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. LIBRARY
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This is to certify that the
dissertation entitled

HOW LAW FACULTY SOCIALIZATION OCCURS:
THE FACULTY MEMBERS’ PERSPECTIVE

presented by

CONNELL ALSUP

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for the

Ph.D. degree in Higher, Adult, and Lifelory Education

 

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HOW LAW FACULTY SOCIALIZATION OCCURS:
THE FACULTY MEMBERS’ PERSPECTIVE

By

Connell Alsup

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education

2007

 

 

ABSTRACT

HOW FACULTY SOCIALIZATION OCCURS:
THE FACULTY MEMBERS’ PERSPECTIVE

By
Connell Alsup

Considerable research has been done in an attempt to understand how
socialization occurs for new faculty who have been trained in graduate programs. Little
is found in the literature that helps in understanding how new law faculty, who have been
only professionally trained, become socialized. Despite the fact that law students of
today are more diverse than a century ago, the legal academy continues to be heavily
influenced by Langdell, dean of Harvard Law School in the late nineteenth century, in its
approach to law faculty hiring and use of the Socratic dialogue, using the case method, to
teach law. Langdell believed that new law faculty, who happened to be from the same
socioeconomic background as their students, required no experience in the practice of
law and only needed to be legal scholars with potential to teach law. The purpose of this
exploratory qualitative study was to find answers, from the perspective of new law
faculty, how socialization occurs for law faculty who had been only professionally
trained for the practice of law.

Research of faculty in other disciplines reveals that the promotion and tenure
process provides the best example of how socialization occurs for new faculty. To that
end, socialization theory as it relates to the promotion and tenure of faculty with Ph.D.s
was the framework used in this exploratory study. Fourteen recently tenured and tenure-
track law faculty at 10 ABA-approved law schools, who did not possess Ph.D.s were

interviewed. This study reports findings that can provide deans, tenure advisory

committees, and university provosts with insight into how tenure-track law faculty
perceive their socialization experiences. This study also compares law faculty
socialization experiences to other disciplines, suggestions to improve law faculty
socialization, and the impact that US. News and World Report rankings and law faculty

socialization have on a diverse student body.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

No one can write your dissertation for you, but there are many who help to make
the journey easier. I want to thank my guidance committee, Dr. Ann Austin, Dr. James
F airweather and Dr. Steven Dow for their words of wisdom, and extend a special thank
you to my committee chair, Dr. Marilyn Amey. I also want to thank the law faculty
members who took time out of their busy schedules to participate in my study.

My parents, Henry and Lillie Alsup, deserve a special acknowledgement. They
have always felt that they could not provide the “educational” support I needed to travel
this road. But having come from a background where I “beat the odds”, they provided
much more than educational support. They provided the solid foundation that is needed
for anyone to achieve success. So, thanks to my father for instilling in me a good work
ethic and for passing on the genes that gave me the energy to complete this journey.
Thanks to my mother for her encouragement and instilling that it does not matter what
you do in life, but to always be the best in whatever you do and to show respect for
everyone, no matter what they choose to do with their lives.

Thanks to my two daughters, Shane] and Kimberly, for understanding how much
time I had to devote to complete this journey, and accepting me for who I am. Pat Alsup,
my best friend, deserves special recognition because she has always been one of my
biggest supporters and would worry about my well-being even when I lacked the good
sense to do it myself. Linda Edwards, who I have known since childhood, deserves

thanks for her words of wisdom that always came when it was desperately needed.

iv

There are so many others who deserve thanks and I want them to know that their
support was not taken for granted or has gone unnoticed. I chose to limit specific
acknowledgements to certain individuals who have provided support and encouragement
throughout my life. Finally, I want to thank the United Negro College Fund for leaving

an indelible impression on me with its adage “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST TABLES ................................................................................................................ x

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Statement of the Problem ..................................................................................... 1
Purpose of the Study ........................................................................................... 5
Framework ........................................................................................................... 5
Significance of the Study ..................................................................................... 6
CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Socialization Defined ........................................................................................... 8
Faculty Socialization ........................................................................................... 10
Dimensions of Organizational Socialization .......................................... 12
Collective versus Individual Socialization .................................. 13
Formal versus Informal Socialization ........................................ l3
Sequential versus Random Socialization ................................... 14
Fixed versus Variable Socialization ........................................... 14
Serial versus Disjunctive Socialization ...................................... 15
Investiture versus Divestiture .................................................... 16
Promotion and Tenure Process 16
Graduate School Socialization ............................................................................ 18
Collective versus Individual Socialization ............................................. 19
Formal versus Informal Socialization .................................................... 20
Random versus Sequential Socialization ............................................... 20
Fixed versus Variable Socialization ....................................................... 20
Serial versus Disjunctive Socialization .................................................. 20
Investiture versus Divestiture ................................................................ 20
Stages of Role Acquisition ..................................................................... 21
Anticipatory Stage ................................................................................. 21
Formal Stage .............................................................................. 22
Informal Stage ............................................................................ 23
Personal Stage ............................................................................ 23
Core Elements Leading to Role Acquisition ......................................... 24
Knowledge Acquisition ............................................................. 24
lnvestrnent .................................................................................. 2S
Involvement ............................................................................... 25
Anticipatory Socialization ..................................................................... 25

Lack of Systematic and Developmentally
Organized Preparation ............................................................... 27
Lack of Explicit Expectations and Feedback ............................. 28
Limited Attention to Academic Work and Career Options ....... 28
Insufficient Sense of Community .............................................. 28

vi

Perception of Academic Life ..................................................... 29

Little Opportunity for Guided Reflection .................................. 29

Law Faculty Socialization and the Impact of Disciplinary Culture ................... 29
Law School as Preparation for Academia .............................................. 3O
Disciplinary Culture ............................................................................... 31

Law Faculty Socialization Studies/Surveys ........................................... 33
Faculty Recruitment ................................................................... 33

Teaching Methods ...................................................................... 35

Tenure and Promotion ................................................................ 36

Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 37

CHAPTER 3: DESIGN OF THE STUDY

Summary of the Purpose .................................................................................... 38
Sample ............................................................................................................... 39
Data Collection .................................................................................................. 45
Data Analysis ..................................................................................................... 47
Role of the Researcher ....................................................................................... 47
Verification of Data ........................................................................................... 48
Limitations of the Study ..................................................................................... 49
CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS

Introduction ........................................................................................................ 50
Anticipatory Socialization ................................................................................. 51
Professor Training Programs ................................................................. 52
Workshop for New Law Teachers ......................................................... 53
Promotion and Tenure Policies .............................................................. 56
Organizational Socialization .............................................................................. 58
Teaching ................................................................................................. 59
Socialization of Ph.D.s compared to non-Ph.D.s ................................... 62
Scholarship ............................................................................................. 68
Service ................................................................................................... 71
Organization Culture .............................................................................. 73

. Mentoring ............................................................................................... 75
Concerns for Faculty of Color ............................................................... 78
Summary ............................................................................................................ 80

CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION

Organizational Socialization .............................................................................. 83
Teaching ................................................................................................. 83
Scholarship ............................................................................................. 87
Service .................................................................................................... 91
Organizational Culture ........................................................................... 93
Socialization Experiences of Ph.D.s compare to non-Ph.D.s ................ 94
Mentoring ............................................................................................... 96

Summary ............................................................................................................ 99

vii

CHAPTER 6: IMPLICATIONS

Introduction ...................................................................................................... 102
How do tenure-track law faculty who have been only professional
trained become socialized? .................................................................. 103
How do they come to understand the various aspects of
faculty work? ....................................................................................... 104
How did the understanding regarding the process for learning their
roles occur? .......................................................................................... 106
What are the challenges they face in coming to understand what was
expected of them as law faculty? ......................................................... 106
What strategies helped in learning how to do what was expected of them
as tenure-track faculty? ........................................................................ 107
Anticipatory Socialization for Aspiring Law Faculty ...................................... 108
Comparison of Law Faculty Socialization to other Disciplines ...................... 1 ll
Similarities ........................................................................................... l 1 1
Differences ........................................................................................... 1 15
Suggestions to Improve Law Faculty Socialization ......................................... 118
Simulated Class Lectures ..................................................................... 118
Understand the History of Legal Education ......................................... 118
Course Relief for New Law Faculty .................................................... 119
Law School Faculty Development Initiates ......................................... 120
Collaborative Faculty Development Initiates ...................................... 121
Self-Help Approach to Faculty Socialization ...................................... 122
Establish Minimum Competencies for New Faculty ........................... 122
The Impact that Rankings and Law Faculty Socialization
have on Law Students ...................................................................................... 127
US. News Rankings’ Effect on Admissions Practices ........................ 128
Impact of Law Faculty Socialization on a Diverse Student Body ....... 129
Recommendation for Further Research ........................................................... 132
Law Professor Training Programs: Their Contribution to the
Socialization of Law Faculty ............................................................... 132
Faculty Hiring Practices at AALS member and ABA-approved
Law Schools ......................................................................................... 133
Empirical Research at Law Schools Versus Other Disciplines ........... 133
Assessing Law Faculty Competence: What Does It Mean? ............... 134
Faculty Socialization at Elite Law Schools ......................................... 134

Socialization Experiences of New Tenure-Track Law Faculty Who
Possess Ph.D.s versus Tenure-Track Faculty Who Do Not Possess

Ph.D.s ................................................................................................... 134

APPENDICES ............................................................................................................. l 36
Appendix A: Biographical information found in the AALS (Association of

American Law Schools) Director of Law Teachers ................ 137

Appendix B: Initial Participant Solicitation Letter ....................................... I40

viii

Appendix C: Solicitation Letter When Already Visiting the Area ............... 142

Appendix D: Follow-up Email Message to Potential Participants ................. 144

Appendix E: Interview Protocol .................................................................... 146

Appendix F: Informed Consent Form ............................................................ 149

Appendix G: Agenda — 2007 AALS Workshop for New Law Teachers ...... 152

Appendix H: ABA Adjunct Faculty Handbook — Table of Contents ............. 158

REFERENCES ............................................................................................................ 164
ix

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Solicitation of Potential Participants .............................................................. 42
Table 2: Years in Tenure System .................................................................................. 43
Table 3: Years of Practical Experience ......... . ................................................................ 44
Table 4: Site Locations ................................................................................................. 44
Table 5: Carnegie Foundation Rating ........................................................................... 44
Table 6: Participant Schools ......................................................................................... 45
Table 7: Years of Practical Experience ......................................................................... 50
Table 8: Summary of Participants’ Pre—Tenure-Track Experiences ............................. 51
Table 9: Similarities in Socialization Experiences ..................................................... 115
Table 10: Differences in Socialization Experiences ................................................... 117

Table 11: 2006 US. News and World Report Law School Ranking Where Participants
Graduated ........................................................................................................ 125

Table 12: Law School Rank Where Participants Are Employed ................................ 127

Chapter 1: Introduction

Statement of the Problem

Just as socialization theory plays a vital role in organizations (Van Maanen &
Schein, 1979), it also plays a vital role in the development of faculty (Austin &
McDaniels, 2006; Johnson, 2001; Tierney & Bensimon, 1996; Tierney & Rhoads, 1994).
For socialization to occur, one must take time to understand and acquire the values,
attitudes, norms, knowledge, and skills needed to perform to the satisfaction of those who
are already a part of the group of which he or she seeks to be a member (Merton, 195 7;
Merton, Reader & Kendall, 195 7). In the case of academia, the initial stages of faculty
socialization actually begins prior to assuming the first faculty position and is referred to
as anticipatory socialization (Corcoran & Clark, 1984). For the most part, anticipatory
socialization occurs during graduate school training (Austin, 2002b; Austin &
McDaniels, 2006; Bess, 1978; Rosch & Reich, 1996; Staton & Darling, 1989; Tierney &
Rhoads, 1996), and the promotion and tenure process provides the best example of how
socialization occurs for new faculty (F airweather, 2002; Tierney & Bensimon, 1996;
Tierney & Rhoads, 1994).
Understanding what it means to be a faculty member differs depending on the discipline,
as well as varies from institution to institution within the same discipline (Austin &
McDaniels, 2006; F airweather, 2002; Leslie, 2002; Weidman, Twale & Stein, 2001).
Tierney and Rhoads (1994) provide a possible rationale to account for these differences,
noting how the culture of the discipline or institution can affect how faculty are
socialized. But there is a common factor that surrounds faculty socialization. That is,

while there may be differences in the socialization process, depending on the discipline

 

 

 

 

and institution, teaching, scholarship and service are required of tenure-track faculty in all
disciplines to gain tenure. For example, Leslie (2002) found that a study of 16 disciplines
by Diamond and Adams (1994) revealed that teaching, scholarship and service were
required by all disciplines for tenure-track faculty to gain tenure. It was only the weight
placed on these three requirements that varied among disciplines.

. While the reward system for tenure-track law faculty is also driven by teaching,
scholarship and service (Carbado & Gulati, 2003; Colbert, 2002; Moran, 2002; Report of
the AALS, 1992; Tierney & Bensimon, 1996), little is known about how law faculty
learn how to achieve these objectives. Even less is known about how this process is
learned from the perspective of law faculty. Although much has been written about
faculty socialization in various disciplines, the literature is virtually void in describing
what it means to be a faculty member in legal education and how socialization occurs.
For example, the disciplines highlighted in the study conducted by Tierney and Bensimon
(1996) on faculty socialization included business, communication, education, engineering
and the liberal arts and sciences. Austin’s (2002b) longitudinal study that “examine[d]
doctoral education as socialization for the professoriate” (p. 95) included disciplines in
“humanities (English and music), sciences (chemistry, zoology, engineering, and
mathematics), social sciences (history, psychology, and communication) and professional
areas (business, journalism, education, and food science)” (p. 101 ). Fairweather’s (2002)
study to assess faculty productivity included agriculture/home economics, business,
education, engineering, fine arts,‘health sciences, humanities, natural sciences and social
sciences. While the work of Weidman, et al., (2001) included legal education in their

review of socialization of graduate and professional students, their focus was on

professional socialization of law students for the practice of law. Even Thielens’s (1980)
study on the socialization of law students only looked at professional socialization.

Perhaps the failure to include law faculty in studies about faculty socialization
stems from the fact that the approach used in the extant literature was through the lens of
a graduate school training model. Under the graduate school model, students earn a
Ph.D. where they receive training in academic research, writing, and relevant social
sciences (Austin & McDaniels, 2006; Weidman, et. al., 2001). The socialization
experiences that aspiring faculty are exposed to during graduate training are deemed to be
a crucial aspect of anticipatory socialization that prepares them for faculty life (Austin,
2002b; Tierney & Rhoads, 1994). On the other hand, most law faculty are trained under
a professional training model, where they earn a professional degree that trained them for
the practice of law, as opposed to the academic side of law (Carbado & Gulati, 2003;
Colbert, 2002; Moran, 2002; Redding, 2003).

As Moran (2002) notes, “[a]cademic life calls for the pursuit of one’s own
interests” (p. 285), whereas the focus of professional training is to serve others. As a
result, the professional model of training prepares law students for the practice of law and
exposes students to a different set of cultural norms (Garner, 2000; Redding, 2003) than
their humanities and social science counterparts whose graduate training is intended to
prepare them to assume faculty roles (Austin, 2002b; Austin & McDaniels, 2006; Rosch
& Reich, 1996; Staton & Darling, 1989; Tierney & Rhoads, 1996).

A study conducted by F ossum (1980) using data obtained from the 1975-76
Association of American Law Schools (“AALS”) Directory of Law Teachers revealed

that only approximately twenty-seven percent of law teachers possessed any prior

 

 

 

teaching experience before embarking on a tenure-track career. F ossum’s study also
found that approximately six percent of law teachers began teaching immediately after
graduating from law school and approximately five percent began teaching after earning
a Master of Laws degree. New law teachers who did not have prior teaching experience
did possess some form of practical legal experience, however (Fossum, 1980).

In 1991, a study similar to F ossum’s (1980) was conducted by Borthwick and
Schau (1991), based on data obtained from the 1988-89 AALS Directory of Law
Teachers. The results of their study reveal that only approximately thirty-three percent of
law teachers possessed any prior teaching experience before embarking on a tenure track
career. In addition, their study showed that approximately four percent of law professors
began teaching immediately after graduating from law school and approximately three
percent began teaching after earning a Master of Laws degree. Any new law professor
without prior teaching experience had some form of practical legal experience
(Borthwick & Schau, 1991). Similarly, Redding (2003) found that little had changed
over the past 25 years, in that only 37 percent of new law faculty had previous teaching
experience prior to becoming tenure-track law faculty.

While the studies conducted by Borthwick and Schau (1991), Fossum (1980), and
Redding (2003) reveal that new law faculty may be lacking in anticipatory socialization,
these studies do not report on how faculty socialization occurs. In fact, it would have
been difficult for these studies to uncover how faculty socialization occurs, given that the
data used in these studies were merely extracted from directories. Although the Report of

the AALS (1992) attempted to delve deeper into faculty socialization, as it related to the

promotion and tenure process, the report relied on data obtained from law schools and did
not include the law faculty perspective in its findings.
Purpose of the Study
Considerable research has been done in an attempt to understand how
socialization occurs for new faculty who have been trained in graduate programs (Austin,
2002b). On the other hand, although the literature reveals that a deeply rooted
disciplinary culture exists in legal education (Anzalone, 2001; Borthwick and Shau,
1991; Fossum, 1980; Garner, 2000; Katcher, 2006; McAninch, 1993; Weidman et al.,
2001), little insight is provided to help understand how new law faculty, who have been
only professionally trained, become socialized. The purpose of this exploratory
qualitative study was to fill this void, by conducting face-to-face interviews with a
representative sample of recently tenured and tenure-track law faculty who did not
possess Ph.D.s degrees to answer the following research question and subquestions:
1. How do tenure-track law faculty who have been only professionally trained
become socialized?
a. How do they come to understand the aspects of faculty work?
b. How did they come to understand the socialization process?
c. What are the challenges they face in learning their roles?
(I. What strategies helped in learning how to do what was expected of them
as tenure-track faculty members?
Framework
Research reveals that the promotion and tenure process provides the best example

of how socialization occurs for new faculty (F airweather, 2002; Tierney & Bensimon,

1996; Tierney & Rhoads, 1994). This being the case, tenure-track and recently tenured
law faculty were purposefully selected to participate in my exploratory study. The
primary reason for selecting this population stems from the fact that, while little is found
in the literature describing how new law faculty become socialized, what is known is that
the requirements to gain tenure—teaching, scholarship, and service—for law faculty who
have been only professionally trained, are the same for faculty trained in doctoral
programs. On the other hand, little is known about how law faculty learn how to satisfy
the requirements of tenure. To that end, socialization theory as it relates to the promotion
and tenure of faculty with Ph.D.s was the framework used for my study. A detailed
discussion of relevant socialization theory is provided in chapter 2: Review of the
Literature.
Significance of the Study

While there are limitations to my exploratory study, as stated above, there are a
number of stakeholders who can benefit from my findings. First and foremost, new law
faculty can benefit from the study findings, because it provides insight through the lens of
tenure-track and recently tenured law faculty who have first-hand experience about how
socialization occurs. It is equally as important that the legal academy, which include law
schools and accrediting agencies, understand how new law faculty perceive their
socialization experiences, so training workshops and bylaws can be tailored to address
the common and major concerns raised by new law faculty. The findings in my study
can contribute to this understanding. Universities should understand how new law
faculty perceive their socialization experiences. For example, with the exception of

faculty in professional programs, such as law and medicine, a Ph.D. is required for most

faculty positions (Austin & McDaniels, 2006). While a Ph.D. is not a requirement to
become a faculty member in the legal academy, as it is in most other disciplines, the
requirements of teaching, scholarship, and service to gain tenure are the same for law
faculty as they are for faculty of other disciplines. On the other hand, while broad
requirements for law faculty are consistent with those for faculty in other disciplines, the
findings in my study reveal that the initial stages of faculty socialization, including
anticipatory socialization, typically differ for law faculty. A better understanding of how
faculty socialization is affected by anticipatory socialization can assist universities in
developing programs and workshops to assist law faculty when they assume their first
faculty position.

Students can indirectly benefit from the findings of my study. For example, in
most states one cannot be licensed to practice law without graduating from a law school
that is accredited by the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar of the
American Bar Association (“ABA”). This means that ABA-approved law schools serve
as “gatekeepers” for the profession (Redding, 2003). In that light, if law faculty are not
being adequately socialized, there is the potential that law students are also not being
adequately trained by these faculty members who hold the key to their future. This

places them in jeopardy of not being prepared to pass a bar exam.

Chapter 2: Review of Literature
Socialization Defined

The literature reveals that the work of Merton (195 7) and Merton, Reader, and
Kendall (1957) continues to be the foundation used to define socialization from a
sociological and psychological perspective (see Austin & McDaniels, 2006; Tierney &
Bensimon, 1996; Tierney & Rhoads, 1994; Weidman, Twale & Stein, 2001). According
to Merton et a1. (1957) socialization, in the sociological and psychological context, is
defined as “the process through which [an individual] develops his professional self, with
its characteristic values, attitudes, knowledge, and skills, fusing these into a more or less
consistent set of dispositions which govern his behavior in a wide variety of professional
(and extraprofessional) situations” (p. 287).

Using the work of Merton, Reader, and Kendall (1957) as a foundation, Bragg
(1976) defines socialization as the “process by which individuals acquire values,
attitudes, norms, knowledge, and skills needed to perform their roles acceptably in the
group or groups in which they are, or seek to be, members” (p. 6). Bragg identifies five
steps in the socialization process: observation, imitation, feedback, modification, and
internationalization. In the first step, the individual who is being socialized observes a
behavior that he wishes to mimic and stores what is observed into memory. In the second
step, the individual relies on memory and attempts to imitate the behavior of the role
model. Feedback is the third step in the socialization process, where the individual
receives positive reinforcement from others regarding his imitated behavior. The fourth
step of the socialization process is modification. In this step, the individual determines

whether the imitated behavior is one that has been positively received by others. If not,

the individual either attempts to refine the behavior, or discard it completely and return to
the first step. Once the individual finds a behavior, attitude or value that he is
comfortable in identifying as his self-image, the final step of internalization has occurred,
making socialization complete. In short, Bragg (1976) asserts that “successful
socialization is the internalization of group values into the individual’s self-image within
the group” (p. 10).

In defining organizational socialization, Tierney and Rhoads (1994) also relied on
the foundation laid by Merton (1957), noting that an individual follows the same
socialization process to exist in an organization as he does in trying to exist in a given
society. However, unlike Merton (1957), Tierney and Rhoads believed that a one-
directional approach to socialization was flawed. They note how “[s]ocialization is not
merely the analysis of how an individual changes to fit within the confines of a particular
organization” (p. 2). Rather, socialization is bidirectional because “it is a process that
produces change in individuals as well as organizations” (p. 2).

Similarly, Tierney (1997) later referred to the flawed one-directional approach to
socialization as a modernist perspective because

(a) the modernist assumption is that socialization is a process where people

‘acquire’ knowledge, (b) socialization is viewed as a one-way process in which

the initiate learns how the organization works, and (c) socialization is little more

than a series of planning activities (p. 5).

Tierney (1997) believes the bidirectional approach to organizational socialization
is a more realistic approach consistent with the postmodernist assumption that

“socialization involves a give-and—take where new individuals make sense of an

organization through their own unique backgrounds and the current contexts in which the
organization resides” (p. 6). In other words, while a new member to the organization
must learn and adapt to the organizational culture, the rituals and ceremonies that make
up the culture “often need to be adapted or changed to meet the changed contexts that the
initiates bring to the organization” (Tierney & Rhoads, 1994, p. 6).
Faculty Socialization

Boice (1992) conducted a longitudinal study of four successive cohorts of new
tenure-track faculty from one campus. The purpose of the study was to obtain insight
about what Boice refers to as three obstacles that face new faculty: teaching, writing, and
collegiality. To make sense of his findings, Boice constructed a four-part theory that he
refers to as IRSS theory—involvement, regimen, self-management, and social
networks—that “deals with the most firndamental skills and attitudes that we can impart
to our new hires, skills and attitudes so elementary that we may take them for granted” (p.
12). According to Boice, focusing on the IRSS theory can provide the best insight into
the development of new faculty, “[b]ecause it concerns the most fundamental component
of what new faculty need to master, [and] IRSS theory also promises generality” (p. 14).

Boice (1992) began his observation of new faculty by examining collegiality
because he believed it to be “[t]he most salient experiences of new faculty during their
first few years on campus, the ones they most wanted corrected, are loneliness and
understimulation. So we begin our examination with collegiality, a usually neglected
area of adjustment by new faculty” (p. 19). In that light, Boice found that most
participants expressed feelings of neglect, isolation, overwork, and “deprived of vital

support and feedback” (p. 44). He also discovered a small group of participants who

10

 

 

 

 

07

. 1J

 

seemed to adapt to faculty life quicker than their colleagues. In applying IRSS theory
Boice found that quick starters took the initiative to seek out their own mentoring
opportunity with colleagues (involvement); develop time management skills that enabled
them to complete task, such as class preparation and writing, and still be able to engage in
social networking (regimen); recognize that there is certain knowledge about things such
as time and task management, and social networking, that institutions believe to be tacit
knowledge, and must be independently sought out by new faculty (self-management);
and have the wherewithal to relax the “usual proud autonomy so often characteristic of
new faculty so that colleagues can assist as coteachers, as coauthors, and as mentors . .
.[which means] moving from independence to interdependence” (p. 49).

Tierney and Rhoads’ (1994) two-stage process of faculty socialization, using a
cultural framework, was inspired by Van Maanen and Schein’s (1979) theory on
organizational socialization. Just as Van Maanen and Schein posited, Tierney and
Rhoads (1994) conceptualized the first stage of faculty socialization as anticipatory
socialization. According to Tierney and Rhoads, anticipatory socialization that occurs
primarily in graduate school, “serves as a significant force in socializing students into the
roles and expectations associated with faculty life” (p.24). Tierney and Rhoads further
note how anticipatory socialization can affect how quickly an individual moves from the
initial entry to the role continuance phase of organizational socialization. That is, if
anticipatory socialization for an individual is consistent with the culture of the
organization, the individual does not have to make any adjustments to fit into the
organization. However, if anticipatory socialization for an individual is inconsistent with

the culture of the organization, “the socialization experience will be more transforrnative

ll

in nature” (p.25), which could delay movement to the second stage of faculty
socialization.

Organizational socialization is the second stage of faculty socialization, which has
two phases and several dimensions. Tierney and Rhoads (1994) identify initial entry as
the first phase of organizational socialization. This phase occurs as a faculty member is
being recruited and selected by an organization and continues during the early stages of
employment. Once the faculty member has become situated in the organization, role
continuance, the second phase of organizational socialization, which is ongoing, begins
(Tierney & Rhoads, 1994).

Dimensions of Organizational Socialization

Tierney and Rhoads’ (1994) bidirectional approach to faculty socialization
applied the tactical strategies that were proposed by Van Maanen and Schein (1979).
Van Maanen and Schein conceptualized six major tactical dimensions of organizational
socialization that “refers to the ways in which the experiences of individuals in transition
from one role to another are structured for them by others in the organization” (p. 231,
citing Van Maanen, 1978), either consciously or unconsciously by those in charge of
organizational management. Van Maanen and Schein note how the tactics can be “used
in virtually any setting in which individual careers are played out” (p. 231). In academe,
an understanding of the promotion and tenure process is important in this phase, because
it provides the strongest example of socialization for new faculty (Fairweather, 2002;
Johnson, 2001; Tierney & Bensimon, 1996; Tierney & Rhoads, I994).

The six dimensions of organizational socialization are: (1) collective versus

individual; (2) formal versus informal; (3) sequential versus variable; (4) fixed versus

12

variable; (5) serial versus disjunctive; and (6) investiture versus divestiture (Van Maanen
& Schein, 1979).

Collective versus Individual Socialization. Collective socialization views every
new member, such as a group of tenure-track faculty at the same institution, who enters
the organization the same, whereby they are all subjected to a common set of
experiences. These shared experiences often result in the creation of a subculture among
new members where they develop mechanisms to learn from one another and also pursue
alternative resources that can be helpful during the socialization process (Van Maanen &
Schein, 1979). Individual socialization usually exists when there are a small number of
new members entering the organization who are to be similarly socialized. Individual
socialization is also likely to occur when there only a few senior members in the
organization capable of assisting new members with the socialization process. New
members are forced to view these senior members as their role models, who they will
attempt to emulate (Van Maanen & Schein, 1979). “Individual socialization more aptly
describes the experiences of faculty in the vast majority of colleges and universities”
(Tierney & Rhoads, 1994, p. 27).

Formal versus Informal Socialization. Formal socialization occurs when new
members are set apart from other organizational members, for the purpose of subjecting
new members to a set of experiences that are explicitly designed for this group. The
primary focus of formal socialization is on teaching the “newcomer ‘correct’ attitudes,
values, and protocol associated with the new role” (Van Maanen & Schein, 1979, p. 237).
Formal socialization also provides others in the organization the opportunity to closely

observe and assess the new member’s “commitment and deference to the critical values

13

of the [organization]” (p. 238). Informal socialization forces new members to learn their
new roles through trial and error, and they must seek out their own socialization agents to
teach them. As a result, socialization for new members is limited to the knowledge of
their self-selected socialization agents. In addition, mistakes that occur through informal
socialization can prove to be more costly and detrimental to new members than those that
occur through formal processes (Van Maanen & Schein, 1979). According to Tierney and
Rhoads (1994) faculty socialization is typically a ’sink or swim’ experience that is more
informal than formal requiring the need for new faculty to have experienced and caring
mentors.

Sequential versus Random Socialization. This tactical dimension is usually
prevalent when “the socialization process may cover a broad spectrum of assignments
and experiences, taking sometimes many years of preparation” (Van Maanen & Schein,
1979, p. 241), such as the socialization process that occurs in graduate and professional
programs (Weidman et al., 2001). Sequential socialization occurs when there are
identifiable and specified sequences of steps that new members must follow to reach the
desired goal. Random socialization occurs when the steps that new members need to
follow to achieve the desired goal have no order or sequence and are “unknown,
ambiguous, or continually changing” (Van Maanen & Schein, 1979, p. 241). In the case
of the promotion and tenure process, “[o]ne is never sure how much to write, how good a
teacher to be, or what to do in terms of public service to attain promotion and tenure”
(Tierney & Rhoads, 1994, p. 28).

Fixed versus Variable Socialization. The focus of this dimension is on the extent

that “the steps involved in a socialization process have a timetable associated with them

14

that is both adhered to by the organization and communicated to the recruit” (p. 244).
Fixed socialization occurs when new members to the organization are aware of the time
that it takes to complete the process. Fixed socialization is preferred by organizations
when peer group solidarity is desired. Variable socialization occurs when new members
are unaware of the time that the process takes to complete, which could differ for each
member. Variable socialization also creates anxiety and frustration for new members, as
they try to figure out required timetables needed to complete the process. Tierney and
Rhoads (1994) note,

Usually, transitions from one role to another for faculty are a mixture of fixed and

variable processes. The passage from novice through the promotion and tenure

process is relatively fixed—usually six years. The role continuance that occurs
when a person passes from an associate professor to a full professor is more an

individualistic time frame and thus more variable. (p. 29)

Serial versus Disjunctive Socialization. Serial socialization occurs when senior
members of the organization serve as role models to socialize new members who will be
assuming similar positions in the organization. The training of an untenured faculty
member by a tenured member of the faculty is an example of serial socialization (Tierney
& Rhoads, 1994). When new members of the organization are not emulating their role
models, or when there are no role models available to new members, disjunctive
socialization occurs that could cause complication and confusion for both the new
member and organization because an incorrect outcome could result. For example,
underrepresented groups having issues relating to gender, race, and sexual orientation

might experience difficulty finding mentors who can relate to their unique issues (Tierney

15

and Rhoads, 1994). On the other hand, disjunctive socialization provide opportunities for
new members to be inventive and original (Van Maanen & Schein, I979).

Investiture versus Divestiture. Anticipatory socialization plays a significant role
in this dimension because it focuses on “the degree to which a socialization process is
constructed to either confirm or disconfirrn the entering identity of the recruit” (Van
Maanen & Schein, 1979, p. 250). Investiture socialization values the personal
characteristic that new members bring to the organization by taking “advantage of and
build[ing] upon the skills, values, and attitudes the recruit is thought to possess” (p. 250).
Investiture socialization results in new members feeling that they can become viable parts
of the organization. Divestiture socialization devalues the personal characteristics that
new members possess, remolding them to the point that they adopt the values of the
organization. An individual’s willingness to voluntarily submit to divestiture
socialization is “typically premised upon a strong desire on the part of the recruit to
become an accepted member of the organization” (p. 251).

Promotion and Tenure Process

The strongest example of faculty socialization is the promotion and tenure process
(F airweather, 2002; Tierney, 1997; Tierney & Bensimon, 1996). As F airweather (2002)
observes, “[i]t is here rather than in institutional rhetoric that the faculty seek clues about
the value of different aspects of their work. It is here that productivity is most
meaningfully defined and evaluated” (p. 27). In that light, Tierney (1997) notes the
valuable insight that junior faculty can provide about organizational norms, values, and

culture, as they work to gain tenure.

l6

Applying the two-stage framework developed by Tierney and Rhoads (1994), a
study was conducted by Tierney and Bensimon (1996) to better understand the
socialization process for new faculty. The study participants included tenure-track
faculty from five discipline areas—business, communication, education, engineering, and
the liberal arts and sciences, who were in various stages of the tenure track process.
During the organizational stage of faculty socialization, Tierney and Bensimon (1996)
found that tenure-track faculty were exposed to both formal and informal mentoring, with
the process being more informal than formal; needed multiple mentors; and the burden
was on the tenure-track faculty member to seek out mentors.

In terms of faculty work, Tierney and Bensimon (1996) found that tenure-track
“faculty are socialized about teaching in the most haphazard way” (p. 64), even if the
faculty member never taught a class prior to entering the tenure system. Also, student
evaluations were heavily relied upon for assessing quality teaching. While scholarship
was found to have the greatest importance in tenure decisions the expectations were not
clearly defined. Tierney and Bensimon (1996) also found that tenure-track faculty tended
to shy away from doing ground-breaking scholarly work because gaining tenure was
based on the number of publications, and ground-breaking work could take years to
complete and still not result in a publication. In addition, while service was found to
have little or no effect on tenure decisions, it “provided a way for senior faculty to form
opinions about junior faculty, and in this sense, it became more important symbolically
than practically” (p. 69).

Overall, Tierney and Bensimon (1996) concluded that there was a lack of clarity

about the tenure process or time frame for all study participants, whether they were in

17

small or large institutions, claiming, “The basic themes and dilemmas that emerged in
this study are remarkedly consistent with the findings of faculty socialization studies
conducted by several other scholars” (p. 128, citing Austin, 1990; Boice, 1992;
Bronstein, Rothblum & Solomon, 1993; Sorcinelli, 1992). Austin (2002b) made a similar
observation that “[s}tudies of new faculty also consistently report that faculty newcomers
are isolated, perceiving a lack of collegiality that contradicts their expectations of faculty
life” (p. 99; citing Menges & Associates, 1999; Rice & Austin, 2000; Sorcinelli &
Austin, 1992; Tierney & Bensimon, 1996).
Graduate School Socialization

The preparation that occurs prior to assuming the first faculty position is referred
to as anticipatory socialization (Corcoran & Clark, 1984). During anticipatory
socialization “non-members take on the attitudes, actions, and values of the group to
which they aspire” (Tierney & Rhoads, 1994, p. 23). The literature reveals that
anticipatory socialization for aspiring faculty occurs largely during graduate school
training (Austin, 2002b; Austin & McDaniels, 2006; Corcoran & Clark, 1984; Tierney &
Rhoads, 1994). Austin (2002b) notes, “[a]s a socialization or a preparatory experience
for the faculty career, the graduate experience is the crucial point in time to determine
whether or not students are exposed to the types of skills and expectations likely to
confront them on the job” (p. 96). Austin further describes how several socialization
processes are experienced by graduate students at the same time: “socialization to the
role of graduate student, socialization to the academic life and the profession, and

socialization to a specific discipline or field” (p. 96).

18

Currently, the work of Weidman, Twale and Stein (2001) provides the most
detailed analysis of how socialization theory relates to graduate and professional
programs in higher education (Austin & McDaniels, 2006). As Weidman et al. note, the
work of Bragg (1976) was considered to be the most comprehensive on the socialization
of graduate and professional students until the report of Tierney and Rhoads (1994) on
faculty socialization was published “that included much of the same classic literature but
used a cultural approach” (Weidman et al., 2001 , p. 1). They also note how Tierney and
Rhoads’s work did not focus on the socialization of graduate and professional students,
but did “include the graduate experience as a component of anticipatory socialization”
(Weidman, et al., 2001, p. 1). Accordingly, Weidman et al. (2001) chose to “expand,
extend, and update the discourse on socialization in higher education” (p. 1), using the
work of Tierney and Rhoads (1994), Bragg (1976), and Thornton and Nardi (1975) to
conduct their analysis.

Similar to the approach taken by Tierney and Rhoads (1994) with faculty
socialization, Weidman et al. (2001) took Van Maanen and Schein’s (1979) six polar
dimensions of organizational socialization to show how these dimensions apply to the
socialization of graduate and professional students:

Collective Socialization versus Individual Socialization. Weidman et al. (2001)
refer to students in a medical clinical setting as being subjected to collective socialization
as they are grouped together to make rounds with experienced doctors. On the other
hand, students completing their dissertation in the arts and sciences experience individual

socialization while working with their committee chairperson.

l9

Formal versus Informal Socialization. Every school has formal “rites of passages
that track students through the program” (Weidman et al., p. 7). However, to help
students navigate the formal system, they rely on informal departmental and peer
cultures.

Random versus Sequential Socialization. Information that is provided to students
is “random, ambiguous, and subject to change (including opinions on courses and
faculty)” (p. 7) and is an example of random socialization. Specific steps that must be
followed such as those required for examinations or dissertation are examples of
sequential socialization.

Fixed versus Variable Socialization. The specified curriculum and timetable to
complete certain professional programs such as medical, law, dentistry, and business are
examples of fixed socialization. However, the independent component in doctoral
program is variable because completion is dependent on the student and faculty who are
working with the student.

Serial versus Disjunctive Socialization Disjunctive Socialization. “Those
graduate students who also have previous knowledge of the role through anticipatory
socialization experience serial socialization; those lacking this assistance and support that
is often critical to success experience disjunctive socialization” (Weidman, et al., 2001, p.
8).

Investiture versus Divestiture Socialization. Students are expected to complete
their programs “with an internalization of appropriate values, attitudes, and beliefs
associated with their intended professions and professionalism” (p. 8). When

confirmation of these values is acknowledged in the professional setting investiture

20

socialization has occurred. Divestiture socialization may occur when “new students are
not accepted by faculty because they are not like their predecessor” (p. 8).
Stages of Role Acquisition

Weidman et al. (2001) also applied the framework for role acquisition developed
by Thornton and Nardi (1975) to analyze the socialization of graduate and professional
students. Like Merton (1957), the work of Thornton and Nardi (l 975) viewed
socialization from a sociological and psychological context in developing their
framework for role acquisition that was “capable of being applied (with varying degrees
of accuracy) to virtually any role which may be acquired rather than restricted to a
particular type of role” (p. 871). According to Thornton and Nardi, role acquisition is not
a one-step process that is merely conveyed and assimilated in a vacuum. Rather, “role
acquisition involves in part an increasing awareness of implicit as well as explicit
expectations encompassing attitudes and values, and knowledge and skills in addition to
behavior” (p. 872). Acquisition of a role includes four stages: anticipatory; formal;
informal; and personal. In other words, “[a] role is not fully acquired until an individual
has anticipated it, learned anticipatory, formal, and inforrn’al expectations comprised in it,
formulated his expectations, reacted to and reconciled these various expectations, and
accepted the final outcome” (p. 873).

Anticipatory Stage. This stage of role acquisition, commonly referred to in the
literature as anticipatory socialization, begins before an individual assumes a position
(Corcoran & Clark, 1984). During this stage, the individual who aspires to be a member
of a particular group has a perception of the values of the group that he hopes to join and

begins to adopt these values. These perceived values can be learned directly or

21

indirectly, and are generally not completely learned when the individual becomes a part
of the group. Since what may actually be experienced when the individual assumes the
role may be inconsistent with the individual’s perception of the role, the individual will
be faced with “unlearning as well as further learning” (Thornton & Nardi, 1975, p. 875).

In thinking of how the anticipatory stage relates to students in graduate in
professional programs, Weidman, et al. (2001) note,

They exude uncertainty in terms of professional jargon, vocabulary, knowledge of

subject content, normative behaviors, and acceptable emotions. Communication

tends to be one-way downward flow from professor, supervisor, and/or clinician
to student. Novices generally seek information, listen carefully, and comply
readily to faculty-initiated communication such as verbal imperatives and explicit

directions for program success and eventual completion. (p. 12)

Formal Stage. The individual has become an insider at this stage and begins to
experience the role from this perspective. During the formal stage of role acquisition, the
expectations tend to be explicitly communicated and often address behavior that must be
adopted by all members of the group. This being the case, “. . . it appears that conformity
to the perspective aspects of role often occurs most thoroughly at the neophyte level,
when the individual must prove his competence, sincerity, and awareness of his place”
(Thornton & Nardi, 1975, p. 877, citing Goffman, 1961, p. 130).

The novice receives formal instruction during the formal stage and observes
activities of role incumbents and older students, and learns what is required in carrying
out role expectations (Thornton & Nardi, 1975). It is during the formal stage that novices

become veteran newcomers (Thornton & Nardi, 1975) and students “interpret their

22

environment, establish their professional goals, and seek positive feedback and
modification in their continued growth and development” (Weidman et al., 2001, p. 13).
However, the success of an incumbent can only be achieved if the informal stage of role
acquisition is explored.

Informal Stage. The individual becomes exposed to unofficial or informal
expectations and ways of doing things in this stage, usually through everyday interaction
with colleagues. These informal expectations usually refer to behavior that are not
absolute requirements for the individual, but may be adopted. As a result, “an individual
now has an opportunity to start shaping a role to fit himself, his past experiences and
future objectives, and to work out an individual style of role performance” (Thornton &
Nardi, 1975, p. 879).

Individuals begin to make the transition from student to professional during the
informal stage. Their understanding of the culture is solidified whereby they come to
know acceptable behavior that has not been formally expressed, and they begin to rely on
peers to provide social and emotional support systems. In short, “[t]he novice becomes
aware of flexibilities in carrying out roles while still meeting role requirements”
(Weidman, et al., 2001, p. 14).

Personal Stage. Thornton and Nardi (1975) note how important it is that role
performance contain a psychological dimension that includes an individual’s
“personality, past experiences, unique abilities and skills, and culturally defined values
and beliefs” (p. 880). So, it is during this last stage of role acquisition, after various types
of expectations have been experienced, the individual can impose his own style into the

role and receive acceptance from others. According to Weidman et al. (2001) the

23

personal stage of role acquisition occurs as students form their professional identities that
sometimes require modification of their self-conceptions of the role, to comply with the
values and attitudes of their chosen profession where they are recognized as scholars and
colleagues. Weidman et al. further note, “[t]hrough the process, however, graduate and
professional students are to realize that their program is only preparatory to their
professional goal, not the real thing” (p. 15).
Core Elements Leading to Role Acquisition

Relying on the foundation laid by Thornton and Nardi (1975) and Stein (1992),
Weidman et al. (2001) described the core elements that lead to role acquisition as
knowledge acquisition, investment, and involvement, which work in tandem with one
another.

Knowledge Acquisition. Weidman et a1. (2001) noted the relevance of
knowledge acquisition as twofold:

First, novices must acquire sufficient cognitive knowledge and skills for effective

professional role performance. Second, novices must acquire affective

knowledge such as awareness of normative expectations associated with the

professional role being sought, a realistic assessment of personal ability to

perform the demands of professional roles successfully, and awareness of the

confidence others have in the novice’s capacity to practice professional roles

successfully. (p. 16)

As socialization occurs the knowledge level of the novice shifts from generalized
to more specialized and complex to the point that the novice understands the culture and

begins to assume the identify of an incumbent. “In all stages, the accuracy of knowledge

24'

and of the novice’s personal assessment of capacity to perform the professional role
successfully will influence socialization outcome” (Weidman et al., sp. 16).

Investment. “To invest in a role is to commit something of personal value such as
time, alternative career choices, self-esteem, social status, or reputation to some aspect of
a professional role or preparation for it” (Weidman, et al., 2001, p.17). In the case of the
four stages of role acquisition, investment occurs in the anticipatory stage of socialization
once the novice enrolls or makes a commitment to enroll in a particular school, because
the likelihood that the novice will attend another school has diminished. lnvestrnent has
occurred during the formal stage of socialization once the novice enrolls in specialized
classes that are not easily transferable to other programs. A greater level of investment
occurs during the informal and personal stages of socialization because even more
specialized knowledge is acquired at these stages. Allegiance to a role model also creates
a sense of commitment and obligation in the investment stage.

Involvement. “Involvement is participation in some aspect of the professional role
or in preparation for it” (Weidman et al., 2001, p. 18). The willingness of a novice to
immerse in a program has a direct impact on his commitment to the program and whether
he will develop a professional identity in the eyes of others.

Anticipatory Socialization

To learn more about faculty socialization Corcoran and Clark (1984) conducted
an exploratory study that provided insight into anticipatory socialization. The study
participants included two groups of tenured university faculty members who were from
three generations of faculty. One sample group was from humanities, biological

sciences, physical sciences, and social sciences. The second group was from the same

25

fields, but was known to be highly active in teaching, research, and service, compared to
the first group. Corcoran and Clark (1984) asked participants “about the opportunities
they had during graduate school to learn what a faculty member does” (p. 141). While
more than half of each group was exposed to teaching experiences in graduate school, the
highly active group tended to have more exposure to research opportunities. On the other
hand, Corcoran and Clark (1 984) found that many participants appreciated the
“anticipatory socialization value of observing their graduate school professors” (p. 141),
which provided both insight of what to do and what not to do as a faculty member.
Corcoran and Clark’s (1984) findings also revealed that having a good relationship with
advisors proved beneficial in the socialization process.

With regard to the contribution of peers in the socialization process, Corcoran and
Clark (1984) noted how, “for the most part, informal discussions, exchanges of ideas,
mutual stimulation, and competition characterized these relationships” (p. 143). For the
highly active group, peer relationships evolved into networking opportunities once they
became faculty members. “[T]he highly active group maintained professionally helpful
contacts such as invitations to write, speak, or collaborate, support for grant applications,
help in obtaining employment, and more regular exchanges at professional meetings”
(Corcoran & Clark, 1984, p. 143).

To obtain a better understanding of how anticipatory socialization occurs in
graduate programs, Austin (2002b) conducted a four-year longitudinal, qualitative study
that focused on graduate students aspiring to be faculty who began their graduate
programs with teaching assistantships. Austin found that the socialization process for

graduate students varies among disciplines and it plays a critical role in how graduate

26

students learn to assume academic roles. In addition to the heavy influence of
disciplinary cultures on the socialization process, Austin found that graduate students
“shared common challenges and concerns” (p. 103). They included “the lack of
systematic professional development opportunities, minimal feedback and mentoring
from faculty, and few opportunities for guided reflection” (p. 104). As a result, graduate
students were forced to seek informal socialization opportunities that included
“observing, listening, and interacting with faculty, interacting with peers, and interacting
with family and personal friends” (p. 104).

In providing “an overview of socialization theory as it relates to the socialization
of doctoral students to faculty roles” (p. 399), Austin and McDaniels (2006) heavily
relied on the framework of Weidman et al. (2001) because of their detailed analysis of
socialization theory. They indicate that recent research reveals that several issues and
concerns were found to exist in the socialization of graduate students to faculty roles.
According to Austin and McDaniels six issues “emerged with consistency across several
major studies on graduate education” (p. 438): (l) a lack of systematic and
developmental organized preparation; (2) lack of explicit expectations and feedback; (3)
limited attention to academic work and career options; (4) insufficient sense of
community; (5) perception of academic life; and (6) little opportunity for guided
reflection.

Lack of Systematic and Developmentally Organized Preparation. According to
Austin and McDaniels (2006), apprenticeship and observation are how doctoral students
learn to succeed in graduate school and prepare for faculty roles. However, while

observing, graduate students tend to refrain from asking questions of faculty, or even

27

engage in discussion with faculty for the purpose of learning “about scholarly life, higher
education issues, or the particular skills and abilities that they should develop in
preparation for their careers” (p. 432). Instead, graduate students rely on peers, family,
and friends, to assist them in becoming socialized. Also, while graduate students who
aspire to be faculty members are socialized to teaching and research, they often are not
exposed to other facets of faculty work they will be expected to perform when assuming
their first faculty position (Austin & McDaniels, 2006).

Lack of Explicit Expectations and Feedback Graduate students who aspire to be
faculty members receive unclear information about the graduate process, or limited or no
feedback regarding their performance as graduate students.

Limited Attention to Academic Work and Career Options. While graduate
students explain what was involved in faculty work, as it relates to teaching and research,
they were less familiar with the many others responsibilities of faculty work. Austin and
McDaniels (2006) further note how graduate students were not typically exposed to
“discussion[s] of the history of the profession and the responsibility of academics within
the broader society” (p. 435).

Insufiicient Sense of Community. Austin and McDaniels (2006) relied on the
work of Lovitts (2004) to describe how the lack of community affects graduate students’
decision to remain in the graduate program, and how a bidirectional approach to
socialization that was conceptualized by Tierney and Rhoads (1994) can assist in
retaining graduates. They observe that “Lovitts (2004) suggested that the best way to
retain graduate students . . ., is to develop a culture characterized by a sense of

community and to adjust departmental culture to the interests and needs of the students,

28

rather than expecting students to make all the adjustments to conform” (Austin &
McDaniels, 2006, p. 436).

Perception of Academic Life. Austin and McDaniels’ (2006) review of the
literature reveals the socialization experience of graduate students is leaving students
with concerns about the quality of life of faculty members. That is, based on graduate
students’ observations of faculty it is believed that “isolation and competition, rather than
community, characterize academic life” (p. 437).

Little Opportunity for Guided Reflection. While students wrestle with challenges
and significant questions throughout the graduate school experiences, there are often no
mentors to provide guided reflection opportunities. “If graduate students had more
regularly scheduled opportunities, the bidirectional socialization process might work
more effectively” (Austin & McDaniels, 2006, p. 438). Austin and McDaniels further
note that guided reflection can also help students learn about some of the expectation and
experiences that are unique to their disciplinary cultures.

While highlighting the six common issues in the graduate socialization
experience, Austin and McDaniels (2006) conclude their discussion by pointing out that
one of the objectives of graduate school training is to “ensure appropriate and thorough
preparation and socialization to the roles that new faculty will assume across disciplinary
and institutional contexts and appointment types” (p. 43 8).

Law Faculty Socialization and the Impact of Disciplinary Culture

It is clear from the literature that disciplines play a role in faculty socialization

(Austin, 2002b; Austin & McDaniels, 2006; Corcoran & Clark, 1984; Weidman et al.,

2001). The literature also reveals that anticipatory socialization that prepares an

29

individual for academia primarily occurs during graduate training, for most disciplines
(Austin, 2002b; Austin & McDaniels, 2006, Tierney & Rhoads, 1994). However, this is
not the case in professional programs, nor is preparation for academia their purpose
(Weidman et al., 2001). To better understand the impact that disciplinary culture has on
faculty socialization this section will discuss the role that law school plays in preparing
aspiring faculty for academia; the use of the Socratic method to teaching and its effect on
faculty socialization; and law faculty socialization studies and surveys found in the
literature.
Law School as Preparation for Academia

While Weidman, et al.’s (2001) analysis of graduate and professional student
socialization was not specifically directed to the socialization of those aspiring to
academic careers, the literature is clear that there is a distinction between how students
are socialized in graduate programs compared to professional programs (Thielens, 1980;
Weidman et al., 2001). For example, after their review of the literature, Austin and
McDaniels (2006) suggested that doctoral students preparing for academia should possess
four competencies: “(1) conceptual understandings; (2) knowledge and skills in key
areas of faculty work; (3) interpersonal skills; and (4) professional attitudes and habits”
(p. 417). On the other hand, “[p]rofessional education is clearly meant to prepare
individuals for a set of social and intellectual roles, the performance of which reflects an
advanced level of specialized knowledge of skills” (Weidman et al., 2001, p. 34). In that
light, the role of legal education is to prepare students for the profession, which is the
practice of law, not for academia (Thielens, 1967; Redding, 2003; Weidman, et al.,

2001).

30

While the literature reveals that anticipatory socialization might be different for
new law faculty than it is for faculty in other disciplines, socialization plays a significant
role in the promotion and tenure process for law faculty (Report of the AALS, 1992), just
as it does in other disciplines (Carbado & Gulati, 2003; Colbert, 2002; Fairweather, 2002;
Leslie, 2002; Moran, 2002; Tierney & Bensimon, 1996). However, the primary focus of
the literature regarding promotion and tenure is based on anticipatory socialization from a
graduate school model of training (Austin, 2002; Tierney & Rhoads, 1994; Tierney &
Bensimon, 1996), versus a professional school model approach that is used to socialize
law faculty (Redding, 2003).

Disciplinary Culture

For over a century, law schools approached the teaching of law in the tradition of
Christopher Columbus Langdell, who was appointed dean of Harvard Law School in
1870 (F ossum, 1980). Langdell believed that law was a science, in that “the library was
its laboratory, and cases were its natural elements” (Fossum, 1980, p. 502). In keeping
with the tradition of Langdell, the case method, using Socratic dialogue, continues to be
the most common approach (frequently referred to as merely the Socratic method) for
teaching law students how to “think like lawyers” (Anzalone, 2001; Garner, 2000;
McAninch, 1993).

In legal education, the popularity of the case method centers around the fact that it
forces students to be active learners, in that they take responsibility for developing a
pattern of reasoning that is adaptable to solving similar problems in the law (Stropus,
1996). The Socratic dialogue makes the case method even more complex for law

students because the dialogue usually “involves a teacher asking a series of questions,

31

ideally to a single student, in an attempt to lead the student down a chain of reasoning
either forward, to its conclusions, or backward, to its assumptions” (Garner, 2000, p.
329)

Langdell believed that the use of the case method was effectively employed by a
teacher of the principles of law, who was not necessarin a successful practitioner, but
one who was learned in the law (Borthwick & Schau, 1991; Katcher, 2006). The
appointment of James Barr Ames in 1873 as an assistant professor of law at Harvard
“signalled the beginning of a division in the legal profession between ‘academics’ and
‘practitioners’” (Borthwick & Shau, 1991, p. 193). Ames had only received his law
degree a year prior to his appointment as assistant professor of law and was hired because
of his scholarly abilities and teaching potential (p. 191).

Merseth (1991) wrote that faculty must possess extensive and specialized skills to
use the case method, in that these skills are not innate. Merseth (1991) goes on to note
that just knowing the material well is not enough to teach the case method. Rather, it
“demands that instructors be thoroughly familiar with the subject at hand, and that they
also understand the characteristics of their learners and the dynamics of group
interaction” (p. 20). An important characteristic that instructors must understand when
using the case method is the fact that the majority of law students must learn how to
become active learners, given that they have practiced passive learning most of their
educational lives (Hawkins-Leon, 1998). It is also crucial for the teacher using the case
method to control the pace and the directions of the discussion (Shulman, 1992).

Shulman points out how difficult it is to teach using the case method, “[e]specially when

32

paired with Socratic teaching, they require well-trained, gifted teachers who are willing to
invest longer periods of preparation than is typical for other methods” (p. 26).

Although there are other effective methods for teaching law, the case method and
Socratic dialogue continues to be the dominant teaching techniques in American law
schools (Anzalone, 2001), particularly in the first-year curriculum (Iijima, 1998). In
addition, the current approach to hiring new law faculty continues to resemble hiring
practices of Langdell (Borthwick & Schau, 1991; F ossum, 1980; Katcher, 2006), despite
the fact that law students are more diverse than a century ago (Austin & McDaniels,
2006). This is attributed to the fact that the focus on recruitment of law professors is
based on scholarship potential, as opposed to teaching ability (Garner, 2000; Redding,
2003). Garner observes, “law faculty members come to their academic positions
outstandingly able in their own legal capacities but quite lacking in their conceptions, let
alone understanding of the teaching-learning process” (Garner, 2000, p. 344).

Law Faculty Socialization Studies/Surveys

Research has been conducted to help understand the socialization process for
faculty trained in graduate programs, but little is found to help understand how tenure-
track law faculty trained in professional programs are socialized. This section discusses
studies and surveys that affect law faculty socialization: faculty recruitment, teaching
methods, and law school promotion and tenure practices.

Faculty Recruitment. While the literature on faculty socialization indicates that
anticipatory socialization primarily occurs during graduate training, this is usually not the
case with training in professional programs. Although law faculty play a pivotal role in

shaping today’s lawyers, there is a limited amount of empirical research regarding how

33

they are socialized to assume faculty roles (Borthwick & Schau, 1991). On the other
hand, the literature reveals that new law faculty have diverse backgrounds, with one
exception. A study conducted by F ossum (1980) included a section on the educational
and professional credentials of law teachers and found that “60 percent of the legal
profession’s teaching specialists were products of fewer than 15 percent of the nation’s
accredited law schools” (p. 507). Fossum observes that the 20 law schools producing the
majority of the law teachers consisted of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious law
schools. The results of Borthwick and Schau’s (1991) study were similar to Fossum’s
(1980) findings, in that the twenty top-ranked law schools produced almost 60 percent of
all sampled professors.

Redding’s (2003) study included a longitudinal comparison of demographic
characteristics and qualifications of law faculty over a 25 year period and found that little
had changed during that time span. Like Borthwick and Schau (1991) and F ossum
(1980), Redding found that 60 percent of all law faculty graduated from the top 20 law
schools. Redding found that only 37 percent of new law faculty had previous teaching
experience. In addition, only 12.5 percent of new law faculty possess an advanced
degree beyond the Juris Doctor, such as a Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy) or S.J.D. (Doctor
of Juridical Science), where students are expected to produce projects that lead to
publication and exposure to faculty work. While these findings provide strong evidence
that “graduation from an elite school may be the most important criteria used in law
school hiring” (Borthwick & Schau, 1991, p. 230), they do not provide insight into how

tenure-track law faculty become socialized.

34

Teaching Methods. In the 1994-95 academic year, a nationwide survey was
circulated to law professors, for the purpose of “obtaining information about teaching
goals, methods, rationales, new techniques, and any techniques professors wished they
had used” (Friedland, 1996, p. 2). F riedland wanted to gain insight about teaching
objectives and methods of law professors, focusing on how professors made the
connection between their teaching methods and the learning process (Friedland, 1996).
Approximately 2000 surveys were sent to full-time law professors at ABA-approved law
schools and 574 surveys were completed. Although the survey provided insight about
law school teaching and connections with the learning process, it falls short of addressing
the research questions that were the focus of my study. The F riedland study merely
sought the opinion of law professors about teaching, but did not question or provide
insight regarding how they learned how to be faculty members.

In 1995, Franklin Pierce Law Center (FPLC) adopted a program to improve
classroom teaching. To learn about other possible programs, a survey was sent to all 173
ABA-accredited law schools (Simon, Occhialino & Fried, 1999). Based upon the 54
responses received, F PLC “found that the efforts law schools make to improve teaching
are generally focused on newer faculty and take place in the emotionally charged context
of tenure decisions (footnote omitted). Few if any schools have a systematic program to
encourage tenured and experienced teachers to improve their use of class time” (p. 257).
Given that law professors are recruited based on scholarship, the lack of attention to
faculty development may be attributed to a common belief that “scholars actively
involved in legal research are better teachers of legal theory and doctrine, to which their

research usually relate” (Gelpe, 1999, p. 208; Katcher, 2006). This belief implies that a

35

learned professor of the law is also an effective teacher of the law. Even if this belief is
correct, there is still a need to understand how these individuals learned to be faculty
members.

Tenure and Promotion. In 1988 a Special Committee on Tenure and the Tenuring
Process of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) was commissioned to
conduct an empirical study of the tenure process at ABA-approved law schools (Report
of AALS, 2002). In 1989 the Special Committee surveyed the 175 ABA-approved law
schools, using a questionnaire containing 22 questions. The questions in the 1989
questionnaire were similar to the questions asked in the survey that was conducted in the
AALS 1979 study, for the same purpose.

The Special Committee was successful in having 141 of the 175 law schools
respond to the survey. Although the law schools that responded to the survey agreed that
the criteria for awarding tenure included a review of teaching, scholarship, and public
service, there was no consistency regarding how much weight should be given to each
category. But the 1989 survey revealed that the service component of the tenure process
was given little weight at most law schools. On the other hand, the survey results showed
that if service activities are closely linked to the other two tenure criteria, it “can have a
favorable impact on tenure and promotion decisions” (p. 491 ). Despite the inconsistency
that exists among ABA-approved law schools regarding the tenure process, coupled with
the fact that most law faculty lack in anticipatory socialization, the survey revealed that
the majority of the ABA-approved law schools did not provide newly hired faculty with a
copy of their promotion and tenure procedures until the faculty member had already

arrived on campus.

36

The findings of the study lead the Special Committee to conclude that there was a
need for law schools “to encourage and facilitate discussion, debate, and self-study within
and across schools about mission, standards, and procedures of the tenuring process and
the nexus between goals and standards normatively declared and practices empirically
applied and experienced in that process” (p. 501). The Special Committee also
recommended (1) the need for each law school to undertake a self-study of its tenuring
process; (2) a core set of norms and standards be articulated by each law school that can
be used to guide faculty development for untenured faculty; and (3) that law schools
review their tenure procedures to insure that they are clearly articulated and disseminated,
no later than the time a new faculty received an offer. While indicating that tenure
processes at ABA-approved law schools lack clarity, which affects the socialization of
law faculty, data was not gathered from the perspective of the faculty member, which was
the focus of my study.

Conclusion

This chapter provided an overview of the literature and research on faculty
socialization and the effect that promotion and tenure, graduate and professional program
training, and disciplinary culture have on the process. Review of this literature supports a
study on law faculty socialization. Following examples set in other studies of new
faculty, I used a framework of anticipatory and organizational socialization to guide my

research.

37

Chapter 3: Design of the Study

Summary of the Purpose

While understanding what it means to be a faculty member differs depending on
the discipline, the literature consistently notes that anticipatory socialization primarily
occurs prior to assuming the first faculty position. The socialization process begins with
graduate school training (Austin & Daniels, 2006; Blackburn & Fox, 1976; Tierney &
Rhoads, I994; Weidman, Twale & Stein, 2001). This is particularly true in doctoral
programs that prepare students to assume faculty roles (Austin, 2002; Austin &
McDaniels, 2006; Tierney & Rhoads, 1994). Despite the socialization process that
occurs during graduate training, most new faculty members begin their first position
feeling inadequately socialized to handle what is expected of them in their new roles
(Austin, 2002b; Austin & McDaniels, 2006; Johnson, 2001; Tierney & Bensimon, 1996;
Tierney & Rhoads, 1994; Whitt, 1991). Considerable research has been done to
understand how socialization occurs for new faculty trained in graduate programs
(Austin, 2002b). Although the literature reveals that a deeply rooted disciplinary culture
exist in legal education (Anzalone, 2001; Borthwick & Shau, 1991; F ossum, 1980;
Gamer, 2000; McAninch, I993; Katcher, 2006; Weidman et al., 2001), little insight is
provided for understanding how new law faculty, who have been only professionally
trained, become socialized.

The purpose of this exploratory qualitative study was to address this void by
conducting face-to-face interviews with a representative sample of recently tenured and
tenure-track law faculty who did not possess Ph.D.s. In my study I examine one research

question and four sub-questions:

38

I. How do tenure-track law faculty who have been only professionally trained
become socialized?
a. How do they come to understand the aspects of faculty work?
b. How did they come to understand the socialization process?
c. What are the challenges they face in learning their roles?
(I. What strategies helped in learning how to do what was expected of them
as tenure-track faculty members?
Sample
Merriam (1998) notes that non-probability sampling is primarily used for
qualitative research, because the researcher intends to use the data “to solve the
qualitative problems, such as discovering what occurs, the implications of what occurs,
and the relationships linking occurrences” (p. 61). Probability sampling allows results to
be generalized in an effort to answer questions, such as how much and how often
(Merriam, 1998). Purposeful sampling is the most common form of non-probabilistic
sampling used in qualitative research (Creswell, 1998; Merriam, 1998; Patton, I990).
Qualitative studies generally focus in depth on relatively small samples that are selected
purposefully (Creswell, 1998; Merriam, 1998; Patton, 1990). The objective of purposefirl
sampling is to enable the researcher to select information rich cases that can be studied
(Patton, 1990).
Recently tenured and tenure-track law faculty without Ph.D.s who were located at
law schools approved by the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar of the
American Bar Association (“ABA”) were the focus of my exploratory qualitative study.

These faculty and their ABA affiliation were purposefully selected for a number of

39

reasons. First, I believed the findings of my study would be richer if they included the
views of tenure-track law faculty who have been in the tenure system for a few years, and
recently tenured faculty who still remember the experience of being a new member of the
law faculty (Creswell, 1998; Merriam, I998; Patton, 1990). Second, it is likely that non-
tenure-track faculty, such as visiting professors, lecturers, academic specialists,
instructors and adjuncts, may have faculty development issues and concerns that are
different from tenure and tenure-track faculty. Including this group in my study could
skew the findings (Creswell, 1998; Merriam, 1998; Patton, 1990). Third, recently
tenured and tenure-track faculty from ABA-approved law schools were purposefully
selected because this population has been the focus in the literature and the subject of
empirical research (Borthwick & Schau, 1991; Fossum, 1980; Friedland, 1996; Redding,
2003; Report of the AALS Special Committee on Tenure, 1992; Simon, Occhialino &
Fried, 1999). Given that reliance on this literature would be beneficial in answering the
research questions in my exploratory qualitative study, it made sense that the sample be
drawn from the same population that had been surveyed in the literature.

Affiliation with an ABA-approved law school is another reason why this
population was selected for my study. The ABA provides national accreditation to law
schools and requires that all accredited law schools be in compliance with certain
standards (ABA Standards for Approval of Law Schools [ABA Standards], 2006). These
standards pertain to curriculum, faculty qualifications and responsibilities, and
organization and governance. Although there may be state or regionally accredited law
schools that are not ABA-approved whose standards are consistent with ABA Standards,

they are not bound by these standards. Given the potential that my findings could be

40

skewed if non-ABA-approved law schools were included in this study, faculty from these

law schools were not considered.
The AALS Directory of Law Teachers (AALS Directory) (2005) published by the

Association of American Law Schools (AALS) was used to identify the sample. The

 

AALS is a non-profit education organization “recognized as one of the two national
accrediting agencies for law by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation”

(Association of American Law Schools Handbook, 2006, p. l); the other is the ABA.

T———r

Although not every ABA-approved law school is a member of the AALS, 168 of the 195
ABA-approved law schools are members.

The AALS Directory provides extensive biographical information about every
faculty member. One section of the directory provides a listing of all member law
schools. This section also includes a complete listing of each member schools’ faculty,
title, telephone number, and email addresses. In addition, the directory has a separate
section that contains an alphabetical listing of all law teachers with extensive background
information about each person. For example, the section provides the law school
conferring the J uris Doctor degree; other advanced degrees; current title; year of hire; the
hiring law school; preservice legal experience; years of law school teaching experience;
and years of non-law teaching experience for every law teacher (AALS Directory, 2005).
A more detailed list of the information found in the AALS Directory is shown in
Appendix A.

I initially identified several law schools to solicit potential participants for my
study. For purpose of convenience and to allow for a relevant comparison, I chose to use

purposeful sampling (Patton, 1990). Potential law schools were selected based on their

41

geographic location, or because I would already be visiting the area for other reasons.
Also for purpose of convenience, a potential site was selected if the law school was in
close proximity to other ABA-approved law schools that could serve as potential sites.

Once a law school was identified as a potential site, the member list section of the
2004-2005 AALS Directory of Law Teachers was reviewed to obtain a purposeful
sample of potential participants. I reviewed this section to identify faculty members who
had titles of assistant or associate professor. After compiling this list, the alphabetical list
of law teachers section was reviewed. If a faculty member possessed a Ph.D., the person
was eliminated as a potential participant. If the faculty member did not have a Ph.D.,
further review was done in this section to determine the number of years in law teaching.
Any faculty member who taught for less than seven years was considered a potential
participant.

Over a four month period, a total of 74 solicitation letters, along with a copy of
my interview protocol, were mailed to recently tenured or tenure-track law faculty
located at 18 ABA-approved law schools. A breakdown of the number of solicitations,

law schools, and approximate time period between mailings is shown in Table 1.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Solicitation of Potential Participants
Number of Number of Approximate time
solicitations Potential lapse between
in mailinL Sites each mailing
22 6
17 4 2 weeks
21 5 2 months
13 5 6 weeks
Totals: 74 20
Table l

 

 

 

42

Given that I am employed as a senior administrator at Michigan State University
College of Law, I chose to place the solicitation letter on my letterhead, in an effort to
improve the response rate. A sample of the letter is found in Appendix B. Also, there
were times when I knew in advance that I would be visiting or near an ABA-approved
law school, either for a work related matter, or because I arranged to conduct other
interviews at a nearby law school. In those cases, I mailed a different solicitation letter
on my letterhead, to inform the potential participant of this fact. A sample of this letter is
found in Appendix C. If a response to my solicitation letter had not been received within
two weeks after the mailing, a follow-up email message was sent to the potential
participant. A sample of the email message that was sent to potential participants is
shown in Appendix D. If a potential participant failed to respond to my solicitation
letters and email messages, a final solicitation was made by telephone.

Participants in my study consisted of 14 faculty members from 10 ABA-approved
law schools. Three of the participants were women, and 11 were men. Two of the 11
male participants were persons of color, and one of the three female participants was a
person of color. Table 2 show the number of years participants have been in the tenure

system ranging from two to six years.

 

Years in Tenure System
2yrs 3yrs 4yrs 5yrs 6yrs
5 l l 3 4
Table 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three of the 14 participants had either just been approved for tenure at the time of
the interview, or were granted tenure within the past few years. Also, only seven of the

14 participants had teaching experience prior to entering the tenure system. The number

43

of years of practical experience possessed by participants ranged from two to 17 years,
with the majority of participants having five or less years of practical experience, as

shown in Table 3.

 

Years of Practical Experience
2yrs 3yrs 4yrs 5yrs 7yrs 15yrs 16yrs l7gs
4 2 l 1 2 1 1 I
Table 3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were a total of 10 sites, with one site in the Eastern part of the country,

seven in the Midwest, and two located in the Western part of the country, as show in

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 4.
Site Locations
East Midwest West
1 7 2
Table 4

 

 

 

Also, Table 5 shows that three of the site law schools were located at a university
having a Carnegie Foundation rating of “research university/very high activity
(RUN H)”, one was classified as “research university/high activity (RU/H)”, two were
classified as “doctoral research universities (DRU)”, and the remaining four law schools

were not classified as research institutions.

 

Carnegie Foundation Rating
RUN H RU/H DRU Non-Research

3 l 2 4
Table 5

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

U. S. News and World Report ranks the top 100 ABA-approved law schools in
order of their overall score. Law schools not ranked in the top 100 are listed

alphabetically in two groups, the Third and Fourth Tier. Each tier includes law schools

44

similar in quality with Fourth Tier schools receiving the lowest overall assessment score.
One site school was ranked in the top 10, one in the top 20, one in the top 40, three in the

third tier, and four in the fourth tier, as show in Table 6.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Participant Schools
2006 US. News and World News Rankin
Top 10 Top 20 Top 40 3rd Tier 4t Tier
1 l l 3 4
Table 6

 

 

 

In addition, three of the 10 law schools were located at public universities, six were
private not-for-profit universities, and one was an independent free standing law school.
Data Collection

I developed an interview protocol for discussing with participants how they
learned to become law faculty. The protocol consisted of a series of open ended
questions inquiring about the participants’ experience during the job interview, the type
of work they do as law professors, how job expectations were learned, a description of
the demands placed on them as law professors, how they figured out how to be law
professors, and how colleagues interact with one another. If a participant already had
tenure, the protocol included additional open ended questions to determine what the
participant would have done differently as a new faculty member, based on hindsight,
and any advice the tenured participant would share with new law faculty. The complete
interview protocol is found in Appendix E.

To test whether the interview protocol would assist in obtaining rich findings, a
pilot study was conducted with a tenure-track law faculty member located at an ABA-
approved law school who was not asked to be a part of my study. After the interview

was completed the pilot participant was asked to provide feedback regarding the

45

effectiveness of the interview protocol in eliciting responses that could assist in
answering my research questions. A review of the transcribed interview was also done
for this purpose. The feedback received was used to improve the effectiveness of the
protocol before any study participant was interviewed.

In the case of a qualitative study, the primary data collector is the researcher
(Merriam, 1998). This could cause many participants to feel uncomfortable or reluctant
to respond to certain questions posed by the researcher. Merriam (1998) notes how this
discomfort and reluctance generally stems from the fact that participants are concerned
about the accurate reporting of the data and how it will be disseminated, as a result of the
researcher’s theoretical position and biases.

Confidentiality could have been of particular concern in my study because of my
position as a law school administrator and the fact that the legal academy is a close-knit
community. To assist in assuring confidentiality, a consent form was developed that
described for participants the research objectives, how the data will be used, and the fact
that they would be provided the opportunity to review the transcribed interview prior to
the dissemination of the study. A sample of the consent form is found in Appendix F.
Given the concern for confidentiality and to avoid having skewed findings, pseudonyms
were used and “he” was used in referring to participants, regardless of gender. Also, I
chose not to solicit any faculty members at my law school to participant in my study
because of confidentiality concerns and not to skew my findings.

Data collection for my study was achieved by conducting a single interview with
each participant that ranged from 60 to 75 minutes. Although attempts were made to

conduct face-to-face interviews with every participant, three of the interviews were

46

conducted by telephone. Prior to conducting any interviews, each participant was asked
to execute a consent form. In the case of telephone interviews, participants were asked to
sign and return the consent form by mail or fax before the interview took place. Also, to
facilitate accuracy in transcription of each interview, a tape recorder and high quality
audiotapes were used (Creswell, 1998). A speaker phone was used for the three
telephone interviews, so they could also be tape recorded.
Data Analysis

To give meaning or understanding to the data collected, a researcher must
consolidate, reduce and interpret what has been said by the participants (Merriam, 1998).
To assist in this process, the researcher can develop codes for the data (Creswell, 1998).
In my study I reviewed the transcripts of each participant. As I reviewed each transcript,
codes were developed to facilitate in identifying themes, categories and subcategories to
assist me in understanding how the socialization of law faculty occurs.
Role of the Researcher

Building trust with participants, learning the culture, and checking for
misinformation add to‘ the value and validity of a qualitative study (Creswell, 1998). In
addition, the researcher’s personal experiences and insights play an important role in data
collecting and understanding the phenomenon (Patton, 1990). My experience in law
school administration and educational background placed me at a distinct advantage for
building trust, understanding the phenomenon, and adding value and validity to my study.
I am an Associate Dean for Student Affairs and Registrar at my law school, where I have
worked as a senior administrator for over thirteen years. In this capacity I serve as an ex-

officio member on several faculty committees (Academic Standards, Curriculum,

47

Journal, Student-Faculty Liaison) and adviser to the law school student governance
organization. While serving in these capacities I gained significant insight into the
dilemmas that law faculty encounter during the promotion and tenure process. I have a
Juris Doctor degree and have taught law courses at the law school. I am what Creswell
(1998) describes as an “active learner who can tell the story from the participants’ view
rather than as an ‘expert’ who passes judgment on participants” (p. 18).

My “insider” status and law school affiliation afforded me the opportunity to
interview participants who would not ordinarily agree to participate in a study. For
example, one participant agreed to participate in my study by virtue of the fact that I
worked for Michigan State University College of Law. Another participant agreed to
participate in my study because it was felt that I could appreciate the importance of
preserving confidentiality.

Verification of Data

Given the potential for bias in a qualitative study, it is extremely important that
the findings are reported accurately and in an ethical manner, if they are to be considered
to be valid and reliable (Creswell, 1994; Merriam, 1998). Validity can be either internal
or external. As Merriam (1998) notes, “[i]nternal validity deals with the question of how
research findings match reality” (p. 201 ). External validity focuses on whether the
findings of one study can be applied to other situations (Creswell, 1994; Merriam, 1998).
In the case of internal validity, I chose to use member checks, which were accomplished
by taking my interpretations back to each participant and asking if the results were
accurate (Creswell, 1994, Merriam, 1998). With regard to external validity, the make-up

of the sample population in my study proved to be a representative sample of the larger

48

population. For example, the 14 participants in my study were located at 10 different
ABA-approved law schools. The make-up of the law school sites (research and non-
research institutions, Carnegie Foundation classification, and type of institution — public,
private, etc.), and US. News and World Report makings are consistent with the make-up
of the law schools in previous studies (Borthwick & Schau, 1991; Fossum, I980;
Redding, 2003). The training before becoming faculty members and law schools where
their Juris Doctors were obtained are also consistent with what has been reported in
previous studies Borthwick & Schau, 1991; Fossum, 1980; Redding, 2003).
Limitations of the Study

Since this was an exploratory qualitative study, both purposeful and small
samples were used for the purpose of obtaining meaningful data that could be used to
solve the research question (Creswell, 1998; Merriam, 1998; Patton, 1990). Although the
sample population used in my study might be a representative sample of the larger
population, only generalizations have been made throughout my study to describe how
socialization occurs for law faculty. Also, while socialization experiences vary from one
law school to another, based on such factors, as institutional cultures and missions, type
of institution (research versus non-research; national versus regional, public versus
private, etc.), and the law school’s US. News and World Report rank, the findings in my
study limited reporting to the socialization experiences that were common to study

participants.

49

Chapter 4: Findings

Introduction

How socialization occurs for tenure-track law faculty who are only professionally
trained was the focus of my exploratory study. The experience of the 14 participants
prior to entering the tenure system is as follows: Practical experience ranged from 2 to
17 years, with the majority of faculty entering the tenure system after having only five or
less years of experience; most participants worked in ajudicial clerkship; half of them
had prior teaching experience ranging from 6 months to 3 years; and several participants
participated in a professor training program that was designed to assist law graduates
segue into academe. A summary of the experience is shown in Table 7 with detailed

information found in Table 8.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summary of Participant Pre-Tenure-Track Experiences
Years of Practical Experience Before 2 to 17 years
Entering Academia
Judicial Clerkships 9 participants
Prior Teaching Experience under 3 years 7 participants
Participation in Professor Training Program 4 participants

Table 7

 

 

Two primary themes emerged from the data. The first theme surrounds the
amount of anticipatory socialization that participants possessed when they first assumed
their position as tenure-track law faculty. The second theme is centered around
organizational socialization and how this process occurred for participants as new tenure-
track law faculty. To identify study participants while preserving anonymity they are

referred to as “he” regardless of gender and pseudonyms are used, as noted in Table 8.

50

Anticipatory Socialization
Participants were all trained in professional programs that were designed to prepare them
for the practice of law. After graduation, a few participated in professor training

programs designed to

 

Backgrounds of Study Participants

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pseudonym Judicial Years of Law Participation in Teaching
Clerkship? Practice a Professor Experience B4
Experience Training Tenure-track
Program?
Professor Albert Yes 2 years No 6 months
Professor Brinks No 7 years No None
Professor Campbell Yes 2 years Yes 3 years
Professor Drummond Yes 5 years Yes 2 years
Professor Egan Yes 2 Ears No None
Professor Francis Yes 2 years No None
Professor Greene Yes 7 years Yes years
Professor Henry No 16 years No None
Professor Ink Yes 4 years No None
Professor Johns Yes 3 years Yes 2 years
Professor Kay No 15 years No None
Professor Lowe Yes 3 years No None
Professor Mims No 3 Lears No 6 months
Professor Nunn No 17 years No 6 months
Table 8

 

prepare practicing attorneys for academe. Virtually every participant attended the
Workshop for New Law Teachers sponsored by the Association of American Law
Schools (AALS) the summer prior to assuming their first position, to gain insight about
what it means to be law faculty. The themes that emerged when participants describe
how these programs assisted them in understanding the various aspects of faculty work
will be discussed in this section. The themes that emerged when participants described
what they learned about job expectations of their employing institutions, based on
promotion and tenure policies provided during the interviewing process will also be

discussed.

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Professor training programs. Four of the 14 participants were able to take
advantage of law professor training programs that are sponsored by a few high ranked
law schools. Professor training programs are offered by a small number of ABA-
approved law schools in the form of fellowship programs. Fellows are provided
opportunities to teach, work on scholarship, and have access to mentoring and
networking opportunities; fellows are required to publish an article by the end of the
program, or produce an article that is publishable quality; and many of the programs
require fellows to teach a section of legal research and writing to first-year law students.
Some of the programs also require fellows to devote the first year in the program entirely

to research and the second year to teaching (Cain and Pincus, n.d.).

Individuals who participate in these programs are usually referred to as Visiting
Assistant Professors, even though they are not visiting from another law school. It was
understood by all professor training program participants and the sponsoring institutions,
that participants were being groomed to go on to be professors at other law schools.
Professor Campbell who participated in a professor training program shared how these
programs are “designed to help people segue from law practice into law teaching.”
Professor Campbell went on to describe how the training program was for two years and
“you’re there for four semesters, and you teach two of them, and have time to write the
other two, and they sort of groom you for a career as a law professor.” Professor Daniels
who Participated in a different professor training program commented that the program is
deSigned to assist its “graduates who have been practicing law and who want to go into

law teaching[.]” Professor Johns felt “[i]t was an atmosphere that was low pressure

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because I was not trying to impress the people that I was working with in the sense that I
was trying to get them to hire me.”

There was consensus that scholarship is the primary focus of the programs. When
asked how the training program prepared participants for teaching, Professor Greene
noted that “the support that I’ve gotten [at my current law school] in terms of preparing
me to do the job . . .[is] much more fulsome than what I received in [the professor
training program]. Professor Greene further explained how participating in the professor
training program was a way to get “sort of the [Prestigious School] imprimatur when you
are going out on the [job] market[.] [I]t was [also] a way to get some writing time for me
and be paid to teach and write at the same time before I went out on the market.”

When asked if what he was currently doing as a law faculty was what he
expected, Professor Campbell responded,

I think so. I think in terms of the job responsibilities, it’s not far off from what I

would have thought. I was to some extent, exposed to the culture [in my

professor training program], before I accepted a tenure-track job, . . . . And so I

was in that sort of cultural milieu and sort of got a sense of what it was that people

did. So it didn’t really come as a surprise.

Workshop for new law teachers. Virtually every participant noted how they were
encouraged by their employing institutions to attend the annual Workshop for New Law
Teachers sponsored by the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). The three-
day workshop sponsored every summer is designed for newly appointed law faculty and
faculty with up to two years of teaching experience. The workshop addresses issues of

teaching, scholarship, service, and other concerns of new law faculty.

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A variety of sessions are held during the workshop. The sessions include:
Preparing for Your First Semester of Teaching; Learning Theory; Question and Answer;
Teaching Techniques and Demonstrations - Upper Level, First Year, Technology, and
Seminar; Assessment and Institutional Citizenship; Scholarship, and Junior Faculty
Feedback. The length of the sessions vary, with the shortest session — Question and
Answer — lasting 30 minutes and the longest session — Scholarship — lasting two hours.
In addition to workshop sessions, new law faculty are exposed to networking and
mentoring opportunities through small group discussions, sponsored meals that have
keynote speakers, receptions and informal gatherings. A complete agenda of the
Workshop is found in Appendix G.

The vast majority of participants in my study attended the workshop and
regardless of their level of training, felt they benefited in some way. For example,
Professor Kay, who had extensive practical experience and no prior teaching experience
commented how the workshop “was about the most formal piece of information that I got
in a real broad sense. Nothing specific to your university.” Professor Lowe, with less
than five years of practical experience and only a few years of teaching experience, found
the workshop to be “generally helpful,” but felt that

we don’t do enough of it. I think it would have been better if there was a sort of

follow-up workshop. Once you teach for at least a couple of months, to sort of

know that you actually understand what a day looks like, here’s advice on how to
go about that. I was told certain things during the new faculty workshop which
have all proven to be true. But I didn’t quite know exactly what I was being told

at the time because I hadn’t actually started teaching.

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Professor Johns who participated in a professor training program also found the
workshop beneficial in a number of ways:
I found it to be helpful. There were still sessions and ideas I hadn’t thought about.
You know, I had two years of teaching experience at that point and so there[‘s]
definitely . . . new things to learn. [O]ne of the ways I’ve learned is by talking to
colleagues, watching colleagues both here and at other schools, and I found it to
be a very useful opportunity for meeting people at other schools which was nice.
[T]hey divided us up by substantive area for some of the breakout groups and so it
was helpful to meet people who were about in the same place in their career,
working in the same areas in which I was working, and I still draw on those
resources. Those are still people I turn to when I have questions about things.
Professor Francis, who possessed no prior teaching experience before becoming a
tenure-track faculty member, believed the AALS Workshop provided valuable insight
regarding teaching, but did not share the same opinion regarding scholarship:
It gave me a couple of ideas about how to structure a class, but it really was not
helpful at all, especially on the scholarship side. The scholarship side, it really
did not communicate to me what I was getting myself into. The teaching, it was
little bit more helpful, because they talked about learning theory. One thing that I
took out of that, for instance, if you can use visuals, if you can do group activities,
all of that will help students learn and have a better experience in the class. So

that’s one thing I took away that was very useful.

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While Professor Ink found the AALS Workshop helpful, he was of the opinion
that the informal aspect of the workshop might have proven to be more beneficial to
attendees:

I thought it was great for what I got out of it. I’m not sure that if you had taken

200 new law professors and just let us hang out for two days we wouldn’t have

gotten close to the same thing. You know, meeting other people who were new,

seeing what they were thinking about I think was helpful. There was one thing on
teaching that was helpful, I think, that kind of talked about the firings you needed
to do and that you needed to be yourself and you could think about doing these
creative things. But you had to be careful of your institution because some
institutions weren’t going to like your being creative.

Promotion and tenure policies. Participants knew that, to gain tenure, they must
be good teachers, published scholars, and good citizens. But the steps and processes that
must be followed to achieve these objectives were not known at the time they took their
faculty positions. While participants were provided copies of their employing institutions
tenure policies, the lack of clarity in promotion and tenure policies is a theme that
emerged in the data.

For the most part, participants did not feel that their candidate “call back”
interviews provided enough insight into exactly what was expected of a tenure-track law
professor. The interviewing law school search committees focused on such things as the
“niche . . . that they had been interviewed for”, or communicating how important
teaching and scholarship was to the tenure process, without providing specific details. As

Professor Francis pointed out,

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you have a general expectation of what different schools have and you have the

opportunity to ask questions. But I really didn’t get a good idea of what this

particular job entailed until the dean actually called me up and gave me an offer,
and gave me the offer letter. At that point, I knew sort of what my teaching
package was going to be, how many classes I would have to teach, what the
teaching standards were in terms in number of articles. . . . . But in terms of the
interview process, I really didn’t have much of an idea.

Although participants acknowledged that their employing institution possessed
some form of tenure policy, there were very few faculty who said that their understanding
of what was expected of them was a result of reviewing the tenure policy. Two
participants who commented on their law school’s tenure policy had differing opinions
about its clarity. Professor Campbell felt that the “clearest message that I got regarding
what my responsibilities were going to be when I got here was the tenure policy that was
sent to me.” Professor Henry believed that the tenure policy possessed “a lot more
information beyond the paper” with expectations that were “even higher than the paper”.
So he “used the [tenure policy] as a baseline to have informal conversations with faculty
colleagues.”

A possible rationale for the lack of clarity in tenure policies that many participants
encountered during the interview process was provided by Professor Kay:

Probably from the [law school’s] perspective, they thought they were clear. I’d

have to say no, and part of that has to do with I came from a business environment

where I’m used to a level of clarity that is not always the case in academia. [Job

expectations] were fuzzy enough where, with my own initiative, I was able to

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figure out some things by continuing to ask questions. And I can tell you now,

not everything is still crystal clear.

Another possible rationale that might explain why law school tenure policies were
not explicit in helping participants understand what is expected of them as tenure-track
faculty is a heavy reliance on what Professor Lowe referred to as “common law.” That
is, “one infers”, or “people telling what made somebody successful or made somebody
fail” in obtaining tenure. Professor Mims also noted,

I think it’s kind of interesting looking back . . ., but I think that’s how it was

pitched to me, what they were expecting was not like here’s what we expect you

to do this year. It’s more here’s what you need to do to get tenure five, six years
from now. [T]hat was passed informally. . . . . I think, talking to several
different people and hearing the same message.

Organizational Socialization

Organizational socialization occurs when an individual has acquired the values,
attitude, norms, knowledge and skills needed to be accepted into the group of which he
aspires to be a member. The promotion and tenure process provides the best example of
how socialization occurs for new law faculty. Although new law faculty assume their
first position with an understanding that teaching, scholarship, and services are the three
requirements to attain tenure, they encounter many challenges as they learn their roles,
particularly since they were trained in professional programs that were not intended to
prepare them for academia. The themes that emerged in the data to assist in answering
the research question “How do tenure-track law faculty who have been only

professionally trained become socialized?” are discussed in this section.

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Teaching. A lack of anticipatory socialization for participants seems to be a
predominant theme that emerged in the data, particularly as it relates to teaching.
Although trained in professional programs that were not designed to prepare aspiring law
faculty for academia, most participants had little opportunity to learn about academe after
graduating from law school and before becoming tenure-track faculty. As Professor
Brinks noted, “[w]hat seems to be still the more predominant pattern that people follow
for law schools, at least, is law school, then perhaps some sort of clerkship, then either
directly into academia or perhaps with one or two years of practice experience and then
into academics.”

Many participants used statements such as “trial and error”, “sink or swim”, “just
figure it out”, and “trial by fire” to describe their first-year experience in the classroom,
and they provided a number of reasons for having these feelings, such as what was
provided by Professor Kay’s comments:

I am actually surprised, particularly those of us with just JDs who teach at law

school, how it is that we learn to be good teachers, because one of the things I

often think about is that at the elementary school and high school levels, there’s a

big push now to have teachers have subject matter expertise as opposed to

learning to be good teachers. And at the graduate school level, I’ll just give law
school as an example, there’s now more concern, well you’re subject matter
experts but you’re not good teachers and then there’s more learning now about
how it is that adults learn. . . . . And so I often sit and think well, I have lots and
lots of subject matter expertise, but I don’t know how to incorporate issues related

to adult learning into teaching. And I don’t know how to embrace that, to figure it

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out. I don’t have time to research and study it or, you know, as many people say
here, ‘well, I read an article about it.’ Well, that’s not the same to me as research
and studying something, now how do I turn that into something that is practical.
And so I kinda just do what I think makes sense for me personally.

While many participants were not socialized to become law faculty, the majority

of them relied heavily on how they were trained as law students to give them a starting

point in the classroom as new law faculty. Professor Ink captured the sentiments of these

participants:

I went to law school and that’s probably what a lot of us say. I mean, that’s your
vision of a law professor, right? I had 30 of them, 40 of them and I know which
ones I liked and which ones I didn’t like. And so you try to emulate the ones that
you like as opposed to the ones you didn’t like.

Although emulating their law professors may have been a starting point in the

classroom for participants, they quickly realized after assuming their first faculty

position, how much they were lacking in anticipatory socialization. That is, most

participants underestimated the amount of time it took to prepare for class, despite their

exposure to teaching during their professional program training. As noted by Professor

Albert,

I come from a school where a lot of people aspire to law teaching and a lot of
people have gone on to law teaching. So I had fiiends of mine who were a year to
two ahead of me who . . . had entered [teaching] a year or two before I did. . . . .
So one thing everyone always said was that your first couple of years, you will

spend an incredible amount of time preparing for class. And I said, okay, and I

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understood that intellectually, but when I got there, the amount of time it took to
prep up a class, in the first semester that I was there was really incredible. . . . . I
worked even harder in the second semester to get my class prepped up. . . . . It’s
just a shock to your system, even if you’ve been told and intellectually appreciate
that it will take time to prepare for class. And I had taught before even. So, it’s
not as if I had never prepared a lesson. But law lessons are different. . . . .
There’s a lot more preparation. Especially if you want to be able to succinctly
explain black letter law. And at the same time also have interesting discussions
about big picture issues that surface in particular cases.
Professor Johns underestimated the amount of time it took to prepare for class in
the first-year for a different reason:
[I]n working with students, it sort of opened my eyes to the fact that we don’t all
come with the same interests, same abilities, same background knowledge. We
don’t come with the same learning styles. We don’t come with the same goals.
And that all affects how each student learns. And I guess that [is] the thing that I
most unanticipated was how much, in going back and teaching, I really have to
reanalyze and think about all those things. I guess I kind of had this foolish
notion that it was like, well, I can explain this in a way that I understood and it’ll
reach everyone. And you know, of course that’s not the case. And so I’ve had to
learn how to sort of rethink and realize the things that I thought were wonderful in
law school and that I really enjoyed professors doing, actually, not all students
love that and it doesn’t work for all students. And so kind of the thing that was

unanticipated was how much time I’d spend actually just thinking about rather

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than substance of law, the learning style, the pedagogy I want to use in presenting

the material. . . . . It’s just something I didn’t anticipate I would be doing.

What also appears to be consistent among the majority of participants is their
feeling that they were left to figure out on their own how to be effective teachers.
Professor Brinks, with extensive practical experience but no prior teaching experience,
captured the essence of what most participants expressed:

[W]hen it came to the classroom, my biggest question was how do I figure out a

pace for the material and how do I figure out how to occupy [students] in one

class that’s an hour, it was the first year, it was, let’s see, an hour and 15 minutes.

And the other one was a full hour and a half, two hours. . . . . [I] thought that’s a

long period of time. . . . . I had to think about how do you develop a syllabus?

What do you put in a course description? How do you write a final exam? . . . . I

had to learn those things . . . they didn’t say here’s your one day orientation.

Here’s what we accept, here’s what we expect for exams. Here’s the program on

how to stand in front of a class and teach. Here’s how you write a syllabus. None

of that.

Socialization experiences of Ph. D.s compared to non-Ph. D. s. While all
participants possessed Juris Doctor degrees, none of them possessed Ph.D.s. So, many
participants believed that the lack of a Ph.D. may have presented additional challenges as
they learned how to be effective teachers. As Professor Ink noted,

[I]f there’s a criticism of us as JDs in teaching, it’s that we don’t necessarily have

any clue about what good teaching is, how to teach well, what the pedagogy is of

why it’s good to do one over another. We’re, in a sense, repeating methods we’ve

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learned by watching and then modifying them to see what works. But I think that
criticism likely applies to Ph.Ds too. The only difference may be that they get
more practice. [But w]hen we walk in the door, we’re expected to know how to
do this thing of educating that nobody’s really taught us how to do.
On the other hand, a number of the participants believe that “lawyers as lawyers are
doing more teaching than maybe a Ph.D. candidate” because lawyers “spend a lot of time
as lawyers in [their] craft teaching, even in transaction work.”

It was very evident during my interviews that participants who possessed
extensive practical experience exuded a level of confidence and calmness when
describing their teaching experiences as new law faculty that did not seem to be present
with participants who had considerably less practical experience. For example, Professor
Henry with more than 10 years of practical experience shared,

I probably spend less time getting ready for class than other new teachers because

I am comfortable being down there and I am comfortable with a thin margin of

safety. I have been in trial. There are times where the witness wasn’t prepared,

the witness doesn’t do it the way we expected. Not that it went perfectly but I am
comfortable that I can get myself through a problem. And then many times, the
testimony or the class goes the best when I didn’t over think it, when I didn’t over
prepare. I have a gut sense of what needs to be done. But that takes some
confidence and it takes experience, having gone through experiences where you
didn’t prepare all day or all night. Look back and say, that was fine. I’m not

saying I go unprepared into class but I don’t need to go over and over what I’m

going to do.

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Professor Nunn who also had more than 10 years of practical experience
commented that his non-law teaching experience did not adequately prepare him for law
school teaching, but the combination of prior teaching and practical training gave him a
level of comfort in the classroom. Professor Nunn stated that

I am very comfortable speaking in front of groups and I am good on my feet and I

can divorce myself from what I am going to say next to be able to listen to what

the student is saying. So I am not concerned about my response as much as I am
at the moment of really trying to understand and listen to what the student’s
question was, where their concerns are, why they’re not getting what I said the
first time. I think that comes with a certain level of confidence about an ability to
respond. . . . . I was an appellate litigator for a long time and so I, you know, it’s
the same process, I went before a panel of judges and I had to be responsive to
their questions. So instead of worrying about what I was going to say, I had to
listen to what they were asking and then somehow you just develop the skill to be
able to respond quickly. I think there’s nothing more frustrating for a student to
be in a classroom and be trying to communicate a concern or question and the
teacher is not able to get or too worried about going on or is not focusing on what
they’re saying.

The lack of formal socialization in the first-year forced participants to be
resourceful. Professor Daniels described how he did the “traditional law school thing.
Ask around for other people’s syllabi, look at a bunch of textbooks, and then sink or

swim[]”, while Professor Lowe used the art of listening to perfect his teaching skills:

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Part of how I learned how to do the teaching was hearing other people describe
sort of in snippets and offhand comments what they do in class. . . . . I have
rarely, if ever, had a sort of clear conversation with anybody about what they do
in the classroom. So you know, honestly, the way I’ve sort of gotten a sense of
what I’m supposed to do in the classroom is by hearing, you know, maybe older
colleagues regarded as a good teacher of say, oh, you know, I did my PowerPoints
today and that went really well. Or hearing somebody say you know, the students

did a good job answering my questions today. Or hearing somebody say my

lecture didn’t go over well today and then sort of more specifically, . . . or didn’t

work. I really feel this profession does an awful job of telling people what you’re
supposed to do in the classroom.

It was common practice for participants to receive feedback in the form of written
evaluations from their tenure advisory committees, student evaluations, and annual
reviews from their deans. The vast majority of participants described the formal
feedback they received from their tenure advisory committees and senior colleagues
regarding their teaching to be similar to what was described by Professor Francis:

[E]very semester you have two tenured faculty members visit your class and

review it. They sit down with you after their review and say ‘here are some

pointers. Here are some things that you might want to be doing differently.’

They also gave a written report for your tenure file.

Professor Kay expressed concern about the effectiveness of feedback received

following only one class visit, given its limited duration:

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[T]he dean has come to class and my mentor has come to class and they give
comments. [L]ike the dean said, ‘you need to improve this and get students
engaged’. My real feeling is, well, you came to class once and you sat there for
20 minutes, . . . and I appreciate the fact that you’re more knowledgeable and you
bring a perspective that I don’t have, but to me, it’s not possible to sit in on
somebody’s class for even 50 minutes, a whole class period, and assess that. No
one has the time to sit and to do a real assessment, which to me, is to spend a
week there, in a classroom, looking at an entire class period over a week or some
other period of time. Because you might hit the day when the students don’t talk.
You might hit the day where I’m not as on. So it’s too hard to judge. I mean, I
haven’t received any critical remarks, but I haven’t received anything, even if it
was critical, that I could take and think that I would improve. They’ve been
shallow remarks to me, empty remarks.

Most participants also felt that their primary feedback comes from student course
evaluations, because they are helpful in providing a “sense of how you are doing on the
teaching side”, both formally and informally. As Professor Johns noted,

[flormally, you get evaluations. You see them, you see what the numbers are, you

see what the students’ comments are and that’s a pretty formal statement if you’re

doing a good job or you’re not. Inforrnally, you see students sign up for classes
again and you get a sense they must think your class is okay. The students here
are really great about informally saying, gee, I really like the way you did that.

Thanks. That was helpful. And equally great about saying that wasn’t really

helpfirl. Can you find another way? You should find another way to do that.

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Although the findings reveal that scholarship must be the primary focus for
tenure-track law faculty to gain tenure, the weight that is given to student opinions and
expectations cannot be taken for granted or ignored by tenure-track faculty. One reason
why student opinions and expectations must be taken seriously, according to Professor
Albert, is “[b]ecause even if you turn out to be a great scholar, . . . no one is going to
notice it for four or five years, whereas what they are going to notice . . . in two or three
months is whether your students are happy.” Professor Nunn points out the challenge
this presents:

[W]hat most people don’t appreciate is how difficult it is to teach and to be in the

classroom and how this generation of students is very consumer savvy and if their

expectations are not being met, they will be very vocal about it and you’ll have a

very short career.

Despite the effect that student opinions and expectations can have on the careers
of tenure-track law faculty, Professor Albert observed how “[s]tudents really don’t know
whether [we] are good teachers or not”, because students “reward easiness. . . . . They
reward someone who they do not fear or have any reason to fear, the professor that makes
them comfortable, that’s not threatening” in an intellectual way. On the other hand, to
gain tenure in legal education, a law professor must successfully have a certain number of
articles published in another law school’s legal publication, such as the law review.
These publications are student-edited and managed, which is another reason why student
opinions and expectations offer a challenge and must be taken seriously, at least to some

degree.

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Scholarship. Like teaching, most participants relied on how they were trained in
law school to assist in their understanding of what is expected of law faculty in terms of
scholarship. For example, Professor Greene stated:

Scholarship, I think, you know, I was on Law Review when I was [in law school].

. . .. [N]obody sort of tells you how to do the process [as a law professor], you

know, how to come up with an idea, how to narrow it down. That’s sort of a

process of trial and error. But I think it starts in law school when you start doing

research papers in law school. So . . . , I think most of us have more experience
with that than with teaching when we come to be law professors[.]

Similarly, Professor Francis captured the sentiments of participants who had
extensive practical experience and how their training as lawyers assisted them as law
faculty:

In terms of the research, I had done a number of clerkships and worked in practice

and things like that. And had done appellate work. So a lot of the stuff I was

doing in practice was sort of high level thinking type stuff. And so in that way I

sort of had ideas about how to do sort of high level scholarship and thinking.

Certainly not the amount of abstractness, I guess is the word for it, in terms of the

academy, in terms of the theory and stuff. But in terms of just doing high level

thinking and doing high level work, I think I had a little bit of that in practice.
Professor Ink also provided insight about the benefit of practical experience to
scholarship: “[W]hat I had to learn to do on scholarship was just switch from more of a

legal brief type of writing to more of a law review type of writing.”

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While all participants acknowledged that scholarship is a key factor in gaining
tenure, teaching was the primary focus of the majority of participants during their first
year as law faculty. However, the lack of attention to scholarship was not intentional.
Rather, it was a result of having limited time in the first year and quickly recognizing that
“you should be able to get a piece done . . . within a summer”, and “[i]t doesn’t have to
set the world on fire.” For example, Professor Albert whose law school requires contract
renewal votes each year prior to tenure noted that “the idea is you have two articles
before tenure, you don’t have to have any [published] articles to be renewed.” Professor
Mims pointed out that “I got the message [that if] you want tenure, this is what you have
to do. . . . [W]hat they were expecting was not like here’s what we expect you to do this
year. It’s more here’s what you need to do to get tenure five, six years from now.”
Professor Ink noted how his school “pushes people not to write in their first year” and “to
put all of our time and effort into teaching.”

In addition to the demands that teaching placed on participants in their first year
as new law faculty, Professor Drummond talked of how teaching a first year course
places even greater stress on a new faculty member’s ability to focus on scholarship.
That is, although Professor Drummond acknowledged that scholarship should place the
greatest demand on a tenure-track faculty member’s time, he realized that

[i]n a semester in which I’m teaching a first year class, the teaching and the

associated visits from students to my office, etc., can consume an equal number or

maybe even a greater number of hours for that, you know, 13 week period when

I’m actually teaching that class than my scholarship. But on yearly basis, or a

year-to-year basis, scholarship consumes the most of my time.

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Another reason why the focus of participants in the first year was more on
teaching than on scholarship has to do with the fact that, in most cases, candidates for
tenure-track law faculty positions are “expected to have prior publications, [or] at least
pieces that are ready for publication to present at their [candidate interview] job talks.”
Also, in the first year, tenure-track law professors have what Professor Mims refers to as
a “grace period.” That is,

[i]f you have done some writing that you have thought about, it’s great, but you

really want those reviews. You want your teaching to get off to a good start,

because . . . it’s amazing how fast you create a reputation with students and with
faculty [as to whether] you are a good teacher.

Like teaching, most participants indicated that they received both informal and
formal feedback regarding their scholarship. Instead of mainly coming from within their
various institutions, the feedback was received from sources that were within and outside
the institution. These include “direct feedback [from] people who read your work,
conferences you went to, colleagues [at your law school] who knew something about
your field, . . . and indirect signals[,] such as where your articles are being accepted [and]
are you being invited to the right conference[.]” Professor Henry, with no prior teaching
experience and extensive practical experience before becoming a tenure-track law faculty
member points out how

I didn’t pay as much attention to law reviews as a practitioner or in college but I’d

go and read the law review articles that were considered to be fairly good, and the

good journals. [1 would] study the style, study the length, the number of

footnotes, ask colleagues what are the parameters these days. How many words?

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How many footnotes will be in an average law review article? Read[ing] the first

four pages you get an idea of the conventional layout to a law review article.

How to do the research and writing for that, I do on my own.

Overall, the insight provided by Professor Mims, who was recently tenured and
began his law faculty career with no prior teaching experience and limited practical
experience, supported what was expressed by most participants: “[T]he feedback you’ll
get is more likely to be informal than formal. So if you’re going to count on a formal
mentoring system, or a formal evaluation system, you’re going to be out of luck, very
likely.”

Service. No participant was overly concerned about their effectiveness in this
area during their first year. In addition to service being the least important requirement to
attain tenure, the overwhelming rationale behind the lack of concern for performance in
this area was summed up by Professor Ink: “1 think anybody getting into this business
knows that nobody loses tenure on service.” Despite this knowledge many participants
devoted more time to service than anticipated. As Professor Johns stated:

I underestimated the amount of time I would spend outside of the classroom,

administratively and with student organizations and students themselves, trying to

help them and help out. . . . . [W]hen I came here and first saw committee
assignments, I thought ‘big deal’. A faculty meeting once a month, sit on this

committee, but then of course, that’s not the case. That actually takes a

significant amount of time. . . . . That was not even on my radar, so obviously

that didn’t comport with my expectations.

7]

Although opinions varied regarding the explicitness of tenure policies and
procedures, as related to job expectations, participants generally agreed that service is the
least important of the three requirements for tenure. Several referred to the requirements
for earning tenure as a “three legged stool” with legs that are not equal in size.
“[S]cholarship has got the longest leg, then teaching”, and “service being sort of a distant
third.” Simply stated, service is viewed by participants as an “acceptable factor”, because
it is common knowledge that tenure is never lost because of service, as long as you do
your “committee assignment[s] that you’re forced to take[.]” This may explain why
Professor Drummond stated that “the most important thing I do is scholarship and the
most important thing I do is teaching. I can’t say the most important thing I do is also
service.”

Professor Francis provided insight that might explain why service demanded so
much time of these early career faculty, despite the fact that participants believe that
tenure decisions are primarily based on performance in scholarship and teaching.

[F]rom the dean’s eyes, [service is] very important. Like you’ve gotta be a team

player and you gotta get your stuff done. From the rest of the faculty, I don’t

think they keep score of who’s on what committee or who’s doing a good job on
what committee. I mean, you can certainly set yourself apart and get to know
people better when you’re serving on these committees. But in terms of how
many committees you serve on, I don’t think people notice. So I don’t think in
terms of the tenure vote, other than maybe the dean’s impression of you, I think

committee service really doesn’t make all that much difference.

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Organizational culture. Although each law school culture is unique, adapting to
the culture, along with the challenges that this presents, is something that all participants
have in common. The findings reveal that the primary reason why adapting to a law
school’s culture was so challenging is due to the number of “unwritten rules” that exist
within it. In most cases, violation of these “unwritten rules” would be viewed as a
violation of the culture in the eyes of colleagues or students. The findings also reveal that
a lack of understanding of the culture does affect tenure decisions for new law faculty, as
noted by Professor Greene:

[T]here’s sort of a cultural understanding of what the tenure code requires, that

it’s not necessarily codified. For example, the tenure code doesn’t talk about a

specific quantum of scholarship that’s required. . . . . I think it actually says at

least two law review articles that are published or have been accepted for
publication, or the equivalent. . . .. But even at least two is not sufficient, even

though it says at least two. I don’t think anybody believes that two is enough. . . .

. [T]hat’s an instance where I think the culture is different from the code.

Another example of where the culture is different from the code is found in what
several participants referred to as the unspoken fourth requirement to gain tenure. This
fourth requirement is referred to as the “likeability” or “personality test which few
faculties talk about”, because, as Professor Mims observes,

[i]f they like you, they’re willing to overlook some weaknesses that they might

not for someone they don’t like. . . . . [W]hen I say like, I mean, are you

personable on a committee? Do you do the kind of work [that is expected of

you]? Are you a pain to deal with, and so on. And so that comes into play and I

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think it kind of fits into all three groups . . . . What we say sometimes of service

is, are you a good citizen to the university, meaning, are you pulling your weight

with the committees? I also think it means are you a good colleague.

Many participants found a number of strategies to assist with the so-called fourth
requirement of tenure, such as having “lunch with everybody on the faculty” for the
purpose of passing the “lunch test.” “That is, some people will judge [you] based on
whether they want to have lunch with [you].” Other strategies include interacting with
colleagues in order to get “to know the lay of the land”, and making every effort to make
sure that students like you.

Another instance where participants found the culture to be different than the code
is in the periodic review process that occurs for tenure-track faculty. Most participants
felt that being subjected to periodic progress reviews for tenure is even more stressful in
that tenure documents only “objectively says this is what you have to do to achieve
tenure,” but do not have “clearly quantifiable” standards that can be measured during the
process. There were a number of participants whose law schools require annual renewal
contracts, in addition to annual reviews, for their tenure-track law faculty. These
participants note how this causes even greater stress to an already challenging process.
For example, Professor Albert notes,

my school has renewal votes every year when you’re untenured. . . . . [I]t’s an

important feature of the job that you will have an annual renewal and evaluation

process that I had no idea coming in. . . . . And didn’t really appreciate what the
contours of it would be, and I’m still learning what the contours of it are, because

initially, it’s just teaching. Now it’s teaching and scholarship. . . . . [I]t’s always

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nervous to know that tomorrow there will be a vote on whether you have a job

next year. . . . . The idea that you could potentially not have a job the next year,

and have only four months of notice basically can induce some nervousness,
unnecessary nervousness.

Mentoring. Several participants mentioned that their law schools have recently
created faculty development committees. Professor Drummond spoke of how the faculty
development committee at his school “assigns to each [professor training program
participant] and new tenure-track faculty member a mentor for teaching and a mentor for
scholarship. And those people are charged with checking in on the development of
syllabi and visiting classes[, etc.]” For the most part, participants felt that there is not
much formal mentoring. Professor Henry believed that one factor is due to lack of
mentors: “If you ask the senior members, is mentoring part of your responsibility, most
of them are going to say yes. But then if you ask, . . . how many of [your colleagues]
spend significant time mentoring junior faculty, that would be a much smaller group.”

The perceived level of anticipatory socialization possessed by certain new faculty
members is another factor. For example, Professor Nunn who had prior teaching
experience and extensive practical experience said,

I’m well into mid-career and very experienced and mature, I think maybe they

have been more hands off in terms of trying to actually train me or educate me

about the role of being a law professor. So I don’t know if I were . . . years
younger, just starting out in my career, whether they would be more hands on,

more mentoring.

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On the other hand, Professor Nunn also observed, “1 did have a faculty member assigned
to me, but you know, we just really haven’t ever really met and I haven’t really felt the
need to use that person or ask [for] help.”

Professor Kay, who had extensive practical experience expressed his feeling of
isolation,

I enjoy the research and the time to be able to think about it but what I don’t enjoy

right now is the sense of isolation as I do it. I feel that if I had a better systematic

way of involving colleagues and others in the profession along with what I do. . .

. . But I do think it will come as I get to more conferences and get to know other

people who teach in my discipline and have a broader network outside of the

school.

Exposure to informal mentoring that was not organized and prearranged by the
employing institution was much more prevalent with participants than formal mentoring.
Also, most of those interviewed gained much more insight about learning how to be law
faculty through informal mentoring, as compared to what was learned through formal
mentoring. Many participants shared the perspective on informal mentoring expressed by
Professor Francis who pointed out that “[o]ther untenureds really want to see the younger
folks [succeed]. They sort of see it as their duty to give the inside scoop, the real scoop.”
Professor Francis goes on to observe that

[t]he senior folks, like third and fourth year into their tenure-track want to sit

down and say here’s what [your] experience is going to be . . . and here’s some of

the things that you should think about. Research is A, number one and you

should really focus on getting this many articles . . . and try to place them here

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and here’s the best time to send them out . . . . So really, the more senior

untenureds have been really honest about what the expectations are because

they’ve sort of been socialized into the institution.

Another reason why participants felt they gain greater insight on learning how to
be tenure-track law faculty through informal mentoring centers around compatibility, as
described by Professor Mims:

[W]hat I think happen[s] is what happens in a lot of places, whether it’s law

schools or not, is I kind of picked up on mentors and people who I liked and who

I trusted, and . . . would ask for their advice. You know, how’s this going? Do

you think this is going well? Am I on the right path and so on. So there was no

sort of formal . . . memos or groups or anything like that but, talking to people I

was able to get a sense of [whether] . . . things look good or this is what you might

need to work on and so forth.

Ways that informal mentoring evolved for many participants was through
networking, both within their employing institutions and across institutions. Professor
Francis believed, “[t]here’s nothing formal about the process of advising, . . . [on] how to
do your job. . . . [I]t’s all about,” taking the initiative to learn through “anecdotes . . .
going out to [lunch or] dinner . . .[,] hearing war stories”, attending conference, and
asking questions.

Also, observation is a form of networking that many participants found very
beneficial in learning how to be law faculty. Professor Johns’ comments captured these

sentiments:

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[T]he thing that most taught me how to be a law professor is watching the law
professors around me. That’s how I still learn how to be a law professor is
watching the people more senior to me and how they do it and how they
prioritize, how they balance, how they allocate their time amongst [the] three
prongs of [teaching, scholarship and service] What do they do within those three
prongs? It’s everything from big picture, how to prioritize and balance those
three prongs every day like little stuff about how to present material in the
classroom. I mean, every bit I learn from observing them. I learn from talking to
colleagues at other schools, and I learn from talking to my junior colleagues here
as well, and then some by trial and error. But mostly by just looking and
watching and seeing what other people are doing [and who gets tenure].
In addition, although participants recognize that “service really doesn’t make all that
much difference” in terms of tenure decisions, Professor Francis noted how service
provides networking opportunities: “[Y]ou can certainly set yourself apart and get to
know people better when you’re serving on [] committees.”

Concerns for law faculty of color. Although it did not emerge as a theme in the
data, two participants commented on experiences that are unique to women and law
faculty of color during the socialization process that should not be ignored. Professor
Campbell shared,

I do think that there are gender and racial aspects to the experience of junior

faculty members which we did not really touch on. I just know from talking to

other people that perceptions can be quite different, even seemingly similar facts.

So I think people can have a negative reaction, or vice versa, because of the lenses

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that we view stuff through. So I recognize that based on what I’m telling you, I’m
talking as a white male. And in my experience, it’s a white male institution for
the most part. Male in terms of leadership here. It’s a pretty white student body.
It’s a pretty white faculty. And it has some cases practical implications to
teaching, as one. Plenty of studies show teaching evaluations tend to be biased
along those lines. So I do think that in terms of how people are treated by
students and to some extent by leadership can be affected by gender and race. I’m
not sure that I’m in the best position to tell you what exactly the issues would be
but I do recognize that there can be different reactions and different experiences
based on someone’s identity.
[I]t sounds like you are not studying that but I do think, to draw general
conclusions without at least exploring or identifying that certain issues can be
perceived very differently depending on who you are talking to.
Professor Lowe, a faculty member of color, believes he does not receive the
support from the administration or respect from students because of his race:
My first year or so here, I thought the school was doing a better job in being
receptive to minority faculty than it is. And I’ve sort of come to realize that
there’s a lot of work to do. Not necessarily on the faculty level, but on the student
level. . . . students are allowed to sort of pick on minority faculty and deans.
My theory is that the reason it happens is that administration are invested in
having students feel that the law school is responsive to them.
Professor Kay, another faculty of color, commented how students of color see him as a

resource. This could be viewed as a benefit and a detriment to Professor Kay. It is a

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benefit because students of color have a role model. When faculty of color serve as the
only resource for students of color, this role could place an added burden on the professor
that takes away from time available for scholarship or other requirements of tenure.

As Professor Campbell aptly noted, the focus of my exploratory study was on the
socialization of recently tenured and tenure-track law faculty, which was designed to
focus on common themes involving faculty socialization. However, the concerns raised
by Professors Campbell and Lowe deserve mentioning because these concerns have been
the focus of studies in other disciplines and are themes that will likely emerge in studies
on law faculty socialization with a different focus than my exploratory study.

Summary

How socialization occurs for tenure-track law faculty who were only
professionally trained was the focus of this exploratory study. According to participants
in my study the promotion and tenure process plays a significant role in the socialization
of tenure-track law faculty, and the granting of tenure is based on three requirements -
teaching, scholarship, and service. Despite the significant role that promotion and tenure
plays in the socialization process, participants felt that tenure policies lacked clarity.
Also, due to many informal and unwritten practices, tenure policies failed to provide
complete details about the promotion and tenure process.

The findings reveal that participants believed they were lacking in anticipatory
socialization when they assumed their first position as a tenure-track faculty member,
particularly in teaching. They felt left on their own to figure out how to teach law
students, even though it was known by their employing institutions that they lacked

training when they assumed their first position. So, participants began teaching by

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emulating their law professors and had underestimated the amount of time it takes to
prepare for class. Even participants with prior teaching experience underestimated the
amount of time it takes to prepare for classes in the first-year, and how this made it
difficult to focus on scholarship.

While it is was difficult for most participants to be productive scholars in their
first-year of teaching, most felt they possessed a higher level of anticipatory socialization
as scholars, compared to teaching. This was attributed to the fact that they were exposed
to scholarship while working on journals in law school, as practicing attorneys, and the
requirement that they have prior publications before becoming tenure-track faculty.
Also, no participant was overly concerned about their effectiveness in service, which is
the third requirement to gain tenure, because tenure was not lost based on service. Even
so, participants underestimated the amount of time that had to be devoted to service.

Several participants benefited from participation inprofessor training programs
that are offered by a limited number of law schools, and designed to help practicing
attorneys segue into teaching law. The benefit of participating in professor training
programs included exposure to the disciplinary culture, opportunities to teach before
becoming tenure-track faculty, time to focus on scholarship skills, and the potential of
becoming more marketable because of the prestige that the institutions offering these
programs yield.

Participants quickly learned that there were limited opportunities for formal
socialization as faculty. The primary sources of feedback on teaching were written
evaluations based on cursory classroom visits by tenure advisory committees or the dean,

and student evaluations. Participants also learned that observation, listening, and

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networking with colleagues helped to compensate for the lack of formal socialization.
With regard to scholarship, faculty got both formal and informal feedback about their
scholarship from expert readers, other attendees at conferences, colleagues, or indirectly
based on where their articles were published.

Participants also found that organizational culture can affect promotion and tenure
and therefore affect the socialization process. Most participants discovered that there
were a number of unwritten rules at their institutions and going against these rules could
be viewed as violating the culture. Faculty also spoke of how tenure decisions could be
affected by what they referred to as a fourth, but unwritten requirement of tenure, which
many called the likeability or personality test. To avoid going against this fourth
unwritten requirement of tenure, many participants developed strategies to learn the “lay
of the land”, such as networking with colleagues, and making sure they were liked by
students. While many participants were assigned formal mentors, they reported that more
informal than formal mentoring occurred. Participants prefer informal mentors because
they felt more compatible with their informal mentors.

While socialization experiences based on gender and race was not a theme that
emerged in the data, nor was it the focus of my exploratory study, concerns were
expressed by two participants regarding this population. Given that the experiences of
faculty of color and white women have been the focus of studies in other disciplines, it is

a concern worth mentioning.

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Chapter 5: Discussion
Organizational Socialization

Once a new faculty member arrives on campus both academic and cultural skills
must be mastered for socialization to occur (Tierney & Rhoads, 1994). In the case of
recently tenured and tenure-track law faculty, who were the focus of my study, the
academic skills that must be mastered are the three requirements needed to attain
tenure—teaching, scholarship and service. The cultural skills that must be mastered for
faculty socialization to occur include learning the culture of the organization and the
discipline. To assess whether skills are being learned new law faculty usually require
feedback and mentoring, which could be either formal or informal. This section will
describe how participants in my exploratory study believed organizational socialization
occurred.

Teaching. With the exception of the four faculty who felt they benefited from
participating in professor training programs before assuming tenure-track positions, most
participants began their faculty careers with little training or knowledge about what must '
be done to adequately prepare for class, different pedagogies, how to develop syllabi,
understand student learning styles and their effect on teaching, and create final exams.
Participants recognized that scholarship must be the primary focus to gain tenure, but
they struggled with finding time to produce scholarly work in the early stages of the
tenure process. Participants attribute these constraints to be a result of the unanticipated
amount of time devoted to class preparation in their first year.

Each discipline has a distinct culture that must be learned by new faculty

members for socialization to occur (Austin & McDaniels, 2006; Tierney & Rhoads,

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1994). In legal education, Socratic dialogue, also referred to as the Socratic or case
method, is the most common method for teaching law students how to “think like
lawyers” (Anzalone, 2001; Garner, 2000; McAninch, 1993). The Socratic method is also
used because it forces students to be active learners. It “involves a teacher asking a series
of questions, ideally to a single student, in an attempt to lead the student down a chain of
reasoning either forward, to its conclusion, or backward, to its assumptions” (Gamer,
2000, p. 329).

Participants in my study had enough exposure to the Socratic method in their
professional programs to appreciate it as part of the disciplinary culture, because virtually
every participant noted how they began teaching as faculty members by emulating how
they were taught in law school. Even Professor Henry, who began faculty life thinking
he could deviate from this “distinct culture”, commented that, “even if you want to have
your own style, your own approach, you are still burdened by your past.” But despite the
exposure to the Socratic method while in law school, participants still did not feel
adequately trained to teach using the Socratic method in their first year as faculty
members.

Merseth (1991) notes how just knowing the course material is not enough to teach
the Socratic method. It is a skill that “demands that instructors be thoroughly familiar
with the subject at hand, and that they also understand the characteristics of their learners
and the dynamics of group interactions” (p. 20). Simply stated, to be effective teachers
using the Socratic method requires that law faculty devote a lot of time preparing for
class (Shulman, 1992), which was quickly realized by my study participants in their first

year of teaching.

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While in law school, participants were primarily limited to observing how
professors conduct their class lectures and present course materials, which is only the first
stage in the socialization process (Anthony, 2002; Bess, 1978; Bragg, 1976). Law
students have little or no exposure to the other stages of the socialization process needed
to teach law. In addition to limiting its focus to teaching students how to think like
lawyers, law schools foster a culture in which “law faculty interact with students less
frequently and more formal . . . [and] often appear distant and aloof to students”
(Weidman et al., pp. 68-69), compared to faculty in other disciplines (Austin, 2002b;
Weidman et al., 2001). So, at the end of their professional programs, law students have
only seen the “end product” of teaching and have little knowledge about what is actually
involved in the process.

Braggs’ (1976) described a five step process to socialization:

(l) observation—the identification of a role model(s); (2) imitation—the ‘trying

on’ of the role model’s behavior; (3) feedback—the evaluation of the ‘trying on’

of behavior; (4) modification—the alteration or refinement of behavior as a result
of evaluation; and (5) intemalization—the incorporation of the role model’s
values and behavior patterns into the individual’s self-image (p. 7; see also

Anthony, 2002; Bess, 1978)

In applying these five steps to what participants in my study experienced as new teachers,
they were exposed to the first two steps of the process while in law school—observation
and imitation. Never having been exposed to the remaining three steps described by

Bragg could explain why participants had to devote so much time to class preparation in

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their first year of teaching and why they underestimated the time commitment involved in
class preparation.

While lack of training for academe is common for these early career law faculty,
what occurred for teaching tended to be more informal than formal with their employing
institutions taking more of a “hands off” approach. Participants were exposed to “trial
and error”, “sink or swim”, “just figure it out”, and “trial by fire” type experiences, just as
Tierney and Rhoads (1994) observed as common for organizational socialization.
Participants also sought out their own socialization agents, which is a common informal
approach of faculty in new situations (Austin & McDaniels, 2006; Tierney & Bensimon,
1996; Tierney & Rhoads, 1994).

Participants indicated that the formal feedback received from peers regarding their
teaching is usually limited to a single class visit each semester from members of the
tenure advisory committee, or other tenured faculty members, and sometimes the dean.
These individuals typically spent less than a complete class session observing.
Afterwards they visited with the new law faculty member to provide recommendations
for improvement. A written report of the visit and meeting was also prepared for the
tenure file and the participant had an annual meeting with the dean where teaching
effectiveness was a part of the discussion.

Although most participants felt that student evaluations were the most valuable
source of formal feedback they received regarding their teaching, they commented, with
surprise, how much the dean and tenure advisory committees rely on student evaluations
for assessing their teaching effectiveness. Participants felt students do not possess the

requisite knowledge or insight to appreciate and assess whether someone is a good

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teacher. But relying on student evaluations is not unique to legal education, as noted by
Tierney and Bensimon (1996): “Student evaluations were given much credence in every
institution we visited” (p. 63). Yet, the concerns expressed by participants have been
recognized by law schools. For example, the Report of the AALS Special Committee
(1992) revealed that reliance on student evaluations by deans and tenure review
committees is “often regarded with caution or skepticism” (p. 496), particularly if the
evaluations appear to represent “uncharacteristically favorable or unfavorable
assessments by students” (p. 496).

Scholarship. Although participants may not have focused on scholarship to
prepare them for academe during their professional training, anticipatory socialization
still occurred while they were enrolled in law school. It also continued after graduation.
As noted by a participant in the findings section, “[W]hat seems to be still the more
predominant pattern that people follow for law schools, at least, is law school, then
perhaps some sort of clerkship, then either directly into academia or perhaps with one or
two years of practice experience and then into academia.”

Law students learn that working in a legal clerkship under the supervision of a
judge upon graduation is very beneficial to the advancement of their careers, whether
they are planning to practice law or pursue a career in academe (Weidman et al., 2001).
In addition to having high grades to qualify for a clerkship, applicants must possess
strong research and writing skills. So during their professional training, law students are
trained to pursue scholarly writing, publication, and editorial position opportunities on

student-edited and published journals, such as law review.

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Training that prepared participants for academe also occurred after graduation
from law school in a number of ways. One way is through their experiences as practicing
attorneys. To adequately represent clients in adversarial proceedings, litigator and
appellate attorneys are trained to write briefs for the court that are very persuasive.
Calleros (1994) explains how persuasive writing requires, “(1) strong, but not
exaggerated, language and (2) effective emphasis through sentence structure, specificity,
and concreteness” (p. 310). In an adversarial proceeding, the court brief is prepared in a
manner that only acknowledges weaknesses of a client’s case to the extent necessary to
maintain credibility and to satisfy ethical obligations. An attorney achieves these
objectives by highlighting the arguments that are in favor of the client’s position, and
acknowledging opposing arguments, while at the same time deemphasizing the law that
is unfavorable to the client’s position (Calleros, 1994). To write a brief that is persuasive,
credible, and satisfies ethical obligations requires extensive research and strong writing
skills. Given that these are the same skills needed for quality scholarly writing, it is not
surprising that participants who had more than five years of practical training commented
how the skills and high level thinking they learned as litigators and appellate attorneys
were easily transferable to scholarly type writing.

A second way that anticipatory socialization occurred for aspiring law faculty
after graduation was during the time when participants were preparing to pursue a
position in academe. Candidates for tenure-track law faculty positions are expected to
give “job talks” during their interviews that relate to their published work, or work-in-
progress. Job talks require candidates to present their research and findings to current

faculty members and other invited guests, such as students, at the potential employing

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institution. Those in attendance are encouraged to ask questions of the candidates. The
purpose of the job talk is twofold: to gain insight about the candidate’s knowledge of the
area of law that is being presented and to observe how the candidate handles questions
and answers.

Participants felt they were more prepared to achieve in the area of research and
scholarship than in teaching when they assumed their faculty positions because they were
exposed to and had engaged in more scholarship related tasks during their professional
education and subsequent work experiences. As a result, their understanding of what was
required to gain tenure as it related to scholarship seemed to occur sooner than it did for
teaching. However, participants still experienced difficulty in moving to what Tierney
and Rhoads (1994) refer to as the role continuance phase of organizational socialization.

If anticipatory socialization for an individual comports with the culture of the
organization, role continuance will occur sooner (Tierney & Rhoads, 1994). But an
individual has to understand what is expected and adjust to those expectations before role
continuance can occur (Tierney & Rhoads, 1994). As noted earlier in this chapter
participants underestimated the amount of time it takes to be good teachers. Participants
also found it difficult to do more than course preparation and teaching in their first-year,
with the exception of devoting time to service. The difficulties experienced made it hard
to move out of the entry phase of organizational socialization (Tierney & Rhoads, 1994),
which affected participants’ ability to spend time on scholarship that is given the most
weight in promotion and tenure decisions (Anthony, 2002; Bess, 1978; Bragg, 1976).

Like teaching, participants found that little formal socialization occurred to assist

with scholarly writing. But unlike teaching where the focus was on learning how to

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become effective teachers, the emphasis of the socialization process for scholarship was
not on how to become legal researchers or writers. The focus was on how to become
legal scholars to satisfy promotion and tenure requirements. Unlike most disciplines
where faculty must publish in peer-reviewed publications to gain tenure, law faculty must
publish in another law school’s student-edited and managed legal journal, such as the law
review to gain tenure (Colbert, 2002; Day, 2007; George, 2006; Slomanson, 2000). The
more prestigious the journal, the more highly regarded is the faculty member’s work. It
is also the culture in legal education that law students determine what and who gets
published in their journals (Day, 2007; Slomanson, 2000).

Publication in a student-edited journal is not the sole criterion used to determine
whether a faculty member has produced quality scholarship, however. Quality
scholarship is determined by peers located inside and outside the faculty member’s
institution, and others who read the scholarly work of a faculty member; all of these
individuals affect the socialization process (Report of the AALS Special Committee,
1992; Solmanson, 2000). For example, participants said that they received direct
feedback from colleagues who were familiar with their field, and peers who read their
work or who observed them during conference presentations. But peer review does not
occur until the faculty member is being reviewed for tenure.

Although all law schools, whether affiliated with a university or independent, and
regardless of their Carnegie Foundation classification, require law faculty to publish in
student-edited and managed journals, there has been interest expressed by some legal
scholars to move away from this practice because of several concerns: student

membership on a law review is arbitrary and unfair, resulting in poor selection of editors;

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poor management because staffs are not trained in editing and are frequently without
supervision; there is no institutional history because editorial staffs change every year;
editorial selection of professional and student articles is flawed; and failure to publish in a
timely manner (Day, 2007; Nance & Steinberg, in press).

Serving on a law review provides many benefits to law students in their
professional training and careers, which include academe. But as a faculty member, the
requirement that articles be accepted and published in a student-edited and managed law
review to attain tenure is especially stressfirl and challenging for law faculty (Day, 2007;
Slomanson, 2000). The transformation from researcher and writer to a legal scholar is
what Bragg (1976) describes as the modification and internalization stages of the
socialization process. These are the last two stages of socialization, where “alteration or
refinement of behavior” occurs and the individual’s self-image is established as a result
of the incorporation of the values and behavior patterns of the role model (Anthony,
2002; Bess, 1978; Bragg 1976).

Service. Although participants acknowledge that service is one of the
components involved in gaining tenure, there is no evidence in my findings to indicate
whether anticipatory socialization occurred in this area. However, a lack of anticipatory
socialization in the area of service could explain participants’ reactions after assuming
their first faculty position. For example, Professor Ink was amazed that assisting a
student organization was a form of service during the tenure process, while never
providing service outside of the law school was also acceptable. Professor Johns was not
surprised that service included faculty committee assignments, but was astounded by the

significant amount of time that was required to meet this obligation.

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The experiences of Professors Ink and Johns were similar to faculty studied by
Tierney and Bensimon (1996), who found that “expectations for service varied more than
any other domain” (p. 68), and Austin (2002b) who found that anticipatory socialization
in the area of service did not occur for graduate students. Professors Ink and Johns also
experienced what Van Maanen and Schein (1979) refer to as divestiture socialization.
Divestiture occurs when the new faculty member must adapt to the culture of the
organization, whereas investiture socialization affirrns a new faculty member’s
expectation about faculty life (Austin & McDaniels, 2006; Tierney & Bensimon, 1996;
Tierney & Rhoads, 1994; Van Maanen & Schein, 1979; Weidman, et al., 2001).

Faculty were consistent in stating that service is one of the three components of
the tenure process where little emphasis has to be devoted to gain tenure. But the time
faculty devotes to service is inconsistent with this statement. For example, faculty in my
study stated they learned that service is an important requirement to their deans because it
shows that you are a team player. They also discovered that service provides networking
and mentoring opportunities that prove to be invaluable during the socialization process.
Similarly, Tierney and Bensimon (1996) found that service was not formally rewarded, it
“provided a way for senior faculty to form opinions about junior faculty, and in this sense
became more important symbolically than practically” (p. 69).

The indirect or informal benefits of service work leads to several reasons that
explain why new faculty devote so much time to service when it is believed that it has
little or no effect on tenure decisions. One is that new faculty are afraid to say “No”
when asked to devote time to service because they are uncertain whether it has an effect

on tenure decisions. Service provides the best mechanism for gaining insight about

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organizational culture because it involves interaction with a variety of stakeholders is a
second reason. Third, unlike teaching and scholarship that are completed in isolation and
reviewed by the dean and tenure advisory committees in the early stages, service exposes
new faculty to a variety of colleagues. This exposure gives new faculty opportunities to
show they are collegial and a team player, which adds to their likeability that faculty in
my study describe as an unwritten and unspoken requirement of tenure and that is
discussed in the next section.

Organizational culture. Participants found the tenure process and the decision to
grant tenure are not solely based on the quality of scholarship, teaching and service.
Whether a new faculty member is liked by colleagues can also affect the process, which
many participants referred to as a fourth, but unwritten and unspoken requirement of
tenure that was never anticipated. It is a requirement that can only be learned through
exposure to the organizational culture. Several participants commented how they learned
what was required to satisfy the so-called fourth requirement of tenure through informal
interactions with colleagues and making sure they were liked by students. Learning and
complying with the organizational culture in this manner is what Tierney and Rhoads
(1994) might call the divestiture dimension of organizational socialization. That is,
participants in my study believe they are forced to strip away personal characteristics or
traits that do not conform to the “likeability” aspect of the organizational culture because
they believe it is an additional factor affecting receipt of tenure.

Informal aspects of organizational culture plays a role in directing behaviors of
members that extend beyond formal rules, codes, policies and procedures (Tierney &

Rhoads, 1994). Organizational culture includes traditions, beliefs, and practices that are

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passed down, informally, from one generation to the next that are ultimately adopted by
new faculty during the socialization process (Tierney & Rhoads, 1994). Keeping the
unwritten aspects of organizational culture in mind, the lack of clarity that faculty found
in tenure policies is referred by one participant as a document drafted by “insiders” who
have been socialized and have become a part of the organizational culture. These
“insiders” are unaware that those outside of the organizational culture lack their level of
understanding or knowledge. In the case of my study, senior faculty are the “insiders”
and new faculty are the “outsiders.”

Socialization experiences of Ph. D.s compared to non-Ph. D. s. Many participants
compared their experiences as new law faculty to that of new faculty members who
possess Ph.D.s. Some believed they were not as socialized when they began their first
faculty position as those who were trained in Ph.D. programs, while other participants
thought faculty members with Ph.D.s had similar socialization experiences. For example,
Professor Drummond, who had participated in a professor training program, believed that
faculty who possessed Ph.D.s already had established networking systems in place to aid
them in the socialization process, while Professor Ink believed that a lawyer’s practical
experience compensated for the lack of socialization in a doctoral program].

These mixed opinions expressed by participants regarding the socialization of
Ph.D.s are also reflected in the literature. In her discussion of educational background
and training of law faculty Tracey E. George, Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University,
notes

law professors with social science doctorates usually are better positioned to

undertake empirical research than are other professors (footnote omitted). Law

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EEL F. .E. T. l

schools generally do not teach courses in survey methodology, statistical analysis,

or research design. Graduate social science programs do. . . . . Thus, a law

school with a greater proportion of its faculty holding social science doctorates is
more likely to produce ELS [empirical legal scholarship] than a law school with

lower proportion. (George, 2006, pp. 149-150)

In 1988, when the President-Elect of the Executive Committee of the Association
of American Law Schools proposed the appointment of a Special AALS Committee on
Tenure and the Tenuring Process to “gather and evaluate data on law schools’ procedures
and practices regarding tenure” (p. 477), she noted how “[t]he risk factor inherent in
entry level appointments to law faculties may be relatively higher than in some other
disciplines because potential law faculty candidates, unlike new Ph.D. graduates,
typically are not trained either as teachers or as scholars” (p. 477). Similarly, in their
study of medical school faculty, Blackburn and Fox (1976) found that for Ph.D.s who
aspired to be medical faculty, socialization occurred during their graduates programs.
But medical school faculty who only possessed M.D.s did not become similarly
socialized into academe until they completed their graduate program and took a faculty
position.

Others scholars have found that new faculty possessing Ph.D.s. are equally
unprepared to assume their first position. Austin and McDaniels (2006) reviewed the
process through which prospective faculty are socialized during their doctoral programs
and consistently found that doctoral students express concerns about their socialization
experiences and how they are not prepared to assume their first faculty positions. Austin

(2002b) also found that graduate students who aspired to be faculty believed they were

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prepared for research and publishing, but not properly trained in many aspects of
teaching. Similarly, the findings of Tierney and Bensimon (1996) showed that the
socialization experiences of new faculty in various disciplines were “remarkably
consistent with the findings of faculty socialization studies conducted by several other
scholars” (p. 128, citing Boice, 1992; Bronstein, Rothblum & Solomon, 1993; Austin,
1990; Sorcinelli, 1992).

While the literature reveals that there are mixed opinions as to whether new
faculty who possess Ph.D.s have similar socialization experiences in their first position as
new faculty who do not possess Ph.D.s, it is an issue that should be explored in greater
detail beyond my study. However, it is worth noting that researchers who have studied
new faculty who assume positions in professional programs, such as medicine and law,
are the ones asserting that faculty who possess Ph.D.s are better socialized (see
Blackburn & Fox, 1976; George, 2006; Report of the AALS Special Committee, 1992).

Mentoring. A number of participants commented on how their institutions
created faculty development committees to assist with faculty socialization. Professor
Drummond commented on his experience in his professor training program and how
helpful it was to have the faculty development committee at his institution assign a
mentor for teaching and one for scholarship. Similarly, other participants whose
institutions have established faculty development committees found them to be
beneficial. Although these committees seem relatively new to legal education, the
concept is not new to academia more broadly (see Eble & McKeachie, 1990; Tierney &

Rhoads, 1994).

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There were also participants who were assigned formal mentors, as was the case
with Professor Kay, who chose not to take advantage of the opportunity because the
mentor did not completely meet his needs:

I’ve been assigned someone who . . . tends to be incredibly helpful [and] well

respected here at the school. [However, my mentor] is not as helpful

substantively as I would like, but in terms of maneuvering the politics of the
school, [my mentor] is pretty helpful. . . .. [T]here are times when I kind of want
to sit down and talk to somebody about an idea . . . in a particular substantive
area. [B]ut I am not able to have the kind of what I call a deep conversation [with
my mentor].

Most participants had similar experiences as Professor Kay, forcing them to seek
their own mentors. When asked which faculty members they approached for advice,
most responses were similar to Professor Greene who said “with scholarship, l tended to
go to my peers. [T]he more senior faculty [are] much less scholarship oriented than the
newer faculty. The newer faculty are the ones who really keep track of law review
rankings. . . . . For teaching methods, definitely the senior faculty.” The fact that
participants had more than one mentor is consistent with the literature, in that one
individual may not be able to provide helpfirl suggestions in all aspects of faculty life
(Tierney & Bensimon, 1996).

Participants compensated for their lack of training upon arrival on campus,
particularly as it related to teaching, by doing what Professor Drummond called the
“traditional law school thing.” This included asking to see syllabi of others, reviewing

plenty of textbooks, listening to senior faculty members describe their classroom teaching

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experiences, or observing senior faculty members in order to gain insight about teaching
skills. Knowledge gained through these informal strategies included such things as
learning how senior faculty members balance and prioritize their time between
scholarship, teaching and service, and seeing what was done by those who gain tenure.
While Professor Drummond may have referred to this form of socialization as a
“traditional law school thing,” it is a form of informal mentoring experienced by faculty
in most disciplines. As Tierney and Bensimon (1996) note, “[m]entoring involves more
than dispensing advice and imparting wisdom. If individuals learn by example, then one
way junior faculty will come to understand the organizational culture is by observing the
actions of those in leadership positions” (p. 58).

Another way mentoring occurred for participants is through networking, just as
Professor Lowe discovered: “What was more surprising was that there are lots of people
who are getting their articles placed informally by having a faculty member at that school
say something to the law review.” This form of mentoring is consistent with the
conclusion drawn by Tierney and Bensimon (1996) who stated that, “[m]entoring need
not take place only in a senior faculty member’s office or at an orientation session[.] . . . .
[I]nforrnal mentoring can be as simple as helping an individual network at a conference,
or as complex as explaining how to navigate the cultural terrain of school[.]” (p. 57).
Over all, participants in my study had an array of mentoring experiences that were both
formal and informal. Some participants were assigned formal mentors and others found
the advice provided by faculty development committees to be helpful. Many pursued
informal mentoring opportunities and it was not uncommon for participants to have more

than one role model or mentor, or to network outside of their institutions.

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Summary

Effective teaching in legal education demands that law faculty master the use of
the Socratic dialogue. This requires that law faculty possess thorough knowledge of the
subject matter and the ability to cater to various student learning styles. Most participants
only had the opportunity to observe how their professors conducted class lectures,
without having insight regarding the process taken to prepare the lecture. Given the
limited exposure to teaching while enrolled in their professional programs, participants
found other opportunities where anticipatory socialization to prepare them for academia
could occur. As discussed in chapters four and five these opportunities included
professor training programs, drawing on practical experience, or attending the AALS
Workshop for New Law Teachers. But, after assuming their first faculty position,
participants quickly discovered that they underestimated the amount of time that they
would devote to teaching in the first year. Faculty also quickly Ieamed, with surprise,
that they were left on their own to figure out the steps needed to be effective teachers,
forcing them to pursue informal socialization opportunities.

While anticipatory socialization was more extensive in the area of scholarship for
all participants, these faculty still experienced difficulty moving from one stage to the
next during organizational socialization as a result of the time that had to be devoted to
teaching in the first year. Faculty reported that the networking and mentoring
opportunities that can be gained through service involvement assist in faculty
socialization.

Promotion and tenure policies often lack clarity in describing the steps to be taken

to gain tenure. So, obtaining a clearer understanding of what is expected to gain tenure

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frequently required faculty to look beyond the written policies and procedures. Given
that organizations have a number of unwritten and unspoken rules affecting tenure
decisions, taking advantage of informal and formal mentors as well as networking
opportunities to learn the “lay of the land” is an important part of organizational
socialization.

Participants had mixed feelings about not possessing a Ph.D. and its effect on
faculty socialization. There were some participants who believed that the level of
anticipatory socialization possessed by law faculty without Ph.D.s was not as high as
faculty possessing Ph.D.s, while others believed that their practical training as attorneys
compensated for not having earned a Ph.D. These mixed perceptions mirror the extant
literature on this subject.

Participants expressed surprise and concern about the heavy reliance on student
evaluations to measure teaching effectiveness, particularly since students lack expertise
to assess teaching skills. Students also have an impact on the socialization of new law
faculty in the scholarship area. While publishing is not the sole criteria used to assess
quality scholarship, law faculty are forced to publish in student-edited and managed
journals to gain tenure. Also, while service was believed to have little or no effect on
tenure decisions, participants found that community involvement provided networking
and mentoring opportunities that proved valuable during the socialization process.
Participants also found that an important aspect of the socialization process was learning
about both the formal and informal aspects of the organizational culture. A failure to

learn and understand organizational culture was believed to affect tenure decisions.

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Overall, participants found that the socialization process was more informal than
formal, in every aspect of faculty socialization. Most participants believed that they
benefited more from informal mentoring opportunities, because formal mentors, who are
usually senior faculty, do not appear to be as committed to mentoring tenure-track faculty
as other untenured colleagues. More importantly, participants found that they were more
compatible with informal mentors, and that more than one mentor may be required to
meet their needs. The next chapter discusses the implications that these findings have on

the socialization of law faculty.

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Chapter 6: Implications
Introduction

The literature is consistent in stating that the socialization process for aspiring
faculty begins during graduate training (Austin, 2002b; Austin & McDaniels, 2006;
Tierney & Rhoads, 1994, Weidman, Twale & Stein, 2001). Considerable research also
has been done in an attempt to understand how socialization occurs for new faculty
trained in Ph.D. programs. However, little is found in the literature that explains how
socialization occurs for tenure-track law faculty trained in professional programs for the
practice of law, particularly from faculty members’ perspective. The purpose of my
exploratory qualitative study was to answer this question.

Recently tenured and tenure-track law faculty who do not possess Ph.D.s and are
located at law schools approved by the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the
Bar of the American Bar Association (ABA) were the focus of my study. This
population was purposefully selected because they must satisfy the same three
requirements to attain tenure as faculty in other disciplines and this population has been
the focus in the literature and empirical research (see Borthwick, 1991; F ossum, 1980;
Merseth, 1991; Redding, 2003). Following examples set in other studies of new faculty, I
used a framework of anticipatory and organizational socialization to guide my research.
The work of Austin and McDaniels (2006), Tierney and Bensimon (1996), Tierney and
Rhoads (1994), Redding (2003), Van Maanen and Schein (1979), and Weidman, Twale,
and Stein (2001) were particularly useful.

Participants in my study included 14 faculty members from 10 different ABA-

approved law schools. Data collection was achieved by conducting single interviews

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with each participant ranging from 60 to 75 minutes. Eleven of the interviews were face-
to-face and three were by telephone. All interviews were tape recorded to insure
accuracy of transcription. The interview protocol is found in Appendix E and the consent
form is in Appendix F.

The research question that was the focus of my exploratory study was “How do
tenure-track law faculty who have been only professionally trained become socialized?”,
which had four subquestions: (1) “How do they come to understand the aspects of
faculty work?”; (2) “How did the understanding regarding the process for learning their
roles come about?”; (3) “What are the challenges they face in coming to understand what
was expected of them as law faculty?”; and (4) “What strategies helped in learning how
to do what was expected of them as tenure-track faculty members?” The 14 law faculty
who participated in my study and the anticipatory and organizational socialization
framework used to guide my research were useful in answering these questions from the
faculty member perspective.

How do tenure-track law faculty who have been only professional trained become
socialized? Tenure-track law faculty believe that socialization occurs in a number of
ways: (1) through processes that occur while in professional programs before taking
faculty positions when they observe how their professors use the Socratic method; (2)
engage in scholarly writing; (3) work as judicial clerks, litigators and appellate attorneys;
(4) participation in professor training programs; (5) and attendance at the AALS
Workshop for New Law Teachers. Promotion and tenure policies provided to faculty
candidates during the interviewing process also contribute to the socialization process

during the anticipatory stage.

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Socialization also occurs after new faculty members assume the first position.
This stage, called organizational socialization, tends to be more informal than formal.
Formal socialization include written promotion and tenure policies that describe the
requirements that must be satisfied to gain tenure, being assigned mentors to assist new
faculty members, and feedback provided by tenure advisory committees, faculty
development committees, deans, and students. When new law faculty felt they were not
being adequately socialized through formal means, which was usually the case, they turn
to informal socialization agents, such as finding their own mentors, networking
opportunities, observing and listening to senior faculty members in order to learn the
organizational and disciplinary cultures and the unwritten rules that affect tenure
decisions.

How do they come to understand the various aspects of faculty work?
Anticipatory socialization for aspiring faculty does not primarily occur in professional
programs in the same manner as it does in Ph.D. programs, but my findings show that
new faculty were aware of some aspects of faculty work from experiences during their
professional training. For example, the Socratic method of teaching is the most common
approach to teaching law students how to “think like lawyers” and is the common method
used in legal education. New law faculty begin teaching by emulating how they were
taught as law students.

Another way aspiring faculty become acclimated to future faculty work while in
their professional programs is through membership on student-edited and managed
journals, such as law review. Most law faculty have served as staff members or editors of

law review while in their professional programs. To gain tenure, regardless of the

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employing law school’s Carnegie Foundation institutional classification, a faculty
member must publish a certain number of articles in another law school’s law review, or
other journals that usually are student-edited and managed. Scholarly writing they did as
members of law review while in professional programs proved invaluable for new law
faculty because of the insight acquired as law students about the process and criteria used
to accept faculty articles for publication.

The vast majority of new law faculty continued to focus on their research and
writing skills after graduation and before assuming their first faculty position. Most
served as judicial clerks where they were expected to possess strong research and writing
skills. Law faculty who were trained as litigators and appellate attorneys before
assuming their first faculty position wrote briefs for the courts that require extensive
research and strong writing skills. The research and writing skills acquired through law
review, judicial clerkships, and as litigators and appellate attorneys are the same skills
needed to produce quality scholarly writing to attain tenure.

Law faculty believed that participation in professor training programs that are
primarily designed for practicing attorneys who want to be groomed for law faculty
positions helped them understand the various aspects of academic work. These programs
exposed participants to teaching, mentoring, and networking opportunities and required
them to publish by the end of the program, or produce an article that was publishable
quality. The insight gained from the three-day AALS Workshop for New Law Teachers
also helps new law faculty understand the various aspects of faculty work. The workshop
addresses issues of teaching, scholarship, and service, and other concerns of new law

faculty. It provides networking and informal mentoring opportunities with workshop

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presenters and other attendees. Finally, promotion and tenure policies also helped new
tenure-track law faculty understand the various aspects of faculty work. These policies
describe the three requirements that must be satisfied to attain tenure and the timetable
for meeting them.

How did the understanding regarding the process for learning their roles occur?
New law faculty commented how they rely on myriad resources to understand the
process for learning their roles. Professor training programs provided exposure to
organizational and disciplinary cultures for participants. The AALS Workshop for New
Law Teachers provided insight about what would be expected of tenure-track faculty and
the steps that should be taken to meet these expectations. Observing colleagues who
have earned tenure and understanding what they did as tenure-track faculty also provides
insight for new law faculty. Taking advantage of formal and informal mentors and role
models are other approaches used to assist in understanding the process. Trial and error,
which is a common approach to teaching, was another way that new law faculty felt
helped in understanding the process for learning their roles.

What are the challenges they face in coming to understand what was expected of
them as law faculty? To gain tenure law faculty acknowledge to understanding that they
must be good teachers, published scholars, and good citizens. But they feel the steps and
processes that must be followed to achieve these objectives are unclear because
promotion and tenure policies often lack specificity. In addition to the three written
requirements to gain tenure, there is the belief that there is an unwritten fourth

requirement that can only be learned through exposure to the organizational culture.

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Although participants were aware that scholarship must be the primary focus for
earning tenure, they experienced difficulty finding time to devote to scholarship in their
first year because of the demands of class preparation. Finding time for scholarship was
further complicated by the “sink or swim” approach to teaching they experienced. The
heavy reliance that deans and tenure advisory committees place on student evaluations to
assess teaching effectiveness is also a challenge because new faculty believe that students
lack the expertise to make this assessment. New law faculty also believe the editorial
selection process of student-edited and managed journals is flawed and articles are not
published in a timely manner. So reliance on these student-led publication outlets also
concern new law faculty since scholarship is a requirement to attain tenure.

What strategies helped in learning how to do what was expected of them as
tenure-track faculty? Participants commented how finding their own socialization agents
is a key strategy used to help them become acclimated. These agents include informal
mentors, taking advantage of networking opportunities, learning from senior faculty
members through observation and listening, and emulating the teaching style of their law
professors. To learn what is required to satisfy the unwritten fourth requirements of
tenure, participants rely on informal means, such as interaction with colleagues and
making sure they are liked by students.

These answers uncovered implications for two key findings in my study. First,
while the focus of professional programs is to prepare students for the profession,
anticipatory socialization for aspiring law faculty still occurred. As a result, tenure-track
law faculty were equally as prepared to assume their first position as new faculty in other

disciplines trained in graduate programs. Second, tenure-track law faculty have both

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similar and different socialization experiences as tenure-track faculty in other disciplines.
The discussion that follows will describe these two implications and suggestions to
improve law faculty socialization. This chapter will also discuss the impact US. News
and World Report rankings and law faculty socialization have on law students. Finally,
recommendations for further research will be briefly described, based on insight gained
from my exploratory study.

Anticipatory Socialization for Aspiring Law Faculty

A key outcome of doctoral study is the acquisition of deep knowledge of the
discipline (Austin & McDaniels, 2006). In addition to doing substantial research for their
dissertations while enrolled in doctoral programs, such as a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
or in an advanced legal education program, such as a Doctor of Juridical Science (S.J.D.),
students frequently produce projects that lead to publication (Blackburn & Fox, 1976;
Redding, 2003). None of the participants in my study possess Ph.D.s, which is not
uncommon in the legal academy, as Redding (2003) found in his study of new law
faculty. Redding’s findings revealed that 45 percent of all new law faculty possessed an
advanced degree in addition to the Juris Doctor (J .D.): “16 percent a master’s degree, 13
percent an LL.M. [Master of Laws], 10 percent a Ph.D., and 2.5 percent an S.J.D.” (p.
599)

The low percentage of terminal degrees for new law faculty differs from other
disciplines where it is expected that faculty possess Ph.D.s (Austin & McDaniels, 2006).
But my findings reveal that new law faculty are equally as prepared to produce quality
scholarship when they assume their first position as faculty in other disciplines with

Ph.D.s. There are several reasons why this is the case, such as participation on law

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review while in law school, practical experience after graduation, publications and work-
in-progress at the time of the job interview.

Law Reviews are student-edited and managed journals that publish the work of
legal scholars from inside and outside their institutions, and of legal practitioners. Most
law reviews only allow the highest academic achieving law students to participate.
Members of law review are required to assist with editing articles selected for publication
and also complete a publishable quality article. Although serving on law review is an
extracurricular activity most faculty in my study stated they were members while in law
school, just as Redding (2003) found: “[A]lmost half of all new law [faculty] served on
the law review while in law school, and 28 percent were senior staff members. Twenty-
four percent served on the staff of other journals” (p. 599). Students are motivated to
serve on law reviews because in addition to possessing high grades, strong research and
writing skills are needed to qualify for highly soughtjudicial clerkships which open doors
to academia and prominent positions in law firms.

Law review provides students with a good foundation for pursuing judicial
clerkships because the primary role of a judicial clerk is to research the law that is
presented to the court in a legal proceeding and to draft opinions for the judge. Similarly,
litigators and appellate attorneys are required to research and write briefs for the court
that are persuasive and credible, which require strong writing skills. Nine of the 14
faculty in my study were judicial clerks. Four faculty who did not work as judicial clerks
had practiced law ranging from 7 to 17 years.

Faculty in my study expressed how beneficial their experience on law review was

after assuming their first faculty position. Earning tenure in legal education requires

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being published in student-edited law reviews or academic journals, regardless of the
employing law school’s Carnegie Foundation institutional classification. This might
explain why Redding (2003) found that 76 percent of new law faculty had at least one
article or student note published in a law review or other academic journal, 19 percent
had published two, and 31 percent had published more than two. Redding also found that
almost one-third of new faculty were successful in being published in a top-12 law
review and their student law review note made up 40 percent of this number. Eleven
percent of new faculty had published a book, monograph, or report (Redding, 2003). The
strong research and writing skills required of law review members, judicial clerks,
litigators, and appellant attorneys helps explain why participants in my study had little
trouble adjusting to scholarly writing as new law faculty.

Another reason why participants experienced little difficulty understanding the
requirements of scholarly writing stems from the fact that candidates for tenure-track
positions are required to give job talks during the interviewing process. Job talks require
candidates to present the findings of their published work, or work-in-progress to faculty
members and students. The AALS reports between 1998 and 2005 there has only been a
14 percent success rate for candidates seeking law faculty positions
(http://www.aals.org/resources_statistical.php). Given the competitiveness of the market,
it stands to reason that successful candidates have proven they possess strong research
and writing skills at the time they assume their first faculty positions.

Like most new faculty in other disciplines, participants in my study commented
how they began teaching by emulating how they were taught. But unlike students in

graduate programs where they are exposed to myriad teaching methods they can chose to

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emulate as new faculty, the case method, using Socratic dialogue (Socratic method), is
the common method of teaching in law school (Anzalone, 2001; Garner, 2000;
McAninch, 1993). The Socratic method is popular in legal education because it forces
students who have been passive learners most of their educational lives to be active
learners (Hawkins-Leon, 1998; Stropus, 1996). Although new law faculty may not have
appreciated the amount of course preparation required to effectively teach using the
Socratic method, they felt the constant exposure and observation of the method
throughout law school provided valuable insight regarding its effective use. This is not to
say that tenure-track law faculty felt they were adequately trained to effectively teach
using the Socratic method. Adequate course preparation plays a large role in effective
instruction, which is an aspect of teaching that every faculty member in my study said
they lacked.
Comparison of Law Faculty Socialization to Other Disciplines

The purpose of this exploratory study was to gain insight into how tenure-track
law faculty who have been trained only in professional programs become socialized. My
findings, which are presented from the perspective of tenure-track law faculty, reveal that
they have both similar and different socialization experiences to tenure-track faculty in
other disciplines who were trained in graduate programs. This section will describe the
similarities and differences.

Similarities. While new tenure-track law faculty in my study commented how
they assumed their first position knowing that teaching, scholarship and service are
required to gain tenure, they felt that promotion and tenure policies at their employing

institutions lacked clarity. That is, promotion and tenure policies merely described the

111

benchmarks for tenure, such as effective teacher, quality scholarship, and good
citizenship, but lacked specificity regarding the steps that need to be taken to achieve
these benchmarks (Report of the AALS Special Committee, 1992).

The majority of faculty in my study had limited teaching experience when they
became tenure-track law faculty. So they began teaching by emulating how they were
taught in law school. Faculty described their first-year of law teaching as a “sink or
swim” experience because they believed that little or no formal mentoring or feedback
occurred to assist them in understanding how to adequately prepare for class, develop
syllabi, and understanding the effect that student learning styles have on teaching.
Participants acknowledged that some form of formal feedback regarding teaching is
provided, but that it was not enough. For example, law faculty commented that student
evaluations are the largest source of formal feedback on their teaching and that they were
surprised how much reliance the dean and tenure review committees placed on student
evaluations in assessing teaching effectiveness. Formal instructional feedback is also
provided by deans, tenure advisory and faculty development committees during annual
reviews, but faculty were uncomfortable with the accuracy of the assessment because it
was based on observations during a single classroom visit and student evaluations. To
compensate for what participants believed was a lack of formal mentoring they found
informal approaches to improve teaching skills that included networking, informal
mentors, listening, observation, and trail and error.

Although participants in my study understand that scholarly writing and
publications are required to gain tenure, they experience difficulty finding time to devote

to scholarship as new law faculty. They attribute this to having underestimated the time

112

involved in course preparation and in mastering teaching using the Socratic method,
which took time away from scholarship. Participants also commented about the fact that
they were not provided clear guidelines on the type and amount of scholarship that must
be produced to satisfy promotion and tenure requirements. Law faculty felt they assumed
their first position without a clear understanding of what was involved in service to gain
tenure, but commented how they learned shortly after arriving on campus that service had
little or no effect on tenure decisions. Despite this belief, they devoted considerable time
to service that could have been spent on scholarship or course preparation because they
believed service is important to their deans, shows they are collegial, and provides
invaluable mentoring and networking opportunities.

Boice (1991c) conducted a study that included new tenure-track faculty at a
“teaching” (comprehensive) and at a “research” (doctoral) campus, who “came to campus
with similar levels of scholarly productivity, of teaching experience, and of doctoral
credentials from prestigious universities” (p. 151). While tenure-track faculty included
inexperienced (less than two year post-doctorate), returning (after an absence from
academe and/or teaching), and experienced newcomers (new to the campus with prior
teaching experience), the primary focus of the study was on inexperienced and returning
faculty.

Like law faculty in my study, Boice (1991c) found that the majority of the
inexperienced and returning faculty had little exposure to teaching before assuming their
first position and lacked confidence about their teaching. Tenure-track faculty believed
they should have received more guidance, such as assistance on developing syllabi and

strategies for coping with difficult students. They also believed there was a lack of social

113

networks to discuss teaching. In addition, they expressed concern over senior faculty
negative attitudes toward teaching, how there were few role models, and a feeling of
isolation. Although new faculty felt they would have appreciated help on “learning the
appropriate level of lecture difficulty for students” (p. 156), they believed the only way to
develop this skill is through “trial and error.” Similarly, senior faculty believed that “the
best faculty seem to figure these things out on their own” (p. 156).

While trying to figure out how to be effective teachers, new faculty began by
emulating how they were taught (Boice, 1991c). Like law faculty in my study, the
faculty in Boice’s (1991c) study underestimated the amount of time it took to prepare for
class with little or no time to devote to scholarship in their first year of teaching. Boice
(1992), in a related study, found that although new faculty recognized that more time
should be devoted to scholarly writing to gain tenure, “almost no new faculty members
had a clear sense of how much and what sort of writing would be satisfactory for tenure
considerations” (p. 84).

New faculty also believed that poor student evaluations would be looked upon
negatively by tenure committees. So, in addition to devoting more time in their first year
to course preparation due to a lack of experience, they spent more time in hopes of
avoiding poor student evaluations. The additional time on course preparation to avoid
negative student evaluations also took away from time that could have been devoted to
scholarship (Boice, 1992).

Similar to law faculty, tenure-track faculty in other disciplines had little or no
insight regarding what was needed to satisfy service when they assumed their first

position (Austin, 200b) and they quickly learned that it had minimal effect on promotion

”4

and tenure decisions (Tierney & Bensimon, 1996). But, also like new law faculty, they
learned that service provided networking and mentoring opportunities that proved to be
invaluable during the socialization process (Tierney & Bensimon, 1996).

Table 9 provides a summary of similarities in socialization experiences between
tenure-track law faculty and tenure-track faculty in other disciplines trained in graduate

programs.

 

Similarities in Socialization Experiences

 

Teaching, scholarship, and service required to gain tenure

 

Limited exposure to teaching before assuming first positions

 

Feel that promotion and tenure policies lacked clarity

 

Socialization was more informal than formal

 

9

Learned how to be effective teachers through “sink or swim” and “trial and error’

 

ngan teaching by emulating how they were taught

 

Underestimated the amount of time it took to prepare for class

 

Unable to devote time to scholarship in the first year of teaching

 

Believe there is a heavy reliance on student evaluations by deans and tenure
committees in assessing teaching effectiveness

 

o Underestimated how much time would be devoted to service and had little or no
insight regarding what was needed to gain tenure

 

0 Believe that service had little or no effect on promotion and tenure

 

 

Table 9

 

 

Differences. While there are similarities between the socialization experiences of
tenure-track law faculty who have been trained only in professional programs and tenure-
track faculty in other disciplines trained in graduate programs, there are also differences
in their socialization experiences. For example, in most disciplines, faculty must possess
a Ph.D. (Austin & McDaniels, 2006). Students in doctoral programs are required to
complete a dissertation to satisfy graduation requirements, which is an extensive research
project intended to advance new knowledge in the literature. The dissertation also
exposes aspiring faculty to the type of scholarly writing required of tenure-track faculty

to gain tenure. Although law students are not required to complete a dissertation in their

115

professional programs, they have the opportunity to participate on a law journal, like law
review (Redding, 2003). While law reviews provide aspiring faculty with scholarly
writing and publication opportunities, they are student-edited and managed and
participation is optional, as it is considered an extracurricular activity.

Students in doctoral programs also often have opportunities to gain teaching
experience by teaching undergraduate students. Law students do not have the same
teaching opportunities because there are no undergraduate students in law school.
Recognizing the lack of teaching and scholarly writing opportunities in law school a
select number of law schools offer professor training programs for aspiring law faculty,
who are usually practicing attorneys.

Boice (1992) found that most new faculty begin by teaching “a facts-and-
principle style of lecturing” (p. 76, citing Axelrod, 1973; see also Boice, 1991c, citing
Fink, 1984). New faculty commented that they started to include student participation in
parts of their class sessions during their second year of teaching, because they felt more
comfortable (Boice, 1992). Unlike faculty in other disciplines, new law faculty do not
have the luxury of deciding when students can participate in class because of the Socratic
method, that demands active participation of all students. It also demands that faculty be
thoroughly familiar with the subject matter and have the ability to control the pace and
direction of the discussion (Merseth, 1991; Shulman, 1992). As a result, law faculty must
devote more time to class preparation than is typical for other teaching methods
(Shulman, 1992).

In terms of scholarship, tenure-track law faculty and faculty in other disciplines

are required to publish a certain number of articles to satisfy tenure requirements. The

116

outlets used to publish differ for law faculty, however. That is, most faculty have a range
of options for the peer review outlets in which they publish. The legal academy requires
tenure-track faculty to publish in student-edited and managed journals, such as law
review, and peer review is not generally required until the time of tenure decisions. Also,
while there may be different publication standards in most disciplines based on an
institution’s Carnegie Foundation classification, all law schools follow the same
publication standards, regardless of institutional classification because they emulate the
most presitigious law schools.

Table 10 provides a summary of differences in socialization experiences between
tenure-track law faculty and tenure-track faculty in other disciplines trained in graduate

programs

 

Differences in Socialization Experiences

 

Law faculty trained in professional Faculty in other disciplines trained in

programs

graduate programs

 

Obtained exposure to scholarly writing
through participation on student-edited
and managed law journals, like law
review, which is optional and an
extracurricular activity

Required to write a dissertation to
satisfy graduation requirements

 

No teaching experience while in their
professional program

Gained teaching experience while in
their graduate programs

 

All law faculty use the Socratic method
of teaching, which requires students to
be active learners

Have the option of using various
teaching styles and they begin teaching
using a “facts-and-principle style of
learning”

 

Scholarship is satisfied by publishing in
student-edited and managed journals,
like law review, with peer-review
occurring at time of tenure review

Must publish in peer reviewed
publications through the pretenure
period

 

Same scholarship standard is used for
all law schools regardless of Carnegie
Foundation classification

 

Different scholarship standards apply
depending on Carnegie Foundation
institution classification.

 

 

Table 10

 

117

 

Suggestions to Improve Law Faculty Socialization

Based on the findings in my study, I pose six suggestions to improve the
socialization of new law faculty: (1) simulated class lectures; (2) understand the history
of legal education; (3) course relief for new law faculty; (4) law school faculty initiative;
and (5) self-help approach to faculty socialization, and (6) define faculty competence.

Simulated class lectures. Faculty in my study did not appear to be concerned
about their expertise in subject matters they taught as new law professors. But they had
underestimated the time it takes to prepare a law class lecture. To create an awareness of
the time involved, job talks that occur during the interview process could be expanded to
include a simulated course lecture, as opposed to merely presenting research findings.
Simulated class lectures provide candidates additional insight about the organizational
culture. Requiring that each faculty candidate conduct a simulated class lecture during
the job talk can stimulate questions and concerns for the candidate to pursue at the AALS
New Teachers Workshop held before the start of the academic year. Also, simulated
class lectures can help tenure advisory committees identify potential strengths or
weaknesses that need to be addressed in the initial stages of faculty socialization.

Understand the history of legal education. The culture in each discipline is
distinct and must be learned by faculty to be properly socialized (Austin & McDaniels,
2006; Tierney & Rhoads, 1994). Christopher Columbus Langdell, dean of Harvard Law
School in the late nineteenth century, was very instrumental in shaping the culture,
faculty hiring practices, and instructional strategies of legal education, as they are known

today. Understanding how the disciplinary culture of legal education evolved is equally

118

important to learning how to function in the culture, because of the deep rooted traditions
that continue to shape legal education today and how law faculty are socialized.

Since virtually every faculty member attends the AALS New Teacher Workshop,
this may be a good forum to present the history. In the alternative, law schools should
strongly urge all new law faculty to review the history by making this information
available to them at the time an offer is made. The insight learned from the history may
assist new law faculty in anticipating the demands that class preparation will place on
their time and the effect it will have on other requirements of tenure.

Course relief for new law faculty. Faculty in my study overwhelmingly agreed
that they underestimated the time it took to prepare for class in their first year, leaving
little or no time to focus on scholarship. Given the important role that scholarship plays
in the promotion and tenure process and the reputation of the law school, several
suggestions should be considered. First, similar to what is done in professor training
programs new tenure-track law faculty should be given reduced course loads in their first
year. For example, if four courses is the normal teaching load in an academic year for
full-time faculty, perhaps new tenure-track faculty should only be required to teach three
courses in their first-year, so as to allow them time to develop their teaching skills and
time to devote to scholarship. Second, participants commented on the time required for
class preparation the first time a course is taught. Therefore, new tenure-track law faculty
should be discouraged from teaching too many new courses in their first few years of
teaching. This is particularly important if the new faculty member is required to teach
first-year courses that generally require more class preparation, larger class sizes, and

more student interaction.

119

A failure to limit the number of new courses taught in the first few years of the
promotion and tenure process could adversely affect the progress of new law faculty
trying to satisfy other requirements of tenure, especially scholarship. Also, law schools
should be sensitive to the demands that service can have on a new faculty member’s time
in the early stages of faculty socialization. For example, if a new tenure-track faculty
member is assigned to a high demand faculty committee, it takes time away from
teaching and scholarship. Law school deans should be cognizant of the demands that
committee assignments place on new tenure-track faculty, and make sure they are not
assigned to more than one high demand committee.

Law school faculty development initiatives. Just as law professors should be
sensitive to the learning styles of a diverse student body, law schools should be sensitive
to the diverse backgrounds of its faculty. As my study showed, new tenure-track law
faculty possess varying degrees of practical training, exposure to scholarly writing, and
prior teaching experience. New law faculty who possess many years of practical training
may feel at ease giving class lectures, but experience difficulty trying to figure out how to
become a good legal scholar. New tenure-track law faculty who participated in a
professor training program, or possess other prior teaching experience, may have a better
understanding of what is involved in preparing a course syllabi or what it means to
produce quality scholarship. A new professor with no prior teaching experience and little
practical training may feel completely unprepared to assume any facet of the faculty role.
In short, anticipatory socialization for participants significantly varies. That said, law
schools should provide every new hire with a comprehensive new faculty handbook that

does more than reiterate promotion and tenure policies.

120

Given the “sink or swim” approach to learning how to be a good teacher, at a
minimum, law schools should prepare a handbook that includes teaching guidelines,
criteria used to assess effective teaching, and a suggested reading list for new law faculty.
Also, since the standard for being a good teacher should be the same for all law faculty,
whether they are in the tenure system or fixed term, the handbook should be provided to
all members of the faculty. The Adjunct Faculty Handbook (2005) that was produced by
the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar could be used as a
starting point for law schools that do not currently have a new faculty handbook. The
Preface and Table of Contents of the Adjunct Faculty Handbook are found in Appendix
H.

This suggestion does not minimize the role of the tenure advisory committee. A
handbook can provide new faculty with more formal socialization opportunities and
make the committee’s task easier by reducing the number of “routine” questions asked by
the new faculty member. While the role of a tenure advisory committee is to help
socialize new law faculty members until tenure is granted, the information disseminated
by one committee could vary from what is disseminated by another committee. A
standardized faculty handbook helps ensure that every new faculty member has access to
the same information. This allows tenure advisory committees time to focus on issues
and concerns that relate specifically to their new faculty member.

Collaborative faculty development initiatives. As discussed earlier in this chapter,
there are many similarities that tenure-track law faculty share with faculty counterparts in
other disciplines when they assume their first positions, despite some differences in

disciplinary cultures. Deans, tenure advisory and faculty development committees at law

121

schools with university affiliations should investigate campus wide faculty development
opportunities and encourage law faculty to participate in relevant programs. At a
minimum, these law schools should review faculty development initiatives undertaken
either by the university or in other disciplines on-campus to see if these initiatives can be
adapted to the development of law faculty.

There are many ways that resources used by other disciplines to assist with the
development of tenure—track faculty could also prove valuable to law faculty because of
the extent of similar early career and transition experiences of faculty. Given the lack of
anticipatory socialization new law faculty possess, it is important that tenure advisory
committees not ignore the effect that teaching has on a faculty member’s ability to focus
on other aspects of the promotion and tenure process, such as scholarship. Even law
schools with a small number of new tenure-track faculty members or no university
affiliation should consider partnering with other local and regional law schools in their
area on faculty development initiatives.

Self-help approach to faculty socialization. While it should not be the case, new
faculty are socialized as much informally, if not more than through formal socialization.
This means that new law faculty must take the initiative to seek mentoring and
networking opportunities. A failure to take advantage of these opportunities could delay
movement from one stage of the socialization process to the next, which could also affect
the granting of tenure.

Establish minimum competencies for new faculty. While the legal academy
continues to follow the tradition of Langdell in its approach to law faculty hiring

(Redding, 2003), it is questionable whether accrediting agencies are providing adequate

122

guidance to law schools to ensure that today’s law faculty possess minimum competences
when assuming their first position. Langdell had experience in the practice of law, but
“believed that no experience in practice was necessary to teach the law; rather, one
needed professors who had been trained academically in the law—legal scholars”
(Katcher, 2006, p. 359). Langdell (in Katcher, 2006) defined a teacher of the law as “a
person who accompanies his pupils on a road which is new to them, but with which he is
well acquainted from having traveled it before” (p. 360).

The Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar of the American Bar
Association (ABA) states that faculty at ABA-approved law schools “shall possess[] a
high degree of competence, as demonstrated by its education, experience in teaching or
practice, teaching effectiveness, and scholarly research and writing” (ABA Standards,
2006, Standard 401 ). But unlike Langdell, the ABA does not elaborate on what “a high
degree of competence” means, or use the term “teacher of the law.” While many of the
ABA Standards include what are called “Interpretations” to provide insight and
understanding of the language used in a Standard, no interpretations are provided for the
Standard that addresses faculty qualifications. Also, while the ABA may not use the term
teacher of the law, the wording of the Standard makes its clear that a competent teacher
requires more than merely being trained academically in the law with teaching potential,
as noted by Langdell (Katcher, 2006). Rather, the ABA believes that a faculty must be
educated, an experienced practitioner or teacher (which does not explicitly state that
one’s teaching experience has to be in law), effective teacher, and a scholarly writer

(ABA Standard, 2006, Standard 401).

123

Although not every ABA-approved law school is a member of the Association of
American Law Schools (AALS), the other nationally recognized accrediting agency, 168
of the 195 ABA-approved law schools hold membership. Like the ABA, the AALS
chose to use the term “high competence,” as opposed to the term teacher of the law used
by Langdell. But unlike the ABA, the Bylaws of the AALS define “faculty of high
competence” in greater detail: I

A faculty’s competence shall b[e] judged primarily with reference to the full-time

members. Competence shall be determined in the aggregate, with emphasis upon

.'|-._' n

 

a".

the following criteria: I
(i) Quality of teaching and attention given to law students both as
individuals and as a group;
(ii) Breadth, depth, and variety of the faculty’s training and
experience;
(iii) Scholarly interests and performance; and
(iv) Responsible participation in the group deliberative processes of the
law faculty. (AALS Handbook, 2007, Section 6-4)

Neither the ABA nor AALS standard make it clear whether “qualified” faculty
should already possess the stated competencies when they assume their first faculty
position, or can acquire them following the appointment. The ABA and AALS also fail
to stipulate or provide guidance to faculty hiring committees regarding minimum
competencies that new law faculty should possess at the time they assume their first
faculty position. Although this lack of guidance leaves it to the discretion of each law

school to set minimum standards for measuring faculty competencies, which may have

124

--r- '_l'

been the intent, the lack of clarity encourages law schools to perpetuate hiring practices
that maintain the status quo where “graduation from an elite school may be the most
important criteria” (Borthwick & Schau, 1991, p. 230; Redding, 2003). For example,
Redding (2003) performed a descriptive and statistical analysis for law faculty who
entered teaching between 1996 and 2000. The availability of data collected in similar
studies conducted in the 19605, 19705 and 19803 provided Redding opportunity to do a
“longitudinal comparison of the stable and changing demographic characteristics and
qualifications of law teachers over the last quarter-century” (p. 596). Redding found the
qualifications of law teachers had remained fairly stable since the 19605, and that little
had changed since the early twentieth century.

Although law faculties are no longer comprised of strictly white men, as was the
case in past studies, white men who had graduated from an elite law school continued to
have a hiring advantage in the legal academy (Redding, 2003). Redding also found that
60 percent of all law faculties graduated from one of the top-20 law schools, based on
US. News and World Report (US. News) rankings. So it is not surprising that 12 of the
14 faculty in my study graduated from a top-20 ranked law school, as shown in Tables

11.

 

2006 U. S. News and World Report
Law School Ranking Where Participants Graduated
Top 5 Top 10 Top 15 Top 20 Top 30 Top 100
6 2 3 1 l 1
Table 11

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just as they emulated the teaching method and hiring practices of Harvard in the
late nineteenth century to gain prominence in the legal academy (Katcher, 2006), law

schools are focusing on ways to improve their rank in US. News in hopes of improving

125

their reputations (Ariens, 2003; Baynes, 2006; Klein & Hamilton, 1998; Thomas, 2003).
US. News began annually ranking law schools in 1990 and provides the only
commercially available ranking of ABA-accredited law schools. Four major categories
are used to determine a law school’s overall rank: (1) quality assessment; (2) selectivity;
(3) placement success; and (4) faculty resources (US. News and World Report, 2006).
Although the rankings were designed to provide prospective law students and parents a
means to differentiate law schools, they are widely used by law schools, law firms, and
judges for recruitment purposes. Law faculty search committees are heavily influenced
by the US. News rank of the law school where faculty candidates earned their law
degrees, previously taught, or where scholarly work was published, because it is believed
these characteristics bring prestige to the hiring law school. High ranking judges,
particularly federal judges, seeking to hire clerks give preference to graduates from law
schools with high US. News rankings. Similarly, many major law firms only conduct on-
campus interviews at top US. News ranked law schools, and they give preference to
hiring individuals who have completed a federal judicial clerkship.

While competent teaching should be considered in assessing academic quality it
does not directly impact rankings the way law school recognition and scholarships affect
rankings. So, in an effort to influence potential US. News survey recipients with quality
assessment, shortly before surveys are mailed, law schools mail informational materials
to faculty, administrators, lawyers and judges. These materials introduce new and
visiting faculty and highlight scholarly work of the law school faculty. But faculty
competence must be based on more than mere intellect and potential. Competence must

also be based on proven teaching ability and skills that address diverse learners. The

126

 

longer it takes a new faculty member to learn and master the skills needed to be a
“competent” teacher, the longer it takes before the faculty member can devote any
significant time to scholarship, which is a primary requirement to gain tenure.

In addition to the fact that 60 percent of all law faculties graduated from one of
the top-20 US. News ranked law schools, the desire to move up in the ranks could help
explain why so many faculty in my study are employed at law schools having low US.

News rankings, as shown in Table 12.

 

Law School Rank Where Participants are Employed
2006 US. News and World News Ranking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Top 10 Top 20 Top 40 3rd Tier 4’I1 Tier
1 I l 3 4
Table 12

 

 

This is not to say that lower ranked law schools do not provide quality legal education or
faculty who graduate from a top-20 law school law school should not be teaching in these
law schools. But the current hiring practice of law schools, if primarily done to boost
rankings without regard to the candidate’s teaching ability or the law school’s mission,
maintains the status quo. Such an approach results in missed opportunities to recruit a
diverse faculty found to be “significantly associated with better academic performance by
all students” (Clydesdale, 2004, p. 762; see ABA Standard, 2006, Standard 212; Grutter
v. Bollinger, 2003). The ABA and AALS standards should be written to require new law
faculty demonstrate during the interview process that they possess competent teaching
skills that include the ability to teach diverse learners.
The Impact that Rankings and Law Faculty Socialization have on Law Students

How law faculty become socialized and the strategies that law schools use to

move up in US. News and World Report rankings also affect both potential and

127

matriculating law students. This section will briefly discuss (1) US. News rankings and
their effect on admissions practices; and (2) the effect that law faculty socialization has
on the academic success of a diverse student body.

US. News Rankings Effect on Admissions Practices. Just as law schools are
allowing the US. News rankings system to influence faculty hiring practices, they are
allowing the ranking system to influence admissions practices. That is, selectivity makes
up 25 percent of a law school’s US. News overall rank. Full-time entering class median

Law School Admission Test (LSAT) scores, median undergraduate grade point averages,

 

and the proportion of applicants accepted, which are reported by each law school, are the
factors used to assess this category (US. News and World Report, 2006). The more
selective a law school is in accepting applicants and the higher the entering credentials
are for full-time matriculants, the more favorable the rating.

The “LSAT is one of the few statistics in the [US News] formula that law
schools can control” (Stake, 2006, p. 309). So in hope of increased status, law schools
try to “beat the system” by requiring higher LSAT scores and undergraduate grade point
averages of matriculants (N ussbaumer, 2006). While this approach might boost rankings,
the over reliance of LSAT scores has a disparate impact on persons of color, who are
already experiencing lower acceptance rates than whites because, as a group, their LSAT
scores tend to be lower (Jones, 2006; Nussbaumer, 2006; Shepherd, 2003; Stake, 2006;
Wilder, 2003). For example, Wilder (2003) used data from the Law School Admission
Council’s (LSAC) National Statistical Report to analyze the overall acceptance rates in
fall 2000 of minorities compared to whites. Wilder found that, with the exception of

Asians, applicants in all minority groups were accepted at a lower rate than were whites,

""- 31—:

128

with African-American applicants having the lowest acceptance rate of all minority
groups. Wilder also found a high correlation between applicant LSAT scores and
undergraduate grade point averages and acceptance into law school.

Although US. News publishes a listing of law schools believed to possess the
most racial and ethnic diverse student body, it is not a factor considered in determining a
law school’s selectivity or overall rank, which is surprising given that the ABA stipulates
that law school pay particular attention to attracting a diverse student body (ABA
Standards, 2006, Interpretation 212-2). Despite the US. News rankings’ lack of
educational purpose, disregard for a diverse faculty and student body, law school faculty
hiring and admissions practices continue to be influenced by the ranking system.

Impact of Law Faculty Socialization on a Diverse Student Body. In addition to
the impact that the “sink or swim” approach to teaching has on the socialization of law
faculty, it has a potentially adverse effect on the firture of law students in many ways.
One example of how law students, specifically, are affected by new law faculty
socialization in teaching is seen in their first-year academic performance. Like the
process that law schools use to hire new law faculty (Borthwick & Schau, 1991; Fossum,
1980; Redding, 2003), the training for first-year law students is deeply rooted in the
culture (Weidman et al., 2001; Wightrnan, 1998b).

The use of the Socratic method of teaching in law school forces new law students
to shift from a passive to an active form of learning, which is not easily accomplished
(Hawkins—Leon, 1998). Also, much of the success of the Socratic method is dependent
on a well-trained professor leading students in a guided discussion (Garner, 2000;

Merseth, 1991; Shulman, 1992). While this requires a faculty member to be well-versed

129

 

' “I

in the subject matter, it is not uncommon for law schools to assign new faculty to teach
first-year courses whose subjects are outside their area of expertise. One reason for this
practice is because teaching first-year courses is undesirable to many senior faculty
members who are given priority in selecting the courses they teach. So new law faculty
are forced to fill the void. Another reason for this teaching distribution is because the law
is fairly unchanging in the subjects taught first-year, making it possible for new law
faculty to acquire subject matter expertise in a relatively short time period, while learning
how to be effective teachers.

In addition to being proficient in the subject matter, a professor should understand
and appreciate the various student learning styles, and how one’s ethnic and
socioeconomic background affects learning and their effect on student success (DeGroff
& McKee, 2006; Niedwiecki, 2006; Trijillio, 2007). Learning styles describe the “way in
which students perceive, absorb, and process new information” (DeGroff & McKee, p.
509), which is different for today’s law students, for many reasons including technology
and efforts to diversify the profession through student demographics. Law students of
lower socioeconomic status and diverse backgrounds have more difficulty adjusting to
law school, which leads to higher drop out rates in their first year, particularly for
minority and older law students (Clydesdale, 2004). My findings show that it is common
for law faculty to teach the way they were taught when they assume their first position,
which is also a common practice in the legal academy since a “general lack of experience
and understanding of teaching and learning theory forces professors to teach like they
were taught, or to make teaching decisions based on intuition instead of well-accepted

learning theory” (Niedwiecki, 2006, p. 36).

130

 

Professor Johns, a participant in my study, and a graduate of a prestigious law
school who participated in a professor training program, stated how he began teaching the
way he was taught, thinking that all students were capable of learning the same way. He
quickly discovered that student learning styles, interests and background affects their
ability to learn and that more time is required to prepare for class to address these
differences. But not all new law faculty, particularly graduates of prestigious law
schools, find it easy to adjust to teaching to a diverse student body and different learning
styles.

Most first year law courses cover subject areas that are heavily tested on the bar
examination that must be passed to practice law. The more untrained new law faculty
teaching first year courses, the greater the likelihood students will experience difficulty
passing the bar. What is of greater concern is the fact that law school hiring and
admissions practices, and the sink or swim approach to teaching that new law faculty
experience has a disproportionate impact on minority students who are already
underrepresented in the legal profession (Clydesdale, 2004; Shepherd, 2003; Wightrnan,
1998b)

In Langdell’s times men dominated the legal profession. Law students came from
the same socioeconomic backgrounds as their professors. Although today’s law schools
have diverse student bodies and vary in missions they continue to maintain the status quo
through hiring and admissions practices that favor the elite. The over reliance on a
flawed US. News and World Report ranking system that focuses more on status than

educational purpose is helping to preserve the status quo.

131

Recommendation for Further Research
The focus of my study was on how socialization occurs for tenured-track law

faculty who have been only professionally trained. My findings assisted me in answering

my research question, uncovering implications for two key themes, proposing
suggestions to improve law faculty socializations, and identifying the impact that law

faculty socialization has on law student success. In the course of this investigation, I

identified six topics that are beyond the scope of my study, but warrant further research.

My recommendations for further research are described below.

1. Law professor training programs: Their contribution to the socialization of law
faculty. While only a limited number of professor training programs exists in
ABA-approved law schools, the majority of the law schools that offer these
programs also produce approximately 60 percent of all law faculty. New law
faculty who have attended these programs, including those who were in my study,
believe their participation helped with anticipatory socialization before pursuing
their first tenure-track position. However, it is unclear how much and in what
way these programs contribute to anticipatory socialization and how it occurs.
For example, do professor training program participants have the same informal
socialization experiences while in the training programs as new tenure-track law
faculty who do not participate in a professor training program, or is the
socialization process more formalized? If the socialization experiences are the
same for both groups, does participating in a law professor training program
merely provide early exposure to what they would otherwise learn after assuming

their first tenure-track faculty position, or do professor training program

132

participants move at a faster pace from one stage of faculty socialization to the
next once becoming tenure-track faculty?

Faculty hiring practices at AALS member and ABA -approved law schools. I
attended a conference where a tenured faculty member from a law school that is
ranked in the lower tier by the US. News and World Report stated: “The legal
academy makes it seem like it is a bad thing to be ranked in the 4th tier by US.
News and World Report. But what is wrong with being in the 4’” tier if you are
achieving the mission of your law school?” In that light and given the findings in
my exploratory study, do the current faculty recruitment and hiring practices of
ABA-approved law schools help to achieve institutional missions? If not, does it
mean tradition and other outside factors, such as US. News and World Report
rankings, have more influence over faculty recruitment and hiring practices than
the mission of a law school?

Empirical research at law schools versus other disciplines. Law school
promotion and tenure practices tend to discourage tenure-track faculty from
engaging in empirical research because gaining tenure is based on the number of
publications, even though the work put into a single publication involving
empirical research may prove to be the equivalent of multiple non-empirical
publications. Given that scholarship is an important requirement to gaining tenure
in all disciplines, do tenure-track law faculty produce less empirical research,
overall, than tenure-track faculty in other disciplines? If so, do universities apply
different standards for granting tenure for faculty who undertake empirical

research and have fewer publications, compared to faculty who produce non-

133

 

empirical scholarship, particularly if this occurs in the same discipline or
department?

Assessing law faculty competence: What does it mean? While both law school
accrediting agencies — the American Bar Association and the Association of
American Law Schools — stipulate that law faculty must possess a high degree of
competence, these agencies do not clearly state what is the minimum level of
competence a new faculty member should possess before assuming the first
tenure-track faculty position. That said, how do law schools measure
“competency” during the recruitment and hiring of new law faculty?

Faculty socialization at elite law schools. Sixty percent of all law faculty
graduated from the top-20 US. News and World Report ranked law schools.
Many of the top-20 law schools also offer law professor training programs
intended to segue into academia for aspiring faculty who have been practicing
law. Assuming that law schools offering these programs have greater resources
to train new faculty, is the socialization experience for new tenure-track law
faculty at law schools offering professor training programs more formalized, or
the same as it is for new tenure-track law faculty at other law schools?
Socialization experiences of new tenure-track law faculty who possess Ph.D.s
versus tenure-track faculty who do not possess Ph. D. 3. Most faculty in my
exploratory study are of the opinion that new tenure-track law faculty who
possess Ph.D.s have an easier time becoming socialized. The same opinion is
found in the literature, particularly when discussing the socialization of new

faculty who teach in professional programs, such as law and medicine. On other

134

hand, the literature focusing on socialization of new faculty who were trained in
graduate programs that were intended to prepare them for academia reveals that
those with Ph.D.s have similar socialization experiences as their non-Ph.D.
counterparts. So, one question is whether new law faculty without Ph.D.s are
really less well prepared to assume their first faculty positions than new law
faculty with Ph.D.s. Another, perhaps more important question is whether new
law faculty without Ph.D.s think they are really less well prepared entering the
professoriate than their Ph.D. new faculty colleagues. Both answers may affect

early career socialization and eventual success in the academy.

135

 

A

APPENDICES

136

 

APPENDIX A

Biographical information found the AALS (Association of American Law Schools)

Directory of Law Teachers

137

 

Biographical Information Found in the 2004-05 AALS (Association of American Law
Schools) Directory of Law Teachers:

- year of hire; the hiring law school
0 gender
- minority (as self-defined in the Index to Minority Faculty)
- law school conferring J.D. degree
- other advanced degrees (LL.M., S.J.D., master's degree, Ph.D., other doctoral)
0 law review staff member (editor in chief, senior editor, or staff)
0 other journal staff member (editor in chief, senior editor, or staff)
- judicial clerkship (US. Supreme Court, federal appellate court, federal district court,
state supreme court, state appellate court, other)
0 law practice (law firm or corporate counsel, public interest, government law practice,
multiple practice types). Government experience includes work as a prosecutor or public
defender or as a government attorney in local, state, or federal government in the
legislative or executive branches. Public interest includes public interest law firms and
practice with nonprofit organizations.
° number of years in law practice
0 other law-related professional experience (research, public policy, public interest,
academic, multiple professional experience types)
0 years of other law-related professional experience
0 prior law school teaching experience (legal writing, adjunct professor, visiting

professor, multiple types of law school teaching experience)

138

Biographical Information Found in the 2004-05 AALS (Association of American Law
Schools) Directory of Law Teachers Continued:
0 years of law school teaching experience
- other (nonlaw) teaching experience
0 years of other (nonlaw) teaching experience

- number of books or monographs published

139

 

APPENDIX B

Initial Participant Solicitation Letter

140

.a'

 

1“— - '

MICHIGAN STATE

UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE or LAW

 

 

 

 

March 29, 2005

Professor XXXXXX
(Insert Mailing Address)

Dear Professor XXXXX:

Since August 1998, I have been pursuing a doctoral degree in Educational Administration
at Michigan State University, while initially serving in the capacity as Assistant Dean for Student
Affairs, and now as Associate Dean for Student Affairs and Registrar at the Law College.

The purpose of this letter is to solicit your assistance in helping me complete my
dissertation, by agreeing to participate in an exploratory qualitative study titled: “The
Socialization of Law Faculty: How Does It Occur?” The primary objective of this exploratory
qualitative study is to obtain insight into how tenure track and recently tenured faculty at ABA-
approved law schools come to Ieam how to be faculty members. You are being asked to
participant in this study because of your status as a tenure track or recently tenured member of the
faculty. Your participation in the study will consist of a 90 minutes tape-recorded face-to-face
interview, which you will be given an opportunity to review after it is transcribed. I anticipate
having all interviews completed by the end of 2005.

The collection of the data will be conducted in accordance with procedures that are
monitored by the University Committee on Research Involving Human Subjects (UCRIHS). One
of the requirements of UCRIHS is that all participants execute a consent form, which will include
language that ensures confidentiality and anonymity of the participants and their law schools in
any report of research findings. A sample of the consent form is enclosed.

Please contact me at 517-432-6806 or alsup_c@law.msu.edu by to let me
know of your willingness to participate in the study. If you require additional information
regarding the study, feel free to contact me.

I look forward to your participation in this study.

Sincerely,

Connell Alsup
Associate Dean for Student Affairs

141

 

APPENDIX C

Solicitation Letter When Already Visiting the Area

142

 

'11—!

MICHIGAN STATE

UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF LAW

 

 

 

January 22, 2006

Assistant Professor XXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXX School of Law

Dear Professor XXXX XXX:

Since August 1998, I have been pursuing a doctoral degree in Educational Administration
at Michigan State University, while initially serving in the capacity as Assistant Dean for Student
Affairs, and now as Associate Dean for Student Affairs and Registrar at the Law College.

The purpose of this letter is to solicit your assistance in helping me complete my
dissertation, by agreeing to participate in an exploratory qualitative study titled: “The
Socialization of Law Faculty: How Does It Occur?” The primary objective of this exploratory
qualitative study is to obtain insight into how tenure track and recently tenured faculty at ABA-
approved law schools come to Ieam how to be faculty members. You are being asked to
participant in this study because of your status as a tenure track or recently tenured member of the
faculty. If you agree, your participation in the study will consist of a 90 minutes tape-recorded
face-to—face interview, which you will be given an opportunity to review after it is transcribed. I
anticipate having all interviews completed by early 2006.

The collection of the data will be conducted in accordance with procedures that are
monitored by the University Committee on Research Involving Human Subjects (UCRIHS). One
of the requirements of UCRIHS is that all participants execute a consent form, which will include
language that ensures confidentiality and anonymity of the participants and their law schools in
any report of research findings. A sample of the consent form is enclosed.

As it turns out, I will be at XXXXXX University School of Law on Thursday, February 9
and Friday, February 10, 2006, for a meeting. I am hoping that you will agree to participant in
the study and have time for me to interview you while I am visiting your area.

Please contact me at 517-432-6806 or alsum@law.msu.edu by Monday, January 30,
2006, to let me know of your willingness to participate in the study. If you require additional
information regarding the study, feel free to contact me.

I look forward to your participation in this study.

Sincerely,

Connell Alsup
Associate Dean for Student Affairs

143

 

14'1“”

APPENDIX D

Follow-up Email Message to Potential Participants

144

 

From: Connell Alsup

To: xxxxxxxxxxxx

Date: 3/8/2006 7:26:57 PM
Subject: Assistance with Dissertation
Professor )0000000(,

A little over a week ago I sent you the attached letter and enclosure via US Mail, asking
that you agree to assist me with my dissertation by participating in a study. The purpose
of this email is to follow-up on the letter to see if you will agree to participate in my

study. As I mentioned in the letter, your participation will only require 60 minutes of I
your time for a face-to-face interview. "

I look forward to hearing from you.

 

Connell Alsup
Associate Dean for Student Affairs and Registrar #-
Michigan State University College of Law

368A Law College Bldg.

East Lansing, MI 48824-1300

517.432.6806

517.432.6801 (fax)

alsupc@law.msu.edu

145

APPENDIX E

Interview Protocol

146

 

Interview Protocol

Tell me about your interview for this position.

Probes:
D What made you choose to come to this law school?
a Were the job expectations made clear?

Tell me about being a law professor. What do you do?
Probes:
0 Describe a typical workday.
a Is this what you expected the job to be when you became a law
professor?
Cl How did you find out what your responsibilities were?
D How did you learn to do your job?
0 How has your perception changed about this law school and what’s
expected of you?

How have you learned to be a law professor?
Probes:
0 Tell me about conversations you have with your colleagues about
being faculty member.
a How do you keep up with your field?

What is your involvement with the governance of this law school?
Probes:
a How would you describe your place in the law school (draw a picture
to illustrate)?
D How has the law school been affected by your presence?
0 What changes would you like to see at this law school?

Let’s return to your overall sense of your job at this law school. What do you
enjoy most/least about being a law professor?
Probes:

D What activities make the greatest demand on you?

0 Is there anything you would like to spend greater time doing?

0 How do you know if you are doing a good job?

0 What advice would you give to a new faculty member?

Story Telling: If time permits, ask one of the following:

Probes:
D Tell me a story about how members of the faculty interact here.
D What do members of the faculty think about the leadership here?

Additional Questions for Tenured Faculty

I47

 

Has your understanding of what it means to be a law professor changed since
obtaining tenure?
Probes:
D What would you do differently if you had to go through the process
again? Why?
0 Has your focus of what is important to being a law professor changed?

 

If so, why?
What advice would you give tenure-track law faculty about learning how to be a
law professor?
II
E;

148

APPENDIX F

Informed Consent Form

149

 

Human Subject Informed Consent Form

Project Title:

“The Socialization of Law Faculty: How Does It Occur?”

Summary Explanation of Research:

The primary objective of this exploratory qualitative study of approximately 20 tenure
track or recently tenured law faculty located at American Bar Association approved law
schools, is to obtain insight into how tenure track and recently tenured law faculty come
to understand their faculty roles. The research will focus on how these individuals come
to understand the dimensions of their work as law faculty; how the understanding
regarding the process comes about; the challenges they faced in coming to the
understanding; and strategies that helped them to understand their faculty roles. Research
for this project will be collected through one (1) face-to-face, tape-recorded semi-
structured interview with each participant.

Purpose of Study, Risks and Benefits:

The purpose of this study is to conduct research that will assist in understanding how
those who are only trained in a professional academic field come to learn how to be law
faculty. There are no known risks associated with participation in this study. You will
not benefit from your participation in this study. But your participation may contribute to
filling a void in the literature regarding how law faculty, who only posses professional
training, understand what it means to be faculty.

Estimate of Subject’s Time:

Approximately 90 minutes

Voluntary Participation:

The subjects freely consent to voluntarily participate in the study. Participation in the
study will involve a tape-recorded face-to-face interview. Participants are free to have
the audiotape discontinued at any time. An opportunity to review the transcribed
interview will be provided. Participants may choose not to participate at all, may refuse
to answer certain questions, or may discontinue the interview at any point.

150

 

Confidentiality:

All data and results will be treated with strict confidence by the investigator.
Pseudonyms will be used when findings are reported to protect the subject’s

confidentiality. On request and within these restrictions results may be made available to

subjects. Your privacy will be protected to the maximum extent allowable by law.

Contact Persons for Subjects:

If you have any questions about this study, please contact the researcher, Connell Alsup,
Michigan State University College of Law, 368 Law College Bldg., East Lansing, MI
48824-1300, 517.432.6806 (telephone), 517.432.6801 (fax), alsupc@law.msu.edu
(email). Questions can also be directed to the researcher’s dissertation committee
chairperson, Marilyn J. Amey, Ph.D., Michigan State University College of Education,
428 Erickson Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824, 517.432.1056 (telephone), amey@msu.edu
(email).

If you have questions or concerns regarding your rights as a study participant, or are
dissatisfied at any time with any aspect of this study, you may contact — anonymously, if
your wish — Peter Vasilenko, Ph.D., Director of the Human Subject Protection Programs
at Michigan State University: 517.355.2180, fax: 517.432.4503, email: irb@msu.edu,
regular mail: 202 Olds Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824.

YOUR SIGNATURE BELOW INDICATES YOUR VOLUNTARY AGREEMENT
TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS STUDY. A COPY OF THIS SIGNED CONSENT
FORM WILL BE GIVEN TO YOU.

 

Please Print Name

Date:

 

 

Signature

151

 

APPENDIX G

Agenda — 2007 Association of American Law Schools (AALS )

Workshop for New Law Teachers

152

 

 

F13"; 01.;— ‘

1_l

Agenda — 2007 Association of American Law Schools (AALS)
Workshop for New Law Teachers

2007 Workshop for New Law Teachers &
Workshop for Workshop for Beginning Legal Writing Teachers

June 28 — July 1, 2007
Washington, D.C.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

4:00 - 7:30 pm.
Registration

5:00 - 6:00 pm.
Small Group Discussions
The planning committee strongly encourages attendance at this first set of small group discussions.

6:00 - 7:00 pm.
Reception

7:15 pm.
AALS Sponsored Dinner

Welcome W
Elizabeth Hayes Patterson, AALS Deputy Director

Introduction
Kent D. Syverud, Washington University and Chair, Planning Committee for the 2007 AALS Workshop for New
Law Teachers

David Hall, Northeastern University

The vast majority of people who start out as law teachers retire as law teachers. Former Dean and Provost Hall
will address the habits, attitudes, and ups and downs of successful professors over their careers in law teaching.

Friday, June 29, 2007

8:00 - 8:50 a.m.
MIS Section on Women In Legal Education Continental Breakfast with Questions and Answers

8:30 - 8:50 a.m.
Coffee, Tea and Breakfast Pastry

9:00 - 10:15 a.m.

Preparing for Your Flrst Semester of Teaching

Dorothy Andrea Brown, Washington and Lee University Wm;
Graeme B. Dinwoodie, Chicago-Kent College of Law Mm;

153

 

 

In this give-and-take session, two experienced and successful teachers exchange views on a variety of “nuts and
bolts' issues for the new teacher, including: choosing a casebook, preparing a syllabus for students, creating
notes for teaching, establishing an effective classroom environment, using traditional and alternative teaching
methods, and dealing with difficult students.

10:15 - 10:30 a.m.
Refreshment Break

10:30 - 11:30 a.m.

Learning Theory -vi w i ii

Alison Grey Anderson, University of California Los Angeles -yi§w aning- -vigw handout-
Commentator: Kristine S. Knaplund, Pepperdine University -vigw outline and handout-

Professors Anderson and Knaplund will discuss learning theory and effective teaching methods.

11:30 a.m. — 12:00 p.m.
Question 8: Answer Session

12:00 - 1:30 p.m.
AALS Luncheon
The Honorable Ricardo M. Urbina, Judge, US. District Court for the District of Columbia, Washington, D.C.

1:40 - 2:20 p.m.
Teaching Techniques and Demonstrations

Upper Level
Libby S. Adler, Northeastern University flier! giggling-
Flrst Year

John C.P. Goldberg, Vanderbilt University

Tedinology
Marina C. Hsieh, Santa Clara University -vigw Qgtline-

Seminar
Margo Schlanger, Washington University

2:20 - 3:00 p.m.
Teaching Techniques and Demonstrations

Upper Level
Libby S. Adler, Northeastern University Mew gutling-
First Year

John C.P. Goldberg, Vanderbilt University

Technology
Marina C. Hsieh, Santa Clara University -vigw ggtline-

Seminar
Margo Schlanger, Washington University

154

 

 

‘mw —

3:00 — 3:15 p.m.
Refreshment Break

3:15 - 4:30 p.m.
Small Group Discussions

4:30 - 5:45 p.m.

Assessment 8: Institutional Citizenship

JoAnne A. Epps, Temple University

Laura E. Gomez, University of New Mexico

Veryl Victoria Miles, The Catholic University of America -view eutline—

5:45 - 6:45 p.m.
AALS Reception

5:45 - 6:15 p.m.
AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education Informal Gathering

5:45 -6:15 p.m.
AALS Section on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Issues Informal Gathering

Saturday, June 30, 2007

8:00 - 8:50 a.m.
AALS Section on Minority Groups
Continental Breakfast with Questions and Answers

8:30 - 8:50 a.m.
Coffee, Tea and Breakfast Pastry

9:00 - 11:00 a.m.

Scholarship

Douglas Aaron Berman, The Ohio State University yiew eutline-
Angela J. Davis, American University yiew egtline-

Professors Bennan and Davis will address many of the hard questions about the “how-to" of scholarship. How do
you start the writing process? When, where and how should you submit your manuscript? How do you handle
student editors? What should you do when it (finally) is in print? How can the new professor approach that first
article with an appreciation both for the practicalities of succeeding with the initial piece and for the longer term
implications of being able to build on the earlier work?

11:00 - 11:15 a.m.
Refreshment Break

11:15 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Small Group Discussions

1:00 - 1:30 p.m.
Refreshment Break

155

 

 

 

1:30 - 2:45 p.m.

Junior Faculty Feedback

Erin E. Murphy, University of California, Berkeley -view gutline-
Kimberly Jenkins Robinson, Emory University Meg egtline-
Deleso Alford Washington, Barry University Mew outline-

This panel will include three “alumni" of past AALS New Law Teachers Workshops. They will address the variety of
issues and challenges new law teachers face and tell you what they wish they knew then that they know now.

2:45 - 3:15 p.m.
Workshop Wrap-up F‘
Kent D. Syverud, Washington University and Chair, Planning Committee for the 2007 AALS Workshop for New f
Law Teachers

A good course sometimes evolves during the term, with the professor and students, through interaction,
developing new insight, and the professor wrapping up those insights with a coherent overview at the end of the
term. In this session, Dean Syverud will pull together the insights of the workshop, reflect upon how participants
might best make use of them in the future, and remind participants of their career-long challenges and
opportunities.

 

we:

Program - Workshop for Beginning Legal Writing Teachers
“tumult!” 3o, zoo7

4:30 - 7:00 p.m.
Registration

5:30 - 6:30 p.m.
A Conference Demonstration: A Role Play
Mary Beth Beazley, The Ohio State University W

Individual conferences can help students understand both why and how to improve their analytical writing.
Professors will demonstrate common pitfalls in student conferences and discuss how to make sure both teacher
and student are well-prepared to make the best use of precious conference time

6:45 - 7:30 p.m.
AALS Reception

Sunday, July I, 2007

8:30 - 8:50 a.m.
Coffee, Tea and Breakfast Pastry

9:00 - 9:15 a.m.
Welcome -view flelgeme' -

Elizabeth Patterson, AALS Deputy Director

Introduction
Kent D. Syverud, Washington University and Chair, Planning Committee for the 2007 AALS Workshop for New

Law Teachers
Mary Beth Beazley, The Ohio State University and Planning Committee Member

156

9:15 - 10:45 a.m.

Nuts & Bolts -view egtline-

Patricia A. Broussard, Florida A & M University
Suzanne Rabe, The University of Arizona

10:45 - 11:00 a.m.
Refreshment Break

11:00 - 11:45 a.m.
Designing Assignments
Lorraine Bannai, Seattle University -view outline-

12:00 - 12:45 p.m.
Tead'ring Legal Research
Amy E. Sloan, University of Baltimore -view ogtline-

12:45 - 1:45 p.m.
AALS Sponsored Luncheon

Scholarship
Linda H. Edwards, Mercer University -view eutlige-

2:00 - 3:00 p.m.
Critiquing
Craig T. Smith, Vanderbilt University -view eutline-

3:00 - 3:15 p.m.
Refreshment Break

3:15 - 5:00 p.m.
Small Groups on Critiquing

5:00 - 5:15 p.m.
Worlelop Wrap Up
Mary Beth Beazley, The Ohio State University

Source: http://www.aals.org/events_2007nltprogram.php

157

 

APPENDIX H

ABA Adjunct Faculty Handbook — Preface and Table of Contents

 

158 r

PREFACE

Although their numbers vary from school to school, law schools regularly employ

adjunct faculty members. Adjuncts may teach their own courses or be part of a team-
taught endeavor. They may teach substantive courses or skills courses. They may be
experienced teachers or relatively new to law school teaching. In short, their teaching
responsibilities and experiences are much like those of firll-time faculty. Yet, because
they rarely participate in law school governance activities, faculty retreats, and similar

events, adjuncts may not fully understand the school’s written (and unwritten policies).

This handbook is a resource for schools to use in working with their adjunct
faculty. It covers a variety of topics and means of communication. Recognizing that
schools differ in their use of adjunct faculty, it does not prescribe policy language.
Rather, it covers topics the school might address and explains why they are important.

Table of Contents

PART ONE. ADMINISTRATIVE AND HUMAN RESOURCES ISSUES
A. Corresponding with Potential Adjuncts 7
1. Soliciting Applications (or Not) 7
2. Designating a Responder 7
3. Timing of the Response 8
B. Maintaining Applications on File 8
C. Interviewing Applicants 8
1. Advantages and Disadvantages 8
2. Selecting the Interviewer(s) 8
D. Communicating the Decision 9
E. Corresponding with Adj uncts After Hiring 9
0. Contract or Appointment Letter 9
1. Information to Convey 10
a. Course Name and Description 10
b. Course Meetings 10
c. Compensation and Payroll Information 10
(1. Faculty Titles 11
e. Deadlines 11
2. Required Documents 11
a. Documents Commonly Required 11
b. Methods for Collecting Documents 11
c. Deadlines 11
d. Maintaining and Updating Documents 12
3. Benefits Available to Adjuncts 12
a. Evidence of Faculty Status 12
b. Library and Photocopying Privileges 12
c. Building and Parking Information 12

159

 

.1]

(1. Miscellaneous 13
4. Other Useful Information 13

PART TWO. PREPARING TO TEACH

A.

no

G.

Adjunct Orientation l4
1. Number of Sessions 14
2. When Sessions Occur 14
a. Multiple Versus Single Sessions 14
b. Back-Up Materials 14
Timing the Sessions: Before the Year or Before the Semester 15
4. Target Audience for Formal and Informal Orientation Programs 15
a. Entry-Level and Experienced Adjuncts 15
b. Orientation According to Specialty 15
c. Orientation for Adjuncts Who Are Team-Teaching 15
d. Orientation Through Learning by Observing 15
5. Conduct of the Orientation Program 16
a. Law School Personnel 16
b. An “Experienced” Adjunct 16
Technology Orientation 16
1. Importance l6
2. Student Expectations and Potential Abuse 17
Casebook Selection 17
1. Factors Used in Selection Process 17
2. Supplemental Materials 18
3. Bookstore Issues 18
Supplementary Materials and Office Assistance 18
Course Descriptions, Prerequisites, and Related Matters 18
1. Course Descriptions and Prerequisites 18
2. Limited Enrollment Courses 19
3. Auditors 19
Syllabus l9
1. Course Objectives 19
2. Attendance Policy and Sanctions l9
3. Class Preparation 19
4. Taping and Other Policies 20
5. Communication with Students 20
6
F

9°

. Conveying Expectations to Students 20
irst Assignment 20

PART THREE. CONDUCTING THE CLASS

swans?

Classroom Needs 21

Required Announcements 21

Taking Attendance 21

The Classroom Experience 22

Teaching Methods and Class Participation 22
Classroom Control 22

160

 

Using the Board Versus Other Displays 22
Audiovisual Equipment 22
Guest Lecturers 23
Reflecting on the Experience 23
Scheduling Issues 23
1. In General 23
2. Cancelled Classes 23
3. Review Sessions 24
Communicating with the Class 24
Quizzes 24
l. ADA Issues 24
2. Other Administrative Issues 24
H. Emergencies in the Classroom 25
Evaluating Faculty Performance 25
1. Student Evaluations 25
a. Timing of the Evaluations 25
b. Distributing the Evaluations 25
c. Conducting and Collecting the Evaluations 25
d. Publicizing the Evaluations 25
2. Faculty/Administration Evaluations 25
a. Who Conducts the Review? 25
b. Review Procedures 26
c. Use Made of Evaluations 26
3. Addressing Problems in Teaching 26
a. Mixed Reviews 27
b. The Next Teaching Assignment 27
c. Terminating the Relationship 27

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PART FOUR. AFTER THE CLASS ENDS
A. Examinations 28

1. Exam preparation 28
2. Types of Examination and School Rules 28
3. Length of Exam 28
4. Exam Instruction Sheet 28
5. ADA Issues in Exam Process 29
6. Use of Exam Software 29
7. Examination Administration 29
A. Papers and Projects 30
B. Grading Exams and Other Student Work 30
2. Anonymous Grading 3O
3. Grade Submission Deadlines 30
4. Grading Sheets Versus “Gestalt” Grading 3O
5. Assigning Points to Course Components 31
6. Grading Curves 31
7. Procedures for Submitting Grades 32
8. Transmitting Grades to Students 32

161

 

9. Cheating and Plagiarism 32

10. Highest Grade and Other Awards 32

11. Reusing Exam Questions and Disclosing Exams 32
12. Reviewing Exams with Students 33

13. Grade Changes and Grade Appeals 33

14. Exam Retention Period/Storage 33

PART FIVE. STUDENT/FACULTY ISSUES

A.
B.

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Nondiscrimination Policies 34

Student Privacy Rights 34

1. F ERPA Nondisclosure Rules 34 a
2. Exceptions to Nondisclosure Rules 34 ',_
Disability Issues 35

1. Governing Law and Its Administration 35
2. Confidentiality Issues 35

3. Classroom and Grading Issues 35 ‘
Interpersonal Relationships with Students 36 j
1. Romantic Relationships 36

2. Sexual Harassment 36

3. Other Socializing with Students 37
Non-Social, Non-Classroom Interaction 37
Other Classroom Professionalism Issues 37
Students in Distress 37

 

PART SIX. COMMUNICATING WITH ADJUNCT FACULTY MEMBERS

E.
F.
G.

Modes of Communication 38

Seeking Communications from Adjuncts 38
Addresses for Communications 39

1. Adjuncts’ Addresses 39

2. Administrative Assistants’ Addresses 39
Distributing Documents to Adjuncts 39

1. What to Distribute 39

2. Duplicate Documents 39

3. Making Documents Available on the Web Site 39
Importance of Checklists, FAQ Sheets, and Sample Documents 39
Involving Adj uncts in Non-Classroom Activities 40
1. Inviting Adjuncts to School-Sponsored Events 40
2. Involving Adjuncts in Student Activities 40

PART SEVEN. SAMPLE DOCUMENTS, CHECKLISTS AND OTHER RESOURCE
MATERIALS

A.

Sample Documents 41
1. In Hiring Process 41
2. In Review Process 41
3. In Orientation or Other Mentoring Process 41
4. Miscellaneous Documents 42
162 r

B. Checklists (step by step procedures for completing tasks) 42

C. Other Information to Provide Adj uncts by Handbook or Other Means 42
Schedule Items 42

Classroom Items 42

Maps and Similar Items 42

Contact Information 42

Examinations and Grading Information 43

Teaching Materials 43

9‘9?pr

PART EIGHT. SELECTED PUBLICATIONS ABOUT TEACHING
A. Books 44

B. Articles 44

C. Other 44

163

 

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164

 

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