pedagogical Don Quixote de la Mississippi, The

Case, David W

At this point they caught sight of thirty or forty windmills which were standing on the plain there, and no sooner had Don Quixote laid eyes upon them than he turned to his squire and said, "Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we could have wished; for you see there before you, friend Sancho Panza, some thirty or more lawless giants with whom I mean to do battle. I shall deprive them of their lives, and with the spoils from this encounter we shall begin to enrich ourselves; for this is righteous warfare, and it is a great service to God to remove so accursed a breed from the face of the earth."

"What giants?" said Sancho Panza.1

Introduction

In the fall of 2001, I enthusiastically joined the ranks of full time legal educators. My new career follows a previous thirteen-year legal career, nearly a decade spent as a practicing attorney in Mississippi. I had, to say the least, a lengthy and often turbulent transition from law practice to academia. My efforts to enter the legal teaching profession spanned twelve years and included participation in three separate Association of American Law Schools (AALS) faculty recruitment conferences.

Often during this period and more frequently since, I have been asked to share my experiences by other practicing attorneys similarly interested in pursuing a career as a law professor. A number of requests have come from fellow graduates of my alma mater-the University of Mississippi School of Law, many referred by former law professors acquainted with my recent experiences with the legal teaching market. Although admittedly limited as empirical support, this is at least the starting point for my strongly held view that personal anecdotes and stories convey important information for individuals considering whether to pursue entry into the legal teaching market. This is the primary basis upon which I offer this optimistic, though somewhat self-effacing, personal narrative.2

Each annual academic hiring season, a multitude of practicing attorneys attempt to make the transition from law practice to law professor.3 Only a relatively small number are successful. For that reason, attorneys considering whether to start down such a path-especially newly minted, non-Ivy League law school graduates in the early stages of their careers, as I was-may be well served by carefully considering the successes and failures of those who have made such attempts before them.

The mere fact of this essay should not be construed as evidence that my experiences somehow blaze an easily followed path from law practice to employment in legal education. My route to a career in law teaching was, to say the very least, non-traditional. Indeed, rather than offering encouragement, my story more closely resembles the Greek soothsayer Teiresias's warning to Odysseus that his intended journey could take either of two paths-a peaceful and successful passage home to Ithaka or, alternatively, a journey fraught with disaster and ruin for Odysseus and his crew.5 In the end, of course, Odysseus's journey reaches, at least for him, a successful completion. Beforehand, however, the entire crew save Odysseus is lost at sea; the result is a nine-year suspension of the journey while he is stranded on Kalypso's island, and numerous suitors to his throne must be fended off upon his final arrival at Ithaka.

"Disaster and ruin" are not necessarily descriptive of my personal odyssey from there to here. Although certainly of personal concern, the resulting substantial amounts of graduate school debt and several years worth of financial lost opportunity costs do not necessarily equate to "disaster and ruin." Nonetheless, my journey from private practice to legal academia-roughly commenced in 1990 and roughly concluded over a decade later in 2002-more closely resembles the latter course of Teiresias's prophesy than the former.6

Even so, a writer-and a law professor is most certainly a writer-writes about his experiences, especially those that are life changing and life enriching. This can lead to significant personal growth and self-improvement, a worthy goal for an academician in any discipline. As this essay reflects, however, my capacity to effectively process lessons learned from past actions may be open to question. Then again, this essay also provides a useful opportunity to conduct a cathartic self-assessment of the results of a lengthy and relatively arduous journey. A fully licensed psychotherapist would undoubtedly charge several thousands of dollars for similar and-as this essay might suggest to the reader-desperately needed services of this kind. Given my rather expensive transition from private law practice to the not-quite-so lucrative world of teaching at a public law school, this is a particularly appropriate time to exercise such financial frugality.

Even if no personal benefits are realized, however, this effort retains at least some genuine importance. As emphasized above, lawyers interested in pursuing a career as a law professor can greatly benefit from learning the experiences of those previously having navigated the murky waters of the legal teaching market. The primary benefit is most analogous to that gained by watching someone else jump off a cliff. The observer-at far less cost than incurred by the jumper-obtains valuable information on an exceedingly important question: What happens when the jumper reaches the bottom of the cliff? Each hiring season finds many standing uncertainly upon the precipice of the cliffs of the legal teaching market. Even the most risk seeking of these potential jumpers should search for as much pre-jump information as possible.7 Hopefully, this essay contributes something worthwhile towards this purpose.

Jumping Off the Cliff-Prologue

The flyer-received in the morning mail in early January 1998-had been on my desk for over two weeks. I was ten years out of law school and in my third year as a partner in a small, successful boutique law firm in Jackson, Mississippi. Normally, I would throw such a flyer away seconds after a brief, curious glance. As a practicing attorney on countless mailing lists, I had received hundreds of seemingly similar flyers over the years. Most advertised continuing legal education seminars held in such exotic locations as New York City, San Francisco, Aruba, or Tupelo, Mississippi. Occasionally, such a flyer set off my wilder fantasies and, for a few seconds, I would consider arguing to my partners that a three-day seminar in Hawaii was of sufficient substantive value to actually justify its otherwise insane cost. In all such instances, reality inevitably regained control of my senses, and the flyer was quickly discarded. This particular flyer, however, seized my full attention. Attention of the sort that oncoming car headlights compel of small animals in the middle of the road after nightfall.

As explained below, reminiscent of the many chivalry novels absorbed by Don Quixote, Cervantes' middle-aged (yet "ingenious") gentleman of La Mancha,8 this flyer awakened-in my case, reawakened-a powerful, wholly impractical compulsion residing deep within my psyche. Despite a few, good faith attempts to do so, I could not bring myself to throw it away. After each failed attempt, I carefully placed the flyer on my desk next to the telephone. As it caught my eye several times a day over the course of the next two weeks, I would pick it up, re-read it, and reflect on its contents.

The flyer had been produced by the Vanderbilt Center for Environmental Management Studies (VCEMS), an academic research center at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.9 The flyer announced a vacancy in the Bridgestone/Firestone Fellowship, a three-year academic appointment financially supporting an individual pursuing a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary environmental studies at Vanderbilt. During this appointment, the Fellow serves as a research associate at VCEMS, including working on projects of interest to the Environmental Affairs department of the fellowship sponsor, Bridgestone/Firestone, Inc., headquartered in Nashville.

Why should a flyer soliciting applications for a doctoral fellowship appointment elicit such fascination-indeed, enthrallment-for a partner in a financially successful and, as such things went, reasonably enjoyable private law practice? To fully answer that question, one must look in on the same individual eight years earlier, then an associate at the same law firm contemplating the possibility of a career change.

Jumping Off the Cliff-Part I

In January 1990, less than two years after graduation from law school, I decided I wanted to become a law professor. I saw no burning bush ordering me to take my shoes off because the ground I stood on was holy. There was no blinding flash of light and accompanying booming voice suggesting I attend that year's AALS faculty recruitment conference in Washington, D.C. So far as I can now recall, no divine, metaphysical, or psychosomatic event triggered my decision. The decision was primarily a reaction to the growing realization that the academic stimulation that made my law school experience so personally enjoyable was virtually nonexistent in my private law practice. I knew I wanted to continue a career in law. But, I also knew I wanted a return of the academic motivation that attracted me to the law in the first place.

My decision to attend law school was not influenced by any family legacy involving attorneys-there had never been an attorney in my family-or by any long-held personal interest in a legal career. Simply put, I attended law school primarily because, as an English major heading into my senior year in college, I had no better idea of what to do with myself after graduation. My first two years of college represented my first experience away from home and, for standard reasons of youthful immaturity and lack of judgment, produced a spectacularly uninspired academic performance. However, at the mid-point of my college career, my family moved to Oxford, Mississippi when my father took a job at the University of Mississippi. Desiring to heighten my chances of turning myself around academically, I decided to move back home and transfer to Ole Miss.

Not surprisingly, my academic performance following transfer to Ole Miss corresponded positively to a newfound focus and diligence. I discovered a previously untapped fondness for learning and scholarship and an unexpected love for academic life. The thrill experienced due to the first real academic effort and success of my life-combined with a sense of wasted opportunity stemming from my initial collegiate experience-stimulated a desire for post-graduate academic challenges. Many of my friends and contemporaries who had performed exceptionally well academically in college had decided to attend law school. Thus, I saw law school-again, at Ole Miss where my grade point average could continue to reap the benefits of the comforts, convenience, and financial advantages of living at home-as an opportunity to accommodate these desires and, importantly, measure myself academically against others similarly motivated and inclined.

From the perspective of a potential career, I confess that I was also motivated by the perception that attorneys earned a good financial living. After almost two years of private practice, the perception regarding money, relatively speaking, seemed to have proven true. Nonetheless, for me, the financial rewards of law practice were quickly overtaken by recognition that the academic enjoyment I had once found in the law had all but disappeared in the day-to-day reality of the work of a practicing attorney. In considering alternatives, I contrasted this with the careers of former law professors, including my own father-in-law,10 whom I admired and by whom I had often been inspired as a student. Academic stimulation was unquestionably built into their respective job descriptions. Further, these women and men appeared to enjoy high levels of career satisfaction and, by all appearances, none appeared to be starving. The optimal solution to my career desires seemed obvious-at least to me.

A decision to seek a specific career change made, it occurred to me that I knew virtually nothing about how one went about becoming a law professor.11 So, like any competent attorney, I initiated a plan of discovery. I decided to first talk to former professors meeting two basic requirements: I had to both trust them and feel confident that they would not immediately burst into laughter upon hearing what I had in mind. Although firmly cognizant of my limited knowledge of how law professors were hired, I approached my fact-finding mission with significant confidence and optimism. My academic performance in law school was exemplary. I had graduated with honors and ranked in the top five of my class, had served as the comments editor on the editorial board of the law review, and had published a well-received student comment in the law review. Moreover, the various law firms that evaluated my credentials when interviewing for jobs coming out of law school had uniformly responded with considerable enthusiasm.12 Surely, the reaction of law schools would be similar. Right?

That particular bubble was burst only seconds into my first conversation with a former law professor. Although in agreement that my academic credentials were commendable, I was advised in no uncertain terms that the mid-tier institution from which I received my law degree would not be looked upon with favor in the legal teaching market. In fact, my alma mater was far enough down in the informal pecking order of law schools that, top graduate or not, my degree most likely would be a detriment to my chances of even getting an interview. For the first time, and certainly not the last, I was advised that most law professors were hired from a relatively small number of law schools, primarily Ivy League caliber schools such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Chicago, and Columbia.13 One professor went so far as to say that "graduates of the University of Mississippi do not get jobs as law professors."14 Not all former professors were quite so pessimistic-well, at least not in so many words. But, with some, you could certainly see it there in their eyes. Their eyes might as well have been those of Sancho Panza suggesting in their reflection, "Don, that is not a giant over on that plain. It is a windmill. Put down the jousting lance, get off the horse, and just walk away."

Of course, the ingenious gentleman of La Mancha was not easily dissuaded. Neither was I. Indeed, at least a couple professors with whom I spoke were almost encouraging.15 At the very least, they humored me by discussing the intricacies of the teaching market. Based on such helpful conversations, I formulated what I began to refer to as "The Plan." The Plan was elegant in its simplicity, consisting of only four steps. Step One: A judicial clerkship on a United States circuit court of appeals. Step Two: An LL.M. degree from an Ivy League caliber school.16 Step Three: Publication of a serious piece of legal scholarship in a law review.17 Step Four: The difficult task of selecting a single offer from the multitude that most certainly would be subsequently forthcoming from law schools around the country.

Execution is generally the primary difficulty even for the simplest of plans. From the outset, even I anticipated a modicum of difficulty in execution of my Plan. For example, as an initial matter, I would have to convince a sitting federal court of appeals judge to hire me as a judicial clerk, a not insubstantial challenge. Similarly, an admissions committee at an Ivy League caliber school would be required to look favorably upon my application. In my view, Steps Three and Four would pose fewer problems, given that I clearly would be firmly in control of these specific phases. However, there was a critical threshold issue to first deal with; a condition precedent to even taking the slightest initial preparatory steps in execution of the Plan. In fact, non-occurrence of this condition would stop the Plan dead in its tracks. To be free to begin, I would have to convince my wife of slightly more than two years that I should quit my relatively well paying job at the law firm, that we should sell our new home purchased little more than a year previous, and that, eventually, we should utilize our savings while also borrowing tens of thousands of additional dollars to pay for LL.M. tuition at a top law school and the accompanying living expenses.

As can be imagined, there was substantial risk inherent in this part of the undertaking-a peril that even Mr. Quixote never had to face. As it turned out, however, this threshold requirement to the Plan's success was not quite the initial obstacle I feared. My wife was also an attorney-we met and married while both law students at Ole Miss-and, in fact, her father was a law professor at the time.18 She was also extremely sympathetic and supportive of my desire for a career change and expressed surprising enthusiasm for the Plan. With her full approval, the Plan moved forward to the implementation stage.

I met with considerable good fortune with regard to Step One. January of 1990 was somewhat late for submitting applications to federal judges for the next batch of open clerkship positions commencing the fall of 1991. Determining to focus my efforts where I perceived my chances for success to be at their highest, I submitted applications to only three judges-each of whom served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and had their respective chambers in the federal courthouse in Jackson, Mississippi, literally across the street from the offices of my law firm. More importantly, each of these judges had graduated from the University of Mississippi School of Law and regularly hired top graduates from the school to serve as law clerks.19 In March of 1990, I received and immediately accepted an offer from the Honorable Rhesa Hawkins Barksdale to clerk for him during the 1991-92 term.

Having accepted an offer of employment from another employer, it was now incumbent upon me to share the details of the Plan with my current employers. I visited privately with each of the firm's partners to give them the news of the clerkship and to explain my reasons for wanting to leave.20 This was an important and highly delicate task. The clerkship with Judge Barksdale would not commence for a little over a year. The Plan did not contemplate loss of my job at the law firm during the lengthy interim between acceptance and commencement of the clerkship. Thus, the Plan did not include a contingent strategy in case the firm's partners decided to throw a perceived ungrateful young associate out of the building and lock the doors behind him. Adding significantly to the drama, my wife informed me shortly after my acceptance of the clerkship of the impending birth of our first child, who would arrive before the clerkship even commenced.21 No, a year of unemployment prior to the clerkship was a clearly unacceptable option that would spell premature death for the Plan.

Fortunately, my good standing at the firm was not in doubt. Plus, there was the added advantage that actually throwing a young family, with a new baby on the way, out onto the street would have appeared unseemly, even to a law firm. Thus, I truly did not suspect a reaction to my news even remotely so drastic as a demand to leave. And, for the most part, I was not disappointed by the firm's reaction. In fact, the reaction from the firm's partners to news of the clerkship and explanation of my desire to enter the teaching market was highly supportive. At least, supportive from the standpoint that they clearly recognized my inalienable right to make my own decisions on such matters, including the decision to charge up hills brandishing a jousting lance and yelling scholarly epithets at windmills if I so chose.

On the other hand, some of the firm's partners-as lawyers are wont to do-were not particularly shy about offering unsolicited and uncensored assessments of the Plan's ultimate potential for success. Carefully selected terms of art like "crazy," "deluded," "lunatic," and "poor Catherine" (referring to my wife) were used, in addition to several other similarly intended observations not suitable for publication in a family essay. Sancho Panza himself could not have put things into any better, more practical, or more realistic perspective, although in certain instances he probably would have been far less profane. Needless to say, I ignored them all. I had what I knew they lacked-supreme confidence in both the elegant simplicity of the Plan-confidence already supported by successful arrangements regarding its first phase-and in my own abilities.

My Fifth Circuit clerkship with Judge Barksdale was a tremendous honor and one of the great professional experiences of my life. Seventeen years before beginning service as a judge, Judge Barksdale had himself served as a law clerk to United States Supreme Court Justice Byron White.22 Judge Barksdale patterned his own chambers, including his working relationships with his law clerks, after his experiences clerking for Justice White.23 The resulting good fortune for me was a learning and growth experience more enriching and worthwhile than my previous six years of law school and practice combined. Importantly, the door that Judge Barksdale opened by hiring me as his law clerk allowed my journey to begin where it otherwise might have faltered at the start. Equally important, the clerkship was a prime mover in opening subsequent doors along the way that otherwise most probably would have remained closed. Included among these subsequent doors were those of the Columbia Law School, which accepted my application to its LL.M. program beginning the fall semester of 1992.

The prospect of attending Columbia University in the City of New York produced simultaneous senses of anticipation and trepidation. Certainly, I looked forward to the academic challenges offered by an institution with the prestige of Columbia. On the other hand, as a lifelong native of the South, I had significant concern about actually moving from Mississippi to New York City with my wife and an eighteen-month-old son. During college, I was a fan of the classic 1981 movie "Escape from New York." Deep down, I had long suspected that movie to be far closer to a documentary than science fiction, and was convinced that the combat abilities of Kurt Russell's Snake Plissken were a requirement merely to walk the streets safely in broad daylight.

My somewhat parochial, Hollywood-influenced fear aside, I well understood that my ultimate career objective would be best served by obtaining an LL.M. reflecting the greatest contrast possible to my prior educational experiences. Without question, studying law in New York City seemed the starkest contrast possible to studying law in Oxford, Mississippi. Moreover, an advanced degree from Columbia converged in all respects with the requirements of Step Two of the Plan. In deference to the greater good the Plan represented, therefore, I forced any inclinations toward regional narrow-mindedness into the deeper recesses of my subconscious. I made peace with the fact that my road to becoming a law professor apparently passed directly through West 112th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenues in New York City.24

For the most part, my fears about living in New York City proved completely unfounded. With the exception of a certain few now largely repressed memories, mostly involving neighborhood grocery stores, one insane cab driver, and a dead body on the sidewalk, the experience of living in the city was truly wonderful. New Yorkers were actually surprisingly nice, in their brash and at times off-putting-"I'll speak slowly so the barefoot rube from Mississippi can understand"-sort of way. The academic experience at Columbia Law School was similarly enjoyable, if one was willing to ignore the insane cost of tuition, the occasionally condescending-"Where did you say you were from again?"-attitude of those who had rarely, if ever, heard a southern accent in their lives, and the aloofness of some, though certainly not all, of the faculty.25

In furtherance of Step Three, early in the fall semester I completed work on a law review article started while clerking on the Fifth Circuit that was published later that year. On the surface, matters concerning the Plan seemed well in hand. However, as I began preparations to attend the AALS faculty recruitment conference in Washington, D.C., later that fall, the first signs began to appear that adherence to the Plan might not guarantee ultimate success. Among my fellow graduate law students at Columbia, I had my first opportunity to meet and interact with other individuals also pursuing employment in the legal teaching market. Many of them-well, most of them-all right, all of them-seemed to have a better-perhaps the correct phrase is "more realistic"-understanding of the competitive realities of the market. Moreover, through conversations and interaction with them, I got a first fleeting glimpse of the number of potential candidates in the market and the impressive (read "frightening") quality of many of their respective credentials.

Worse yet, the faculty associated with the Columbia graduate legal studies program seemed to be going out of their way to downplay-and by "downplay" I mean "completely destroy"-even the slightest hope that any of us would experience success in the teaching market. A few of my contemporaries in the LL.M. program reported that the director of graduate legal studies had even bluntly stated, "You realize, of course, given the current state of the market, that you will not receive any offers to teach this year." My friends were somewhat pale when reporting this bit of news, and I must admit that such a candid opinion caused my own confidence and optimism to wane-at least momentarily.

Although without doubt kindly intended to allay any false hopes, the statement itself was sadly comical. If any of us had truly realized the existence of such a bleak state of affairs, that person might have made a different decision before making legally binding promises to various lenders to repay over the next couple of decades the emperor's ransom necessary to pay the costs associated with Ivy League tuition and living in the most expensive city on the planet. Perhaps that is at least a partial explanation of why such statements were not made until after our arrival in New York, instead of being included in the flowery letters we had each received the previous spring acknowledging and thanking us for our respective acceptances of offers to the LL.M. program. Considering the matter further, however, I concluded-conceded, perhaps-that my ultimate decision would not have been changed by such advance skepticism. I had ignored the Sancho Panzas in Mississippi; I would have ignored Sancho Panzas on the Upper West Side as well. Plus, I still had the Plan going for me-which was nice.26

Following completion and submission of my Faculty Appointments Register form to the AALS,27 I continued my work at Columbia and waited for the phone to ring. I waited. And waited. Although my phone did not exactly ring off the hook, eventually a handful of law schools contacted me to request that I interview with them at the recruitment conference in November. The low number of interviews was disappointing, but at the same time I felt somewhat fortunate. A number of my well-qualified, highly credentialed colleagues at Columbia had received no requests at all for interviews. I tried to ignore the voices of various Sancho Panzas echoing in my head and made my travel arrangements to attend the conference.

To be fully appreciated and understood, the "meat market"-a frequent moniker for the annual AALS Faculty Recruitment Conference-must be personally experienced.28 I am well aware of that now, but most certainly was not in 1992. To say the least, I was unprepared for the sheer numbers of highly qualified and impressively credentialed aspiring law professors in attendance. Lapsing into a favorite southern euphemism, it would have been impossible to swing a dead cat in the lobby of the conference hotel without hitting a candidate who had graduated from either Yale or Harvard-and it was a pretty sizeable lobby at that. In the crush of one of the initial conference receptions, I stuck close to a couple of colleagues from Columbia and tried to suppress the annoying question repeating inside my head-why, do you suppose, is no other candidate out of the several hundred here also a graduate of the Ole Miss law school? Full consideration of that important, if belatedly occurring, question was greatly hindered by the fact that the reception had a cash, rather than open, bar.

To make a long story slightly less long, interviews at the conference clearly established Step Four as the critical flaw in the Plan. By this point, I had been giving serious thought to my intended career in legal education for more than three years. To my surprise, however, such reflection had not been undertaken in nearly the depth the faculty interviewers appeared to expect. For example, even though I had already published articles in law reviews, I found myself unprepared to answer specific questions regarding my long term "research and scholarship agenda." Disappointed facial expressions and unsympathetic body language suggested that generic expressions of enthusiasm for scholarly research and writing were insufficient. Similarly, my blank look when asked to discuss the outlines of my "job talk" in any subsequent on-campus interview probably did little to impress the interviewers favorably. Other largely unanticipated questions also produced similarly off-the-cuff and below par responses. I would explain further, except that much of the rest of the interviews is now a blur-and not a particularly pleasantly remembered blur at that.

On my train ride back to New York City, I came to grips with unforgiving reality. Invitations to campus for further interviews would not be forthcoming from any of the schools I had met with at the conference. Despite prodigious effort, concomitant faith, and substantial sunk costs, the Plan had failed. My disappointment was only partially tempered by a curious distraction on the train ride back to New York. As the New Jersey landscape rushed by outside my window, I noticed some thirty or more windmills standing together on a plain. I found it exceedingly curious that I had completely failed to notice such a bizarre sight during the initial ride to Washington, D.C. But, not nearly as curious as the mystery of where the crowd of lawless giants had gone that I had seen milling about on that very same spot during the ride up only a few days before.

Walking Away from the Landing-Eventually

As a personal character trait, stubbornness is either a positive or negative quality depending upon the specific circumstances. Even after the Plan's unexpected-at least by me-downfall at the 1992 AALS faculty recruitment conference, I refused to concede defeat. Clearly, the flaw in the original plan was simply that becoming a law professor was a somewhat more substantive, long-range project than I had originally understood. At the moment, however, the necessities of supporting a family combined with having taken on a considerable amount of graduate school debt required that I immediately focus on securing a full-time, paying job.

The day before graduation from Columbia in the spring of 1993, I accepted an offer to join the United States Department of Justice as a trial attorney in the Civil Division's Commercial Litigation Branch in Washington, D.C. Two primary reasons supported pursuit of this position. First, there was the family responsibility/paycheck issue. Second, I believed that faculty recruitment committees would favorably view experience as a DOJ/Washington, D.C. attorney during my next charge at the academic windmills with my trusty jousting lance. Our stay in Washington proved brief, however. The impending birth of our second child triggered a desire to be closer to family, friends, and familiar territory. As such, in the fall of 1993, I accepted an offer to return to Jackson, Mississippi to serve as a permanent law clerk to the Honorable James Sumner, a Magistrate Judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi.

At least theoretically, there was, again, a law school teaching market-focused method to my madness in this regard. At Columbia, my graduate studies had focused on such areas as civil procedure, jurisdiction, and conflict of laws. During the recent debacle at the AALS conference, I sought-unsuccessfully it seemed-to convince the interviewers of my aptitude to teach in these areas, given the combination of my graduate studies, clerkship, and legal practice experience. I viewed a second judicial clerkship, this time at the federal trial court level, as an opportunity to continue to gain valuable experience in those areas. Moreover, I hoped the clerkship would allow enough flexibility to direct a portion of my professional energies toward publishing law review articles and teaching as an adjunct professor at the local law school. These efforts would also serve to bolster my credentials for purposes of a subsequent run at the market.

Working for Judge Sumner was another truly wonderful personal and professional experience. And, importantly, within the next year I did have the opportunity to teach as an adjunct at the Mississippi College School of Law and to write and publish an additional law review article. Despite these opportunities, however, my confidence in the "revised" Plan was beginning to wane. Indeed, I began to question whether I was actually making forward progress toward the goal of a career as a law professor. A Faculty Appointments Register Form submitted to the AALS in advance of the 1994 recruitment conference drew no attention whatsoever. Further, an unscientific yet revealing personal survey of a number of law school contacts suggested that, if anything, the teaching market was only becoming more competitive. Success in my ultimate objective did not appear to be on the visible horizon. Worse, no reason seemed to exist to believe the hiring climate in the legal teaching market would significantly change in the foreseeable future. As a thirty-two-year-old head of a single income family with two children, I began to wonder whether ending up a forty-something-year-old federal court law clerk would be the best possible situation on either a personal or professional level.

At this point, the dream was at its weakest, and its seeker at his most vulnerable. Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, my former law firm chose this moment to move in for the kill. Sancho Panza-taking the form of my best friend, former law school classmate, and former fellow associate and now partner at the firm-began to whisper in my ear words full of logic, reason, and rationality. The construction law practice at the firm was thriving. The construction department needed to hire additional attorneys and saw considerable value in hiring a known commodity with three years of prior experience with the firm's practice and client base. The firm would pay well for such experience, and there was the fact that I had a family to financially support to consider. Moreover, the law firm represented a tangible, long-term professional and financial future that most assuredly was not available by continuing to work as a judicial clerk while waiting for an opportunity in law teaching that might-Sancho was gracious enough to avoid saying "would certainly"-never happen. If I failed to take advantage of such a tremendous opportunity, any number of other lawyers most certainly would quickly do so. Instead of hiring a relative unknown, however, the firm would prefer that I come back. "Think about it," my best friend (Sancho) requested in his most reasonable tone.

Considering the firm's offer, part of me knew that accepting the offer was nothing less than walking away from my four-year obsession, something La Manchans are loathe to do. However, I also could find no flaw in Sancho Panza's depressingly straightforward logic. Here was a different sort of opportunity, speaking not to the aspiring academic, but to the somewhat guilty conscience of the husband and father in me. The equal of such an excellent professional opportunity in law practice would most likely not be available again after additional years of waiting out the merciless and unforgiving law school teaching market. I made a decision entirely out of character for me over the past few years-to choose the rational and sensible path. I accepted the offer to rejoin the firm in the late fall of 1994. A little over a year later, I became an equity partner. The jousting lance was put away in the closet, and the horse was turned out to pasture. Sancho Panza-not Mr. Quixote-was calling the shots now.

Jumping Off the Cliff-Part II

And, now, here I was in January 1998. Beginning my third year as a partner in the firm. Attempting to build a law practice that accomplished the difficult-perhaps impossible-task of satisfying both my obligations to my fellow partners and my own desire for intellectual and academic stimulation. Staring at that damned flyer from Vanderbilt as if in a hypnotic trance. I have never been much of a believer in fate. But, for the life of me, I could conceive of no other explanation for why I was the only person at the firm to receive a direct mail advertisement for a pre-doctoral fellowship in interdisciplinary environmental studies. After two weeks of pretending I was really not all that interested, I picked up the phone to call the fellowship sponsor-VCEMS.

Over the phone, I interrogated the current holder of the fellowship. Were they really interested in holders of law degrees for this Ph.D. program? Yes, I was told. I noted that the descriptions of the program suggested that significant study was required in the technical disciplines of science, engineering, and economics. My decision to major in English in college was in part based upon a seriously irrational fear of math and science. That phobia had most certainly not been cured by subsequently obtaining two law degrees. Would my lack of academic background in those areas preclude me from consideration for the program, or, more importantly, constitute an insurmountable obstacle to successful completion of the required course work? No, I was told. The interdisciplinary nature of the program was intended to expose a student with strengths in one discipline (such as law) to foundational principles and knowledge in other disciplines relatively new to that student.

Following additional discussion of my background and the objectives of the program, it became clear that any application from me would receive serious consideration. Thus, the previously believable excuse of not having a realistic chance of actually receiving the appointment was now no longer available as a legitimate reason to throw away the flyer and pretend I had never seen it. So, giving way to the inevitable, I began seriously considering the possibilities represented by the Vanderbilt fellowship.

The overarching question, obviously, was whether this Ph.D. program would seriously advance my ultimate goal of becoming a law professor. Even at first glance, a number of reasons appeared to suggest that the answer to this question was a wholehearted "yes." First, there was the obvious benefit of adding a Ph.D. to my academic credentials from a nationally known university with a prestigious academic reputation. Moreover, the degree program focused on a field (interdisciplinary environmental studies) of substantial relevance to an important area of legal study (environmental law). Furthermore, the interdisciplinary nature of the program was particularly appealing given my specific motivation for pursuing the degree. My previous experience at Columbia had demonstrated that interdisciplinary teaching and scholarship was gaining a significant foothold in the law schools, especially over the past decade.

More importantly, perhaps, through the program I could shore up the area that most plagued me during my interviews at the 1992 AALS faculty recruitment conference-development of a long-term research and scholarship agenda. Indeed, in contrast to my previously haphazard approach to law review publishing sporadically engaged in since graduation from law school, a doctoral fellowship would allow me to devote full time and attention to far more substantial and academically focused research and scholarship. All in all, the Vanderbilt program was a compelling opportunity to both enhance my academic credentials and produce serious, publishable scholarship prior to taking another run at the law school teaching market.

Inside my head, the calming voice of Sancho Panza intruded on the recently reawakened Mr. Quixote's growing excitement. Sancho asked in his most soothing manner, "But, what about the downside to taking three years out of your life-especially at this stage of it-to be a graduate student again? The last time you decided to charge off into the void on such a quest you were a 27-year old associate with no children. Now, you're a 35-year old partner at a successful law firm and your third child was born less than two years ago. How will you financially support a family of five for three years as a graduate student? Moreover, you'll be 39 years old when you finish the program with no guarantee whatsoever that law schools will take you any more seriously as a candidate this time around than last. The risks are far greater this time around; the situation you are contemplating walking away from far better. Maybe Don should just go back to sleep before he falls off that horse and impales himself on that jousting lance. I thought we donated that thing to Goodwill, anyway."

Once again, Sancho's logic was impeccable, if somewhat patronizing, but Mr. Quixote was feeling far better than he had in years. Here was an opportunity worthy of pulling the Plan itself out of mothballs, polishing it up, and giving it another chance. Most certainly, a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt in interdisciplinary environmental studies, together with the attendant publishable scholarship that would be produced during such a pursuit, would constitute a tremendous upgrade of Steps Two and Three of the Plan. Perhaps even enough of an upgrade to make Step Four a far more realistic possibility than in the Plan's original formulation. "Besides," Mr. Quixote chided Sancho, "your negativity is entirely premature. The fellowship hasn't even been offered at this point, nor will it unless an application is submitted. Moreover, even if he applies, the worst thing that could happen is that the fellowship will be offered to him. Only then would he have to make any decision about jumping off a cliff a second time-even if it is a much higher cliff this time around."

Thus erroneously convinced that the mere act of applying would be costless, I did so. And, eventually, the worst happened. After day-long interviews in Nashville, the directors of the VCEMS program offered me the fellowship. Given that this story is related after the fact, I suppose complete honesty, including with myself, is acceptable at this point. Despite what was said (thought) to Sancho, and despite what I may have innocently implied to my wife at the time, I knew-at least subconsciously-that I would accept the fellowship if offered before submitting the application. My desire for a career in legal academia was every bit as strong in 1998 as it was in 1990, if not stronger. The Vanderbilt Ph.D. fellowship appeared to be a last opportunity to make a legitimate run at the legal teaching market. I believed strongly that if this opportunity were allowed to pass, the only choice would be to mentally adjust to the fact that a career as a full time law professor was not in my future. Even the intrepid Mr. Quixote would go into permanent hibernation.

My desires aside, however, actually accepting the fellowship offer was not a given. I had to convince my wife of now ten years that accepting the offer was the decision of a sane individual not completely out of touch with his substantial family responsibilities. In contrast to her previous acquiescence to going to New York City for a year to pursue an LL.M., she was far more resistant this time. To her, the notion of walking away from a successful law partnership, again selling a relatively newly purchased home, uprooting our children from schools, church and friends, and attempting to live as a family of five for three years on a monthly graduate student stipend somehow seemed far more-(insane, crazy, lunatic, demented, stupid)-reckless.

In a calm voice, eerily reminiscent of the rational tones of my inner Sancho Panza, my wife asked the entirely sensible question of how the bills would get paid if she was taking care of the children full time while I was at school full time. I told her that paying the bills would be my responsibility; I promised to take on part time legal work to the extent necessary to make it work. (This became a separate step in the newly revised Plan, by now an oft-revised manifesto that was becoming dangerously Kaczynskiesque in its influence on the author.) Despite an obvious degree of apprehension and misgiving, my wife agreed.29 In short, she took a leap of faith on behalf of herself and the children that matters would eventually work out for the best. A leap much similar to the one she must have taken over a decade earlier when she decided to marry me in the first place. I had no doubt that she was now seriously rethinking the wisdom of that initial decision.

Next, I had to advise the partners at the firm-this time, my partners-of my decision to leave-again. They were, to say the least, not surprised. Most of them were around the first time my delusions turned toward the legal teaching market and to a person claimed to have been expecting such an announcement eventually. One expressed surprise I had waited this long. Another wished me good luck and stated rather enthusiastically that I could be assured the firm would not hire me a third time after this latest homage to my inner demons fell short. The man was a well-known firm comedian, although he did not smile when delivering this particular punch line. Notwithstanding this perhaps confusing signal, the overall reaction of the firm was that of far less concern-and certainly involved use of far less profanity-than when I announced my first departure. It could be that our shared experiences over the years caused my partners to recognize and respect my obvious passion to break into the legal teaching market, including my inspiring refusal to give up on a now long held dream. Thus, they only wished to appear fully supportive of my decision. Or, it could be that they recognized and fully respected clinical insanity when they saw it and were afraid of what I might do if they tried to interfere with my fantasies. Either way, my second departure from the firm was friendly and full of good wishes for success.

A Softer Landing the Second Time Around

So, I arrived at Vanderbilt in the fall of 1998-a graduate student for the third time since graduating from college, but this time bringing a family of five along for the ride. During new student orientation, as I sat among graduate students a decade and more my junior, I could hear Sancho Panza chuckling mightily to himself. Mr. Quixote and I both told him to shut up.

On the academic side of the equation, the Vanderbilt Ph.D. program proved far more suited to pursuit of my ultimate goal than even the ever-optimistic Mr. Quixote had anticipated. The interdisciplinary nature of the program combined with the wonderful support received from academic advisors and directors of the VCEMS program allowed tremendous flexibility to tailor my efforts with my ultimate target-the legal teaching market-in mind. This included both my course work-selected primarily from among Vanderbilt's graduate management, engineering, law, and economics programs-and my dissertation research and writing. Of particular importance, prior to attending the 2000 AAES faculty recruitment conference at the midpoint of the third and final year of the program, I was able to place three separate articles related to my doctoral dissertation with excellent law journals.

On the family support/survival side of the equation, however, matters proved far more difficult than even the ever-rational Sancho Panza had predicted. The monthly graduate stipend accompanying the fellowship, though quite generous as such things went, was intended to support a single graduate student. It was most certainly not intended to financially support a family of five headed by an irrational lunatic rapidly approaching middle age and tilting at academic windmills. Through the stipend plus what additional legal work I was able to muster from contacts with Tennessee and Mississippi attorneys, including my former law firm, we were able to pay rent, buy groceries, and keep the electricity and heat connected. But, our meager budget did not stretch far enough to cover many normally recurring costs-such as medical expenses, vehicle insurance, repairs, and maintenance, and payments on my Columbia loans left over from the last occasion Mr. Quixote had taken over possession of my senses.

Nonetheless, we managed to get by. This was due primarily to overwhelming (and greatly appreciated) generosity from two separate sets of patient, understanding in-laws-more accurately described as highly concerned grandparents-and access to fabulous lines of credit from companies seemingly unaware that their preferred, double platinum card customer no longer held a highly paying job (or any paying job for that matter). Perhaps more accurately, we simply postponed dealing with the personal financial mess being created until after the program's end, at which time, in theory, I would be once again gainfully employed. Appropriate adjustments were made to the Plan by its increasingly frenzied author.

Because, indeed, as academically enriching and personally fulfilling as the Vanderbilt program proved to be, full time employment in the legal teaching market at the end of the program's three years was always the ultimate goal. Thus, all of my academic endeavors from the first day of the fall semester of 1998 on-from course work to qualifying examinations to dissertation proposal defenses to dissertation research and writing-were overwhelmingly influenced by the looming specter of my eventual renewed assault upon the gates of the citadel of the legal teaching market. The 2000 AALS faculty recruitment conference, to take place during the fellowship's third and final year, became the ultimate countdown date. There is nothing like having two and one-half years to prepare for the equivalent of opening night at Carnegie Hall to gradually ratchet up stress to barely tolerable levels. My stress levels were hardly helped by the fact that, in many ways, the lives of my entire family during this same period would be largely on hold pending the outcome of the 2000 conference.

To my good fortune, my academic advisors and others at Vanderbilt, including professors at the law school, were exceedingly generous in offering advice and counsel for purposes of assisting my preparation efforts. I took considerable advantage of such resources, engaging my advisors in conversation about the legal teaching market in general and the recruitment process in particular whenever possible. It was here that my otherwise forgettable experience in 1992 proved to be of considerable value in preparing for the upcoming 2000 recruitment conference. Mistakes and weaknesses during the 1992 conference interviews became the subject of mini-tutorials on anticipating questions most likely to be asked by interviewers and weighing the best potential responses. It was much like preparing for comprehensive oral examinations.

The problem at this point was that I did not yet know which law schools, if any, would be giving these exams. When time came to submit my Faculty Appointments Register form to the AALS in advance of the 2000 conference, I was advised to also send cover letters and resumes to any law school that I believed had interests intersecting with my own. Quite frankly, this was a fairly low standard, given that my primary interest in law schools was "employment." This meant that virtually every law school seeking to employ law professors appeared to me to have an interest intersecting with mine. Accordingly, I eventually sent letters of interest to nearly the entire roster of AALS member schools.30 Seeing no need to wait to be asked at an interview, my letters detailed my teaching, research, and scholarship interests as reflected by my doctoral studies and writing. My recent article placements were mentioned prominently. As the AALS's initial Faculty Appointments Register form distribution date passed, I developed a fairly manic obsession with checking voice and e-mail as I waited for my hundreds of letters to be translated into dozens of interview requests.

Again, as in 1992, my phone did not exactly ring off the hook. Nonetheless, interview requests began to gradually trickle in during the weeks leading up to the 2000 conference. Finally, I had interviews scheduled for the conference with ten law schools. On the one hand, I was pleased with this fact; this was over twice as many interviews as I had managed to schedule in 1992. Further, these law schools seemed to be expressing a much stronger level of interest in my credentials and candidacy than was the case seven years earlier. On the other hand, as Sancho Panza so kindly pointed out, ten did not seem like such a very large number when you considered that there were more than 180 American Bar Association accredited law schools in the country. Nervously, I asked Mr. Quixote about this, but he was blithering on like a caffeine addict about "lawless giants" and "enriching ourselves with the spoils of righteous warfare" and was frankly no help at all.

During the conference in November of 2000, another advantage of having previously experienced the "meat market" in 1992 became clear. The frenzied conference atmosphere with its almost tangible air of one-part studied resolve and three-parts manic desperation no longer seemed to overwhelm me. It no longer concerned me that it was still impossible to get more than a few feet through the spacious hotel lobby without getting run over by another candidate from Harvard or Yale on his or her way to some important appointment to which I was not invited. Nonetheless, I assiduously avoided the conference receptions and their crush of highly qualified, impressively credentialed, and extremely talkative (mostly about themselves) aspiring law professors. I mostly kept to myself in the candidates' lounge, mentally preparing for my interviews while ignoring the argument going on in my head between Sancho and Don over whether I should switch to decaffeinated coffee.

Yet another advantage of my 1992 conference experience was that it provided a useful basis for comparison regarding my interviews at the 2000 conference. That is to say, having already been part of a number of painfully bad interviews, I was able to tell the difference seven years later when I was a part of a number of quite good interviews. Between learning from my mistakes in 1992 and my considerable preparatory efforts in advance of this conference, there were frankly no questions asked that I was not fully prepared to address in substantive detail. Indeed, a handful of the interviews had gone extremely well in my opinion; the possibilities with those schools seemed promising. My optimistic mood during the plane ride back to Nashville in no way resembled my mood during the train ride back to New York City seven years earlier.

Nonetheless, my mood was abruptly disrupted upon arriving home from the airport. My wife was waiting-the phrase "in ambush" comes to mind-at the door in a joyously agitated state with news to share that could not wait a second longer. She was pregnant with our fourth child. To say the least possible and still remain married, I was stunned. Our oldest child-who did not even exist when I first decided I wanted to leave private practice to be a law professor-was about to turn ten years old. Our third and youngest child had recently turned five years old. There was absolutely nothing in the Plan about a 39-year-old, third-year Ph.D. student fathering a fourth child, especially prior to having secured full time, gainful employment to follow the end of the fellowship. I may even have said something to this effect at the time; I really cannot recall at this point. Even Sancho Panza had fainted dead away and was absolutely silent.

Catherine allowed as to how she had known a few days before I left for Washington, but had decided not to tell me until after I returned from the conference. She knew the considerable stress I was already under in advance of my interviews-indeed, at times it seemed as if I was having conversations with people who were not there. She had decided it would be best not to add to what she well understood was an already exceedingly stressful process. This is, of course, evidence of my wife's immense intelligence and good sense. Without question, a candidate's chances at the AALS faculty recruitment conference are not improved by intermittent bursts of uncontrollable and unexplained fits of crying during interviews. Nor does a candidate make a favorable impression on the interviewers by falling onto his knees immediately upon walking into the interview room and begging them to take mercy upon a soon-to-be destitute and homeless family of five with a brand new baby on the way.31

Needless to say, the news of the forthcoming blessed event caused my post-conference stress levels to considerably exceed even my substantial pre-conference stress levels. Obtaining employment immediately following the end of the fellowship-that is, the end of the summer of 2001-now seemed more important than ever. Making matters worse, Sancho Panza, now recovered from his temporary shock-induced coma, calmly observed that I had not even considered, much less developed, a back up plan in the event no teaching offers were forthcoming during the current hiring season. Mr. Quixote and I both forcefully argued that it was too early for such panic-a back up plan was necessary only if nothing came from the AALS conference interviews. Sancho agreed, and then politely asked whether it meant anything at all that two weeks had passed since those interviews and I remained uninvited for on-campus interviews by any school.

This seemed a good point. So, going on the offensive, I phoned the respective chairs of the faculty recruiting committees of those schools with which I had interviewed particularly well. A call to the chair at the school that, in my opinion, had been my best interview-the University of Memphis-was an immediate disappointment. Although informed that I was considered among the top handful of candidates interviewing with them in Washington, the committee had narrowed its list of invitees for on-campus interviews to three. I was not on that list. The committee chair sympathetically counseled patience; there was no way of knowing how matters might proceed with the invited individuals. Calls to a couple of other schools were somewhat more promising. The committee chairs at these schools advised that the committees were very interested in possibly bringing me to campus. However, each of these schools was experiencing funding problems and was awaiting official approval for these specific tenure lines. Until such approval was obtained, candidates could not be invited to campus for further interviews. I was told they would let me know something as soon as they were able.

The rest of November and then December passed into the New Year of 2001 and no invitation for on-campus interviews were extended. Sancho was having considerable difficulty keeping an "I told you so back in 1998; heck, back in 1990 for that matter" quality out of his daily commentaries despite fierce rebukes from the annoyingly optimistic Mr. Quixote. In assessing back up plan alternatives, I explored with my academic advisors at Vanderbilt the possibility of an additional year as a research fellow with VCEMS. Whenever thoughts turned to the pending birth of our new baby that summer, I also contemplated calling that partner at my old law firm to ask him to clarify the seriousness of his previous statement that the firm absolutely would not consider hiring me a third time. However, even the remotest thoughts of returning to law practice evoked vehement, headache inducing rants from Mr. Quixote. Even Sancho Panzo dared not suggest disagreement with him at such moments.

A welcome reprieve from this increasingly pessimistic atmosphere soon arrived. I received successive calls from the faculty recruiting committee chair and the law school dean at the University of Memphis. The open tenure track position I had interviewed for had not been filled, but the faculty had voted to table the search until the subsequent hiring season. During the interim, however, the faculty member who taught environmental law courses at the law school had taken leave to serve as a visiting professor at another law school. I was asked whether I was interested in coming to Memphis to interview with the faculty for a one-year visiting appointment. The position would terminate at the end of the coming academic year, but I was told that the faculty intended during the coming year to hire one or more new tenure track faculty. Although there were no guarantees, a visiting professor might be at an advantage regarding faculty deliberations for filling tenure track slots later in the year.

I accepted the interview request with considerable enthusiasm. We had family residing both in Memphis and just over an hour's drive away in Oxford, Mississippi. Memphis was also two and a half hours away from Nashville, where we had made a number of friends over the past three years, and three and a half hours from Jackson, Mississippi, where we had lived for a decade. Any final decision to accept a teaching job would be based on both professional and family interests and concerns. Although we were fully prepared to go virtually anywhere within the contiguous forty-eight states to gain entry into the law school teaching market, the fact that Memphis was a substantive possibility was an extremely comforting thought.32

The on-campus interview went every bit as well as had, in my opinion, the previous interview in Washington, D.C. with the school's faculty recruitment committee.33 To the best of my knowledge, I avoided any major social faux paux at dinner with members of the recruitment team the night before. My presentation to the faculty the next day-my first "job talk," which had been the basis of some significant nervousness leading up to the event-went well. The presentation was based on my ongoing doctoral dissertation, giving me far more material to work with than I would ever need. Several hours of one-on-one, or two- or three-on-one, discussions with faculty members in the faculty lounge seemed to raise no glaring concerns. Finally, my lengthy conversation with the dean at the day's conclusion (which continued on the way to the Memphis airport) was extremely positive. I flew back to Nashville that evening full of optimism about the possibility of soon receiving an offer for the visiting position. Even Sancho Panza had to admit that my optimism was warranted.

This optimism was rewarded relatively quickly when the dean subsequently called to make a formal offer for the position. In advance of the dean's call, I touched base with the faculty recruiting committee chairs at the schools that had expressed continuing interest in my candidacy, but were still awaiting official approval of tenure lines. Learning that matters were unchanged, I informed them that, rather than awaiting resolution of such issues, I intended to immediately accept the visiting position at Memphis if it was formally offered. Having cleared the decks in this manner, I accepted the position at Memphis as soon as the dean tendered it over the phone. After more than a decade since my decision to pursue a career in law teaching, I would have my first opportunity-even if on an initially temporary basis-when the 2001 fall semester commenced at the University of Memphis.

Fortune Finally Smiles on the Intrepidly Stubborn and Persistent

The final summer of my doctoral fellowship was something of a whirlwind. I attempted to focus as much as possible on the writing of my dissertation. Nonetheless, preparations for the move to Memphis occupied significant attention, as did the birth of our fourth child at the Vanderbilt medical center two weeks prior to the move. I was tremendously relieved that the birth did not take place against a backdrop of uncertainty about our plans for the coming academic year. Indeed, the birth had a special air of celebration about it, even more so than normal under such already happy circumstances. Even though a temporary appointment, the fact that I would start that fall as a full time law professor encouraged the entire family that our long sought objective was legitimately within reach.

Similar to the move to New York City, but for different reasons, our imminent move to Memphis also brought about simultaneous senses of anticipation and trepidation. Again, as a family, Memphis was a location we highly coveted in our search. The possibility of eventually putting down roots in an already familiar and comfortable area was extremely exciting. On the other hand, we faced the competing possibility that our stay was only temporary; that after less than a single year in Memphis we might again have to pull up stakes and move. We were especially concerned about the potential effect of this possibility on the children. Not surprisingly, as they grew older they were becoming increasingly aware that our family led a far more nomadic existence than was normal-for vague reasons having something to do with why Daddy so often seemed to be talking to people who were not there. Further, and even more discomforting, the temporary nature of the appointment ensured, at best, at least one more hiring season in the capricious, wholly unpredictable clutches of the legal teaching market.

Upon beginning that fall at the University of Memphis, I quickly recognized the distinct advantages to being a visiting faculty member at a law school conducting a hiring search. Unlike candidates who only see the faculty during a one-day on-campus interview, the visiting candidate has a far more substantive opportunity for social and intellectual interaction with individual faculty members. Faculty members have a period of months rather than hours to actually get to know a visiting candidate and decide whether he would make a good colleague. The faculty can personally observe the quality of the candidate's classroom teaching. For numerous such reasons, the visiting candidate has the invaluable opportunity to become a known quantity to those eventually making the ultimate hiring decisions.

On the other hand, as Sancho Panza gently reminded, this so-called advantage could just as easily become a distinct disadvantage. That is to say, the candidate spending only one day with the faculty has only a few hours to make a bad impression; the visiting candidate has a chance to screw up every single day over the course of several months. For this and other similarly obvious reasons, we attempted to keep tight control over Mr. Quixote during the fall semester-especially during faculty meetings. The time did not seem right for introductions, at least not at present. Sancho hid the jousting lance, keeping Mr. Quixote preoccupied for much of the time.

Without a doubt, the visiting candidate pays a specific price in exchange for the advantages of being part of the faculty during a hiring search. While the hiring process is pending, the visiting candidate's each and every moment at the law school feels like part of a never-ending interview process. Consider the tension felt by the candidate during the fleeting thirty-minute interview with the faculty recruiting committee at the AALS recruitment conference. Or, the anxiety felt during the several hours of a one-day, on-campus interview with the entire faculty. Apply those same types of pressure over the course of each day of an entire semester. Imagine further that you have been striving on and off over the course of more than a decade to obtain this job with the intensity of a Knight of the Round Table in search of the Holy Grail. Needless to say, as the date approached for the 2001 AALS faculty recruitment conference, the pressures of having a job where every day is interview day mounted exponentially. Several solicitous colleagues at the University of Memphis began to casually drop by my office to look in on me and offer sympathetic advice-and to check my office to see that no sharp, pointy, loaded, or otherwise dangerous objects were in plain view.34

Again, regardless of any perceived advantages as a visiting professor, there were most certainly no guarantees. Indeed, the University of Memphis was conducting its search to fill two tenure track openings commencing the coming academic year in the normal manner, including interviewing candidates at the upcoming 2001 AALS faculty recruitment conference. As a matter of necessity, therefore, I likewise took an approach to the 2001 hiring season identical to that of the immediately preceding year. Submission of my Faculty Appointments Register form to the AALS was again accompanied by sending out cover letters and resumes to the majority of law schools advertising open tenure track positions. This also meant attending the "meat market" for a third time, a prospect that I looked forward to with all the fondness of a trip to the dentist for oral surgery.

My phone rang with the same regularity as the previous year and, eventually, I had conference interviews scheduled with ten law schools. Sancho asked if I needed him to do the same mathematical calculations done the previous year regarding the ratio between the total number of law schools in the country and my total number of interviews. He stopped laughing when I responded by asking if he wanted me to tell Mr. Quixote who had hidden the jousting lance.

Arriving at the 2001 AALS faculty recruitment conference, I was overcome in the hotel lobby by a disconcerting sense of comfort and familiarity. I had a vision of finding a "Welcome Home" banner in my hotel room, and would not have been surprised to learn during check-in that I had been awarded "emeritus candidate" status by the AALS. My sense of distortion only heightened when other candidates would shout "Dave!" in a loud collective voice every time I walked into the candidate's lounge, as if I were a regular at a well-known, fictional Boston bar. Despite good faith efforts, I was unable even to work up a healthy annoyance for the army ant-like hordes of Harvard and Yale graduates clogging up the hotel lobby and hallways, monopolizing members of the recruitment teams at the conference receptions, and causing overly long lines at the cash bar. In fact, their ubiquitous presence caused me to feel strangely at peace.

My fears were confirmed during the interviews themselves. I felt unexpectedly at ease during each interview. My delivery in responding to questions was polished and professional. The reason was becoming painfully obvious. After years of practice, including nearly a semester of non-stop interviewing at the University of Memphis, I had become a professional job seeker-a professional AALS candidate. I had become so adept at being an AALS candidate that I was almost enjoying what before had always seemed an evil, yet necessary, process. During my plane ride back to Memphis, Sancho and Mr. Quixote argued over whether years of doing battle with lawless giants could cause someone to actually sympathize with them-and whether that someone was therefore no different than the lawless giants themselves. I ignored their rudeness in talking about me as if I was not even there.

Discomfiture at my unexpected affinity for the interviewing process was quickly forgotten as two schools contacted me soon after the conference to schedule on-campus interviews. This was a welcome development for a number of reasons. For one, the odds of receiving at least one tenure track offer during the 2001-02 hiring season were now favorably increased. Or, in quantitative terms that could be understood even by someone with a healthy math phobia like myself, three is more than one. Perhaps more importantly, however, the perception that schools were now in competition for my services could not help but improve my chances with each of the three. As with any hiring process, prospects for employment with one employer are certainly not hurt by the perception that competing potential employers are also interested. After a decade of seeking a tenure track teaching position, the thought that factors existed even theoretically in my favor brought considerable pleasure.

Furthermore, and no less important, attention from other schools would give my extremely fragile psyche-battle scarred and stressed by years of AALS disappointment-something positive to focus on during the remainder of the hiring process at my first choice-the University of Memphis. This was a critical factor. My battered psyche would have a front row seat as the University of Memphis brought several other candidates in for on-campus interviews. Each and every one no doubt would be culled from the hordes of Harvard and Yale graduates that must have been stacked like firewood outside the doors of the faculty recruiting committee's hotel room during the recruitment conference. Yes, I believed my psyche would need all the help it could get.

The on-campus interviewing process took place during November and December of 2001. Similar to my recent experiences at the AALS conference, I found myself to be far more at ease during these on-campus interviews than in the previous year. I had never enjoyed any sort of interviewing before-in fact, I had always actively disliked interviews, but the experience of having already been a part of so many of the same type of interviews had stripped most of the anxiety from the process. While producing a benefit from the standpoint of being able to interview with confidence at a critical stage in the process, it suggested that I was doing far too much interviewing and far too little job accepting. I fervently hoped that I was about to be able to retire from professional interviewing in the very near future. Of course, none of this lessened in any way the stress surrounding the fact that my family had a great deal riding on the ultimate outcome of the process, and that ultimate outcome was still highly in doubt.

Moreover, I was by no means comfortable on those days other candidates were at the Memphis law school to interview for what, by this point, I was convinced was my job. The Memphis faculty graciously offered to treat me like any other faculty member during the process, except for allowing me to vote of course. That is, they offered to include me in the distribution of candidate resumes and allow me to meet with the candidates and attend their respective job presentations if I desired. While appreciative, I respectfully declined. I could not see how actually knowing the intimate details of how highly impressive and qualified the competition was would make me feel any more secure about my place in the process. Moreover, I found that I did not entirely trust myself to play by Marquis of Queensbury rules in this regard. My own chances could be easily sabotaged if I were caught in the back of the room during a competitor's "job talk" shouting out questions about outstanding arrest warrants or previous convictions for spousal abuse. Worse yet, I had no illusions about being able to control Mr. Quixote in such a setting, even with Sancho Panza's help. It might be embarrassing to lack a credible explanation for having just challenged another candidate to a jousting match in front of the entire faculty.

Mercifully, the time finally arrived when every candidate the faculty recruitment committee intended to bring to campus had come and gone. The dean scheduled a faculty meeting to discuss and vote on the candidates at a time which ensured that Memphis would make offers well before my other two possibilities. As I was in little mood to extend my time in perdition for any longer than necessary, this was an extremely positive occurrence. Because I was not in attendance, there seems little reason to discuss what I might or might not know about the discussion and voting at the faculty meeting. Suffice it to say, in the early evening a couple of days following the meeting, the dean asked if I would come by his office the next morning "to discuss [my] future at the University of Memphis." Because he was smiling-and because maybe I did have some intelligence about what had transpired in the faculty meeting from sources I am not at liberty to reveal, I took this to mean that the dean was about to tender a formal offer for a tenure track position at the law school.

I rushed home to tell my wife. She screamed. We hugged. We took the children to a celebratory dinner where we told them that it looked as if we would be staying in Memphis. And, then, my wife forbade me to accept the offer as soon as the dean tendered it to me the next day. Incredulous, I inquired as to why, given that we had been waiting for just this moment for more than ten years. I told her that, given everything we had been through, it would be all I could do to refrain from kissing the dean right on the lips when he made the offer, much less stop myself from accepting it as soon as it was tendered. My wife said that all we had been through was just the reason we should wait to hear what the other schools had to say before we accepted any offer from the University of Memphis. She felt we should know and fully consider all of our options before making any decision about what to do.

I could hear Sancho Panza agreeing with my wife's exceedingly rational and logical position, which Mr. Quixote and I found most annoying. However, we had no arguments to overcome her reasoning, and so, somewhat reluctantly, agreed. The next day the dean indeed tendered the offer at our meeting and we discussed its various terms. While making little effort to hide my considerable enthusiasm, I dutifully explained that I needed to inquire as to potential responses of other schools to the fact of the Memphis offer before deciding whether to accept. The dean agreed that this was a good idea, and we mutually established a deadline by which I would formally respond to the offer. Again, honesty compels me at this point to acknowledge that I had no doubt whatsoever that I would accept the Memphis offer by this deadline. Although I would have happily accepted a tenure track position with any one of my three possibilities, Memphis was my first choice by a substantial margin. Moreover, despite the fact that my wife was insisting upon dealing with the offer from Memphis as both an adult and an attorney, I was extremely confident that Memphis was her first choice as well.35

In hindsight, of course, my subsequent discussions with other schools are now neither important nor relevant. On December 17, 2001,1 advised the dean of my formal acceptance of the University of Memphis's offer. This happy event followed by almost twelve years the realization of a naIve, young Mississippi attorney in January 1990 that he wanted to pursue a career as a law professor. Mr. Quixote had been right all along.

Conclusion

Thus, the 2002 fall semester marked the completion of my transition from a career as a practicing attorney to a career as a law professor. For the next several years at least, my family will experience the significant impacts-many positive, some not-of the sacrifices, especially financial, required to put myself in position to begin this new career. Moreover, there will be some period of adjusting to the inherent realities of supporting a family of six on a law professor's salary. This certainly begs-indeed, virtually screams-the question: Was it worth it? Or, said another way, knowing what you know now, would you do it all over again? For me, the answer to both is an unqualified and enthusiastic "yes." Quite frankly, my family and I had an unusually long time to think about whether this is what we really wanted and to consider fully the consequences of our decisions.

Indeed, my family and I are extremely pleased that matters worked out in the exact way they did. However, would other rationally objective observers interested in pursuing entry into the law school teaching market feel the same? The fact is that many others taking the same risks, making the same sacrifices, and landing in substantially similar circumstances might not share the same perspective as we do. Obviously, the sacrifices required of each individual pursuing employment in the legal teaching market vary considerably. Concomitantly, the willingness to make those sacrifices will also vary from person to person.

The potential difficulties in pursuing entry into the legal teaching market will also be different in each case. For example, my circumstances included such degree of difficulty enhancing factors as the market's negative perception of my academic credentials at my specific starting point, as well as the fact that I have a large family. Importantly, however, my circumstances also included the extremely fortunate aspect of a fully supportive spouse and family. Such factors might not be present at all for another person or might be present in different degrees. Certainly, my experiences might provide useful comparisons and valuable frames of reference for someone deciding whether and how to seek entry into the legal teaching market. But, in the end, each specific case requires specific consideration of risks and potential sacrifices inherent in that person's unique situation.

Perhaps the question such an individual should really ask iswhat if, after all of the risks undertaken and sacrifices made, no tenure track offer of employment at an ABA accredited law school is forthcoming? I was required to deal with this reality after my first attempt at entry into the teaching market in 1992, and I am greatly relieved I did not have to face it again following my second attempt in 2000. Without question, however, I came far closer to facing this possibility a second time than is comfortable to admit. Full consideration should be given by anyone considering pursuing entry into the legal teaching market that even substantial sacrifice cannot guarantee success, no matter how "success" is defined by that individual.36 As an observer of the AALS recruitment process of some experience, my opinion is that-even for those with outstanding credentials and qualifications-the process is excessively random and arbitrary. Much of what happens depends upon sheer luck and timing, both good and bad.

In any given year, hundreds of candidates competing for a relatively few open positions in the market must deal with random variables frustratingly outside of their control. There is considerable randomness in which schools seek to fill positions in any particular year and which do not. Even within the group conducting hiring searches in a given year, some will interview candidates despite having funding issues precluding hiring for that year in any event. Even for schools without funding issues clouding the picture, there is always the uncertainty of whether the candidate's interests intersect with the subject matter areas for teaching and scholarship upon which schools focus their respective searches. In one year they may not; in the next, they may. Frankly, the selection process from year to year that matches candidates to open positions has all of the scientific hallmarks of a child's game of "pin the tail on the donkey."

As for my specific story, I have no qualms whatsoever in acknowledging that random luck played a critical role. By incredible good luck and excellent timing, a visiting position in my primary area of interest opened up at a school that had recently interviewed me for a position primarily focused on another subject matter area. Even though I was not brought to campus to interview in connection with the original search, I had the fortunate opportunity to make a favorable impression on the recruitment committee just before the visiting opportunity in my specific area arose. Through another stroke of good fortune, this happened at a school that I already had a strong interest in from the beginning. Frankly, until fate smiled in this way, my long-suffering pedagogical quest did not appear to be proceeding particularly well. Again, others must decide for themselves how much they are willing to risk in a process that can be so dependent upon the shifting winds of chance. Given all that transpired between 1990 and the point at where hard work, luck and good timing finally intersected in my favor ten years later, I am firmly of the opinion that apologies are not in order.

For a significant period after my full time appointment to the Memphis faculty, Mr. Quixote spent most of his time humming contentedly to himself. Indeed, he became so docile and reasonable that, at one point, I began wondering whether it was finally safe to introduce him and Sancho Panza to my faculty colleagues at the law school.37 Surprisingly, however, Mr. Quixote has been absent during the time spent in writing this essay. Both his absence and the possible reasons for it have me extremely worried. This is especially true, given that as of late I have occasionally noticed an unusually pensive and dream-like expression on my wife's face, at which times she announces she is seriously thinking of going to medical school. I had better send Sancho Panza to talk some sense into her before it is too late.

1. MEGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA, THE INGENIOUS GENTLEMAN DON QUIXOTE DE LA MANCHA 62-63 (Samuel Putnam trans., The Viking Press, 1949) (1605).

2. Personal narratives and stories are not traditional fare for the writings and teachings of law professors. See Mark R. Brown, Affirmative Inaction: Stories From a Small Southern Law School, 75 TEMP. L. REV. 201, 204 (2002). However, there are instances where such personal experiences are instructive and add important accounts of successes and failures to the relevant "historical record." See id. at 204-05. In my view, the narrative voice is an important, and perhaps underutilized, tool in deconstructing the arbitrary processes of the legal academic hiring market.

3. Estimates of the number of attorneys who seek to enter the law teaching market each year can vary, but one commentator has produced a ballpark figure of as high as "several gazillion." Kevin H. Smith, How to Become a Law Professor Without Really Trying: A Critical, Heuristic, Deconstructionist, and Hermeneutical Exploration of Avoiding the Drudgery Associated with Actually Working as an Attorney, 47 U. KAN. L. REV. 139, 145 (1998). Professor Smith reports that for practicing attorneys who "merely meet the formal requirements for becoming a law professor, the odds of . . . getting an interview, much less an offer, approach those of . . . winning a state lottery." Id.

4. I certainly do not purport to be the only law professor ever to enter the market in a non-traditional manner, nor do I suggest that my story is any more interesting or important than myriad other law professors who have done so. I am personally acquainted with or have encountered during the decade-plus duration of my own journey to legal teaching many others with equally (or more) interesting stories to tell of a non-traditional path to entering the teaching profession. Ultimately, however, I am writing about my story because it is mine to tell; I leave it to others to tell their own.

5. HOMER, THE ODYSSEY 200 (Robert Fitzgerald trans., 1961).

6. Coincidentally, my colleague at the University of Memphis, Professor Kevin Smith, has published something of a "Michelin Guide" for those interested in attempting to make the journey from practicing attorney to law professor. See Smith, supra note 3. In hindsight, Professor Smith's cogent words of advice might have been almost as valuable a prophesy to me as Teirasias's pre-journey words to Odysseus. Unfortunately, however, Professor Smith's exceedingly humorous yet frighteningly candid guide was published a good eight years after my decision to attempt to pass over.

On the other hand, lacking access to Professor Smith's essay at the outset of my quest was probably for the best. His descriptions of the law school hiring process-evoking the image of the outer circles of hell in Dante's Divine Comedy-and his implied assessment of the chances for success for someone beginning the journey from my relative starting point might have dissuaded me from the journey altogether. Indeed, even reading Professor Smith's work after the fact forces me to wonder how I ever actually received an offer of employment, though I have no intention of asking for clarification at this point. However, even without Professor Smith's essay, I did not lack for other oracles in the early 1990s prophesying doom and failure for my intended quest. I routinely ignored all such oracles then, so Professor Smith's words of wisdom likely would have fallen on deaf ears as well. Still, if I had read and relied upon Professor Smith's cogent advice in advance of beginning my journey, then perhaps I could now hold him legally responsible for the not inconsiderable emotional and psychological trauma suffered by me and my family during the past decade under such theories as express and implied warranties or res ipsa loquitur. There are always tradeoffs.

7. Others have authored far more comprehensive works specifically intended to assist potential candidates in approaching the legal teaching market. In addition to Professor Smith's helpful and humorous piece, Professor Brian Leiter of the University of Texas School of Law has put together a somewhat more serious essay providing extremely useful advice for persons interested in pursuing a career in law teaching. See Brian Leiter, Information and Advice for Persons Interested in Teaching Law, at http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/ble iter/GUIDE.HTM (Sept. 2000). The Michigan Journal of Race & Law periodically publishes a special issue for the purpose of "guid[ing] the law professor wannabe through the process of applying for a tenure track position at a law school." Denise C. Morgan, Advice for Law Professor Wannabes, 7 MICH. J. RACE & L. 458, 458 (2002). For the most recent such special issue, see Breaking Into the Academy: The 2002-2004 Michigan Journal of Race & Law Guide For Aspiring Law Professors, 7 MICH. J. RACE & L. 457 (2002). For other extremely helpful pieces, see Jon W. Bruce & Michael Swygert, The Law Faculty Hiring Process, 18 HOUS. L. REV. 215 (1981); George C. Christie, The Recruitment of Law Faculty, 1987 DUKE L.J. 306 (1987); Terrance Sandalow, On Becoming a Law Professor, 1 MICH. J. RACE & L. 580 (1996); Elyce H. Zenoff & Jerome A. Barren, So You Want to be a Law Professor?, 12 J.L. & EDUC. 379 (1983); Don Zillman et al., Uncloaking Law School Hiring: A Recruit's Guide to the AALS Faculty Recruitment Conference, 38 J. LEGAL EDUC. 345(1988).

8. See CERVANTES, supra note 1, at 27.

9. VCEMS is an interdisciplinary research center jointly led by the Vanderbilt Engineering School, the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management, and the Vanderbilt Law School. For further information, see http:// www.vanderbilt.edu/vcems.

10. See infra note 18.

11. Again, Professor Smith's article, had it been available then, would have been most helpful in this regard. Or, not. See Smith, supra note 3.

12. Twelve years later, I realize just how immensely naive this sounds. Among other things, I now fully understand that the enthusiasm shown by a law firm to a top student coming out of law school is analogous to the enthusiasm a boatswain of a Roman galley would show a brand new graduate of a Roman rowing school applying to become a professional oarsman.

13. Professor Smith describes this phenomenon as follows: The formal requirement [for obtaining a position as a law professor] is that you have received a J.D. from an ABA-accredited law school. The informal requirement is that you have received the degree from a school accredited as belonging to the Almighty-Bunch-of-(Educational)-Aristocrats. There is no official list of these anointed schools, but they include (in alphabetical order) Columbia, Harvard, Michigan, Stanford, University of Chicago, Yale, and the other schools that float in and out of the list of top-ten schools. This is not to say that it is impossible to get a job if you did not attend one of these schools; it merely is to say that your odds of getting an interview, much less a job as a law professor, decrease exponentially as the school from which you graduated descends on the informal ranking of law schools.

Smith, supra note 3, at 146.

14. This declarative statement (emphasis as declared) may sound harsher than it really came across when originally expressed to me. The speaker-who shall remain nameless-believed he was doing me a kindness by squelching any false impressions I might have regarding my chances for success in the legal teaching market. And, he was indeed doing me a kindness by speaking with such directness and candor. The fact that I-a graduate of the Ole Miss law school-now have a job as a tenure track law professor at an ABA accredited law school does not necessarily indicate that this person's statement was not completely accurate at the time and in the context within which it was delivered.

15. The former professor who offered the most encouragement and who graciously took on the role of mentor during rny earlier years of seeking to break into the legal teaching market was Professor Patricia T. Morgan, who left Ole Miss to join the faculty of the Georgia State University College of Law shortly after I graduated from law school. Tragically, Professor Morgan-who had a distinguished academic career at both Ole Miss and Georgia State, including being voted by the students as Professor of the Year at both law schools (twice at Georgia State)-passed away far before her time from a terminal illness while this essay was being written. Professor Morgan was one of those rare teachers with the gift of being able truly to inspire her students, even in a course in which they might have had little initial interest. She was among my very favorite professors in law school, and I will always be grateful for her wise counsel and friendly advice as I pestered her about the optimal way to attempt navigation of the legal teaching market. I am but one of legion of her former colleagues and students who miss her dearly and whose lives were made better by their intersection with hers. See Charity Scott, A Tribute to Patricia Taber Morgan, 19 GA. ST. U. L. REV. ix (2002).

16. A graduate law degree is a standard bauble obtained by many aspiring law professors, although, as with J.D. programs, their worth as a credential for entry into the teaching market tends to coalesce in a relative handful of law schools. Professor Gabriel Chin reports that ten schools-NYU, Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, Columbia, George Washington, Temple, Michigan, Illinois, and Virginia-account for nearly three quarters of LL.M.'s holding teaching appointments. Gabriel J. Chin, Graduate Degree Programs, 7 MICH. J. RACE & L. 481, 482 (2002). For a dated but still useful piece, see Henry D. Gabriel, Graduate Legal Education: An Appraisal, 30 S. TEX. L. REV. 129 (1988).

17. In the current legal teaching market, it is almost necessary to meet the publication requirements for tenure simply to gain an entry level, tenure track position on a law school faculty. See generally Tanya K. Hernandez, Placing the Cart Before the Horse: Publishing Scholarship Before Entering the Legal Academy, 1 MICH. J. RACE & L. 517 (2002); Morgan, supra note 7, at 458; Rebecca E. Zietlow, Writing Scholarship While You Practice Law, 7 MICH. J. RACE & L. 511 (2002).

18. My father-in-law, Michael Featherstone, retired from the University of Mississippi School of Law at the end of the 2000-01 academic year following twenty-nine years of dedicated service. My first year as a professor at the University of Memphis law school commenced the following academic year. For brief, yet heartfelt tributes to Professor Featherstone's lengthy teaching career, see W. Steve Bozeman, A Farewell to "Iron Mike," 70 MISS. L.J. 503 (2000); David W. Case, Tribute to "Iron Mike" Featherstone, 70 MISS. L.J. 497 (2000); Tom R. Mason, About Mike Featherstone, 70 MISS. L.J. 501 (2000).

19. The judge for whom I eventually clerked-Judge Rhesa Hawkins Barksdale-had recently been nominated by President George H. Bush and was confirmed by the Senate and took his oath of office after I submitted my application for a position as his law clerk during the 1991-92 term. As it turned out, I had the distinctive privilege of serving as Judge Barksdale's first law clerk from our shared alma mater, the Ole Miss law school.

20. In order to have at least one reference from the firm for my clerkship applications, I had advised one partner in the firm of what I was doing and why before submitting applications to any federal appellate court judge. Despite his significant misgivings as to the wisdom of the Plan, this partner-whose name is withheld to protect the guilty-very graciously agreed to serve as a reference and to keep my confidence while my applications were being considered. I thank him by so preserving his anonymity.

21. As discussed further infra, this specific type of drama would prove to be an unsettling pattern over the course of the next decade.

22. See Rhesa H. Barksdale, A Tribute to Justice Byron R, White, 107 HARV. L. REV. 3, 5 (1993).

23. See id. Judge Barksdale writes, "My chambers, for the most part, are patterned after his; it is my hope that my clerks have some modicum of the feeling of collegiality, mutual respect, professionalism, and team effort that Justice White engendered in his chambers." Id. My response to Judge Barksdale's implicit query of his current and former clerks is "most certainly."

24. This is the block on which our Columbia-owned apartment was located in New York City. It is actually a fairly well known area, as Tom's Restaurant-a Columbia-area institution an outside view of which is ubiquitous on episodes of NEC's "Seinfield"-is on the Broadway Avenue end of the block, and the awe-inspiring Cathedral of Saint John the Divine is located on the Amsterdam Avenue end.

25. Firmly in the "not" category was Professor Harold Korn who was always interested, engaged, and ready and willing to be as helpful as possible. During my LL.M. program, I had the wonderful opportunity and privilege to serve as a Teaching Fellow for a course that Professor Korn co-taught with the Honorable Jack Weinstein, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York. Professor Korn was gracious, generous, and enthusiastic in offering his time and assistance while I was at Columbia, and for years after my time there ended he continued to make himself available whenever asked. Another of Professor Korn's former students aptly describes this aspect of him as follows:

Hal also stood out among his colleagues for being very accessible to students. His warmth and approachability were a natural expression of the fact that he really liked his students; he was genuinely interested in what we had to say. Not necessarily in our ideas about conflicts of laws (we didn't have much to offer him there) but in our outlooks on life, in our views on controversial issues, in our dreams and aspirations.

Nancy Northrup, Tribute, in COLUM. L. SCH. REP., Fall 2001, at 99. I agree completely. Although no obligation other than simple politeness required him to do so, Professor Korn spent numerous hours with me animatedly discussing the law school teaching aspirations of a modern-day, Mississippi-version of Don Quixote. In my view, I never truly thanked him appropriately or sufficiently. Professor Korn passed away in March 2001; I am among thousands of his former students who miss him immensely. For more, see Jack B. Weinstein, Remembering Harold L. Korn, 101 COLUM. L. REV. 1219 (2001).

26. Purposefully stated in language and tone similar to that expressed by Caddys-hack's, Carl the Groundskeeper when recounting how the Dalai Lama promised Carl that he would receive total consciousness on his deathbed in lieu of a cash tip for caddying a round of golf.

27. For a discussion of the AALS's Faculty Appointments Register and its depressing, yet critical, importance to the law faculty hiring process, see Smith, supra note 3, at 151-56.

28. For an apt description of the "meat market," see Smith, supra note 3, at 150-51, 158-66. This is an area where having Professor Smith's "Michelin Guide" in advance would have been of substantial value. For another humorous take on the AALS "meat market," see James D. Gordon, An Insider's Guide to the Faculty Recruitment Conference, 43 J. LEGAL. EDUC. 301 (1993).

29. Just following the moment of her final agreement to our moving to Nashville for purposes of my eventually taking one more run at the legal teaching market, my wife remarked somewhat hopefully, "You know, Memphis has a law school." This remark reflected two things: (1) the fact that my wife's sister lived in Memphis, Tennessee and her parents lived just over an hour's drive from Memphis in Oxford, Mississippi, and (2) my wife's hopeful optimism that she had not just agreed to an eventual move to some remote part of the country that would take us and the children far away from her family and friends. Somewhat alarmed, I quickly cautioned her that the teaching market did not operate in that manner. That is, a person trying to find a place within such a tremendously competitive and tight market is poorly served by a limited focus on certain few regional preferences. Essentially, most candidates should be prepared to go virtually anywhere in the country given that tenure track offers are likely to be few and far between, if any such offer is forthcoming at all. My wife assured me that, although she understood this fully, the fact remained that Memphis did indeed have a law school. The fact that I am now employed as an assistant professor of law at the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law should not be construed as conclusive evidence of psychic ability on the part of my wife.

30. Although I obviously paid primary attention to those schools expressing interests in hiring environmental law teachers and scholars, the only schools that I decided clearly did not meet the standard of "intersecting interests" were those advertising solely for tax professors. Not that I have anything but the greatest respect for tax professors in general; I am truly amazed at their ability-bordering on sorcery in my view-to bring order and sense to what I perceive to be codified chaos. It was simply that even Mr. Quixote had limits as to how far he was willing to pretend in an interview that I was competent to teach a particular course.

31. I have since obtained empirical data that supports this hypothesis. I conducted a number of trial runs in this regard with a few of my more patient and tolerant colleagues at the University of Memphis. I even brought out pictures of all four children-especially the new baby-to use as visual aids during these trial demonstrations of the "begging on behalf of children who are potentially to be made homeless" approach to seeking a tenure track offer. Based on the responses of my colleagues, the findings were overwhelming that (1) this was an entirely unhelpful and potentially disastrous approach, and (2) psychological counseling for the designer of the study might well be in order. The only dissenting opinion came from Mr. Quixote.

32. Although, I again insist that this does not constitute conclusive evidence of psychic ability on the part of my wife. See supra note 29 and accompanying text.

33. The on-campus interviewing process is a completely different animal from the "meat market" model annually utilized by the AALS in Washington, D.C. For an in-depth discussion of this particular part of the hiring process, see Smith, supra note 3, at 166-68; Danielle Conway-Jones, A Recruit's Guide to the On-Campus Interview Process and the Job Talk, 7 MICH. J. RACE & L. 523 (2002).

34. Frankly, I am not sure whether this was concern for my welfare or theirs. It was probably a combination of both.

35. See sunra note 29.

36. For a five-year comparison of the success rate of AALS candidates participating in the formal faculty recruitment process, see Richard A. White, Association of American Law Schools Statistical Report on Law School Faculty and Candidates for Law Faculty Positions 2000-2001, at http://www.aals.org/ statistics/index.html#success (last visited Aug. 23, 2003). From the 1995-96 through the 1999-2000 academic years, the overall success rate for just under 5,000 candidates was just above ten percent. see id. at http://www.aals.org/ statistics/TVA.htm (last visited Aug. 23, 2003).

37. However, even assuming I decide such introductions are not a threat to my future chances for tenure, exceptions nonetheless may be in order for two new colleagues hired during the school's most recent participation in the AALS faculty recruitment process. To my complete shock and utter amazement, both successful candidates are graduates of the Harvard Law School. Accordingly, before exposing them to the inimitable Mr. Quixote (and vice-versa), I should probably carefully appraise these new colleagues' respective senses of humor, especially as to whether they are oversensitive to perfectly harmless, goodnatured jesting regarding the exalted position that graduates of their shared alma mater customarily occupy within the legal teaching market.

DAVID W. CASE*

* Assistant Professor of Law, University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law. Ph.D. candidate (ABD), Vanderbilt University; LL.M. 1993, Columbia University; J.D. 1988, B.A. 1985, University of Mississippi. For reasons that will become strikingly clear to the reader of this essay, this writing is dedicated to my wife, Catherine, and our four wonderful children, R.J., Jane Costner, Sarah Catherine, and Sam. This dedication is hardly sufficient recompense for the injuries inflicted upon these innocents as a result of the author's pedagogical quest during the time period-from 1990 to 2002-this essay covers. However, the author expressly warrants to do his best over the next several decades-subject to the normal financial constraints imposed upon those choosing a career as a full time academician-to make it up to them. I also gratefully acknowledge the advice and encouragement of my colleagues Kevin Smith, Janet Richards, and Rod Smith, and my fellow Columbia LL.M. survivor Bryan Camp (now an associate professor of law at Texas Tech University School of Law), regarding earlier drafts of this essay.

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