Before law school, you hear a lot about how hierarchical the legal profession is. I didn't believe it then. But I do now.

What happens is you compete in one hierarchy to figure out which hierarachy you get to compete in next. Near as I can tell, even if you get to be partner at a big firm, it's still a competitive situation. Partners are expected to bring in business to justify their profit participation, and when they don't, they can still get kicked out.

Hierarchy is often treated as a concept that's interchangeable with competition, which it's not. Hierarchy implies something more – that there's a prescribed path you have to follow to move ahead. Even if you're extremely good at what you do, you have to move at the prevailing pace. (Conversely, even those who are not so good get moved along by momentum)

What I didn't expect was that prevailing culture of hierarchy would pour over into the law school faculty, for two reasons: 1) most law school professors left jobs in private practice to teach and 2) if you have life tenure, doesn't that take the edge off?

But no. Cursory examination reveals that profs are quite aware of each other's publishing habits & teaching evaluation scores. An acting prof wants tenure. A tenured prof wants a casebook. A prof with a casebook wants a corner office. A prof with a casebook and corner office wants to be a dean. A dean wants to be chancellor.

And so it goes.

06 Apr 06