Teaching Fellowships for Aspiring Law Professors

For practitioners and others contemplating joining the law professor ranks, many law schools offer wonderful opportunities to transition into the legal academy with one- or two-year fellowships which allow you to enter the AALS Faculty Recruitment Conference (the "meat market") armed with teaching experience and published scholarship under your belt:

• Alabama: Hugo Black Fellowship Program (for Supreme Court clerks)
• Chicago:
  • Harry A. Bigelow Teaching Fellowships
  • John M. Olin Fellows in Law
• Chicago-Kent: Visiting Assistant Professor Program
• Columbia:
  • Associates in Law Program
  • James Milligan Law Review Fellowships (for Columbia Law Review alumni)
• Florida:  Visiting Assistant Professor Program (Tax)
• Georgetown: Graduate Fellowship Program for Future Law Professors
• Harvard:
  • Charles Hamilton Houston Fellowships for Law Teaching
  • Climenko Fellowship
  • Petrie-Flom Fellowships in Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics
  • Reginald F. Lewis Fellowships for Law Teaching
• Iowa:  Faculty Fellows Program
• John M. Olin Fellows in Law
• New York University:
  • Acting Assistant Professor Program (Tax)
  • Furman Academic Fellowship Program (for NYU grads)
• Northwestern:  Visiting Assistant Professor Program
  • John M. Olin Fellows in Law
  • Searle Fellows in Public Law
  • VAP in Finance
  • VAP in Health Care Law and Economics
  • VAP in Negotiations
  • VAP in Securities and Finance
  • VAP in Taxation
• Stanford: Teaching Fellowship Program
• Temple:  Abraham L. Freedman Graduate Teaching Fellowship Program
• Texas:  Emerging Scholars Program
• Wisconsin: William H. Hastie Fellowship Program
• Yale:
  • Information Society Project (law and technology)
  • Robert M. Cover Fellowship Program

A great discussion of many of these fellowship programs can be found in Patricia A. Cain (Iowa) & Faith Pincus (Iowa), Faculty Fellowship Programs That Lead to Law Teaching.

For more information on becoming a law professor, including a discussion of the advantages of these fellowship programs, see:

• Jack Chin (Arizona), TeachLaw:  Resources for Lawyers Who Want to be Law Professors
• Jack Chin (Arizona) & Denise Morgan (New York Law School), Breaking Into the Academy: The 2002-2004 Michigan Journal of Race & Law Guide for Aspiring Law Professors, 7 Mich. J. Race & L. 457 (2002)
• Eric Goldman (Marquette), Careers in Law Teaching
• Institute for Humane Studies, George Mason University, Law School and Beyond: The IHS Guide to Careers in Legal Academia
• Law Crossing, Becoming a Law Professor: Part 1 and Part 2
• Brian Leiter (Texas), Information and Advice for Persons Interested in Teaching Law
• Brad Wendel (Cornell), The Big Rock Candy Mountain: How to Get a Job in Law Teaching
• Don Zillman (Maine), Marina Angel (Temple), Jan Laitos (Denver), George Pring (Denver) & Joseph Tomain (Cincinnati), Uncloaking Law School Hiring: A Recruit's Guide to the AALS Faculty Recruitment Conference, 39 J. Legal Educ. 345 (1988)