiting/public service credit from his firm. Incidentally, that firm offshored much of Apple’s IP to avoid taxes.) My crim procedure prof was a high level state public defender. Adjuncts are probably paid like 3-5k per class.
COD overated, imo. Not bad, but overated nonetheless.
I feel like I see this sentiment quite a bit, but I’m skeptical because it’s so counterintuitive. When I do a quick search for the origin of this claim, I get a lot of references to a fairly recent University of Chicago study. But if I understand it correctly, that study doesn’t support the original claim (i.e., that SAT/ACT scores are poor predictors) at all. Their Table 2 seems to show pretty obvious predictive power of both high school GPA and ACT score:
(The easiest thing to look at is the bottom “overall” row that shows a steady increase in the likelihood of graduation as the ACT score increases. But you can see a similar pattern across each row, which holds the high school GPA constant.)
And most of their analyses study the relation between ACT scores and students who end up going to college. But if the ACT is a useful tool for screening people that are likely to perform well in college, then this is a biased approach that’s likely to underestimate the value of the ACT. (The statistical bias stems from conditioning on a collider.)
There are also earlier studies that show the predictive power of standardized test scores:
Schmitt, N., J. Keeney, F. L. Oswald, T. J. Pleskac, A. Q. Billington, R. Sinha, and M. Zorzie. 2009. Prediction of 4-Year College Student Performance Using Cognitive and Noncognitive Predictors and the Impact on Demographic Status of Admitted Students. The Journal of Applied Psychology 94 (6): 1479–1497.
Results indicate that the primary predictors of cumulative college grade point average (GPA) were Scholastic Assessment Test/American College Testing Assessment (SAT/ACT) scores and high school GPA (HSGPA) though biographical data and situational judgment measures added incrementally to this prediction.
Kuncel, N. R., M. Credé, and L. L. Thomas. 2007. A Meta-Analysis of the Predictive Validity of the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) and Undergraduate Grade Point Average (UGPA) for Graduate Student Academic Performance. Academy of Management Learning & Education 6 (1): 51–68.
Results based on over 402 independent samples across 64,583 students indicate that the GMAT is a superior predictor to UGPA and that the two combined yield a high level of validity for predicting student performance.
Maybe I’m biased because part of my job is assessing and choosing applicants for one of our programs, and I very much take GMAT/GRE scores into account. And while I appreciate that many standardized test scores are biased in favor of certain privileged groups, it’s hard for me to believe that the scores aren’t useful predictors and that we should abandon them for other (probably also biased) predictors.
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Most of these are elected. CA is a bit different, but trial judges are usually elected (I think vacancies and appellate are appointed). The elected trial judges generally come out of state prosecution jobs, which are hardly top tier lawyers. Most federal judges are historically pretty good (but see many trump and bush appointments), but there can be a pretty broad range with state judges.
Nice post, spidercrab.
I had a funny feeling about the post you responded to, but wasn’t motivated enough to do a deep dive. And if I had, it’s wouldn’t have been this good.
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Melkerson double quoted the post he was replying to and thus failed the test.
Thanks. I guess my perception was colored by the fact that I was thinking of a very specific lawbro I know irl who has an eye on a CA judgeship. He’s already a very successful partner at a fancy firm, so this would be his retirement job. I don’t really understand the mechanics of how it works. But it sounds like he’s basically just has to wait for a call that may never come.
If you have a solid career, $100-200k for a campaign, and there’s a vacancy in your area, and there no viable prosecutor running, then there’s definitely a viable path to state court trial judgeship in many places. Even if there’s no vacancy you can run against the incumbent who isn’t tough enough on crime.
If you’re in Alabama you can make it to state supreme court by saying the Ten Commandments are the law of the land.