Bibliography of Articles for New Law Professors
When I became a new law professor, I did a little research and tried to assemble articles addressed to me–the new law professor. The stack has been sitting locked away in boxes now for a while, so rather than continue to try to maintain a dead tree’s archive, I’m passing along a bibliography of articles I identified, plus some more recent articles. The list does show my age (I became a full-time professor in 2002) but some principles remain true to this day.
* Rachel Arnow-Richman, Bibliography for New Teachers, 26 Hawaii L. Rev. 489 (2004) (focused on contracts professors).
* Robert H. Abrams, Sing Muse: Legal Scholarship for New Law Teachers, 37 J. Legal Educ. 1 (1987).
* Susan J. Becker, Advice for the New Law Professor: A View from the Trenches, 42 J. Legal Educ. 432 (1992).
* Richard Delgado, How to Write a Law Review Article, 20 U.S.F. L. Rev. 445 (1986). Although its principal audience is students, I think Volokh’s Academic Legal Writing [Amazon Affiliates link] is a more useful and modern treatment of the subject.
* Cheryl Hanna, The Nuts and Bolts of Scholarship (2004).
* Mary Kay Kane, Some Thoughts on Scholarship for Beginning Teachers, 37 J. Legal Educ. 14 (1987).
* Howard E. Katz & Kevin Francis O’Neill, Strategies and Techniques of Law School Teaching: A Primer for New Teachers (2007).
* Eric L. Muller, A New Law Teacher’s Guide to Choosing a Casebook, 45 J. Legal Educ. 557 (1995).
* Douglas K. Newell, Ten Survival Suggestions For Rookie Law Teachers, 33 J. Legal Educ. 693 (1983).
* Frank T. Read and M.C. Mirow, So Now You’re a Law Professor: A Letter from the Dean, Cardozo Law Review De Novo, at 55, 2009.
* Kent D. Syverud, Taking Students Seriously: A Guide for New Law Teachers, 43 J. Legal Educ. 247 (1993).
* Donald J. Weidner, A Dean’s Letter to New Law Faculty About Scholarship. 44 J. Legal Educ. 440 (1994).
* Douglas J. Whaley, Teaching Law: Advice for the New Law Professor, 43 Ohio St. L.J. 125 (1982).
There are a lot of materials on teaching generally. You might find the following further resources helpful:
* My careers in law teaching page
* Madeleine Schachter, The Law Professor’s Handbook: A Practical Guide to Teaching Law Students
* Dorothy A. Brown, Selected Articles on Law Teaching for the New Law Teacher (2005)
* Materials from the Legal Scholarship Blog
* Mercer Law’s Law School Teaching and Learning Resources
* Georgetown Law’s Law Teaching & Scholarship Guide
* Michael A. Gerber, Milk and Cookies for Untenured Faculty, Selected Resources (2001) (emphasizing resources for bankruptcy professors)
* Sharon Dolovich, Making Docile Lawyers: An Essay on the Pacification of Law Students, 111 Harv. L. Rev. 2027 (1998)
* Jordan H. Leibman & James P. White, How the Student-Edited Law Journals Make Their Publication Decisions, 39 J. Legal Educ. 387 (1989). This is a little dated but it has some neat statistical analysis of journal practices.
Good luck! Feel free to contact me if I can help in any way.