Chilton, Masur, and Rozema on Law Schools and Lax Tenure Standards

Lax tenure standards may have high costs at elite law schools

Schools usually apply strict standards for tenure, granting it only to the most talented and productive professors. But that is generally not true at the country’s top 14 law schools, where at least 95 percent of professors hired on the tenure track receive it, according to a paper by three University of Chicago Law School academics published Wednesday.

“This results in unproductive faculty occupying some of the world’s most valuable academic real estate while leaving more productive scholars under-placed and preventing new scholars from breaking into the legal academy,” according to the paper. Titled Rethinking Law School Tenure Standards, the paper was written by Jonathan Masur, a law professor; Adam Chilton, an assistant law professor; and Kyle Rozema, a Wachtell Lipton fellow at the school.

Read more at ABA Journal