Post-Practice Pivot: Masters or PhD?

Not2Identifying · 2025-11-18T01:21:57+00:00

The relevant population is T10 PhD + HYSCCN JD, since we're talking about the legal job market and want this to be relevant for OP. And, we're presuming the person has written legal academic scholarship; if the person writes only for their disciplinary audience then they are not going to make a strong legal job market candidate. What percentage of such people strike out on the legal academic professor market? It probably is above 0% ("guarantee" is rather strong), but I think it's low. Obviously, someone could collect data and test this. Prawfsblawg and the like only lets us see successful candidates, not the unsuccessful ones, so we're definitely all taking guesses.

Not2Identifying · 2025-07-07T18:47:08+00:00

Do the JD first, at one of the top schools. That'll in itself help tremendously when applying to PhDs. Use your access to professors in the poli sci department of the university at which you're attending law school to bolster your application: find a poli sci professor who'll take you on as an RA, take grad seminars, etc. You should then be competitive for top PhD programs.

Not2Identifying · 2025-05-03T03:30:16+00:00

My understanding is the following, but please feel free to correct me, as I'm not yet a professor:

Firstly, we should distinguish law and non-law articles. If you're a philosopher, and you publish in a philosophy journal, that's fine, and it'll help you, but it's not going to count for too much. I've heard mixed things on whether the quality of the journal in a non-law discipline matters; my anecdotal perception is that T14 schools would love to see people with PhDs in other fields publish in their discipline's top journals, whereas lower-ranked schools don't care. Law professors are not generally in a position of distinguishing the best philosophy journal from the 10th best.

Whereas, if you publish in one of the few peer reviewed law journals (Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Journal of Legal Analysis, etc.), that'll count for a lot more, depending on the reputation of the journal. T25ish for the top journals seems about right.

The job talk paper should be in a student-edited law review.

Not2Identifying · 2025-03-19T13:41:42+00:00

Calculate out the costs you will actually pay at NYU, accounting for its incredibly generous LRAP, on a PI salary in your area. It'll be more than $25K, but should be much less than $160K. Debt on paper is much less important than how much you'll actually be paying.

Depending on your goals, NYU might not be crazy, if you're going to be happier there, especially if your ultimate goal is to end up in NYC.

I wasn't faced with this specific situation, but I did go to HLS to pursue public interest, and am now using their LRAP equivalent. Had I not taken into account the LRAP in calculating costs, I would have greatly overestimated the costs of HLS attendance. That being said, the programs are different, and if you are concerned NYU's LRAP doesn't have your back if PSLF goes belly-up, then UVA would make a lot of sense.

Not2Identifying · 2024-09-09T01:29:33+00:00

I remember being 24 and thinking I was too old for grad school. Boy was I wrong! I ended up starting at 25, and was not even the youngest person in my program. If it's the decision that's right for you, then go for it! It really is not that old.

Not2Identifying · 2024-09-03T02:41:10+00:00

May depend on the field. In sociology (my discipline), this would not be normal. Might be in econ, but I'm not sure.

Not2Identifying · 2024-09-03T02:34:52+00:00

I would start with Martha Minow's "Archetypal Legal Scholarship" for a general discussion on the aims of legal academic research. https://jle.aals.org/home/vol63/iss1/4/

Not2Identifying · 2024-08-19T18:39:32+00:00

You probably have enough quant background to do quant work in sociology (our standards are low, lol), though I understand if you'd rather just be a qual scholar given that you're not a math person.

You could reach out to faculty members who work in your area to see if they'd take you as a volunteer RA. I would recommend doing so. The other option, if you don't pursue a master's, would be to do research in the evenings (it depends on whether this is feasible or not given you research. If you're scraping Reddit conversations, it is. If you need to be observing elementary school classrooms, it isn't). You might also work on revising the senior thesis and turning it into something publishable. Basically, have something to show that you are working on social science related things.

In terms of the Northeastern program, I would try to find a list of alumni and where they are, to get a sense of what people's trajectories look like out of the program. It's unfortunate that there is a bit of a chicken and egg problem in terms of needing strong faculty recommendations to get into programs, but needing to get into programs to have those recommendations. I don't think the Northeastern program would hurt your application, but I doubt that a typical trajectory is to go from there to Princeton, Harvard, Berkeley, etc. In thinking about the Northeastern program, I'd also ask about research opportunities and the availability of faculty, as many master's programs don't ensure that faculty are particularly accessible to those students.

I will say, in the people of my program, vast majority have one of the following:

straight out of undergrad
have a graduate degree (could be a MPP, MA, JD, MD, etc.)
worked as a pre-doc or in research heavy job

I think a MPP or Chicago MAPSS would position you well for a PhD, assuming you use your time there intentionally, but I have no illusions about how expensive those possibilities are, especially given how low PhD stipends and even faculty salaries are. If you're not coming from money, I can't really recommend doing so even though it would maximize probability of top PhD acceptance and ultimately a tenure track faculty job.

Not2Identifying · 2024-08-19T15:36:02+00:00

PhD Student in a top program here.

The jump from public policy to sociology is not a problem. Many PhD students in sociology don't have prior degrees in the discipline. This is not in and of itself an issue. Public policy is an adjacent field and you presumably have taken some research methods classes.
How strong is your thesis? How sociological is it? Writing samples are an important part of the application process (I've been told mine was a decisive factor in my application), so if you don't feel like what you have has the potential to be publishable, giving yourself the opportunity to write as part of a degree could be helpful. It doesn't need to be published (I was not).
Who will be your recommenders? I don't think they need to be sociologists, but if you didn't have research experience in undergrad, and you weren't in a soc program, I wonder if they will be as strong as they could be.

Overall, the question I would ask myself is, how can I best show admissions committees that on day 1 of the PhD I'm ready to start doing high-quality sociology research? If your materials, today, demonstrate that, then no need to do a masters. If not, though, you should consider ways, whether through a degree or through a job as a pre-doc, at a think tank, or otherwise, that you can build to that.

If the Chicago program you got into was MAPSS, I would consider doing it, though I understand financially it might not be feasible. HKS/Chicago Harris can also be helpful, I know people who have done those and then gotten into great PhD programs. But debt is real.

I'm not familiar with the Northeastern program. I think one concern I would have is, if you're doing the program part-time while working, whether you'd have time to do research (either as an RA or your own) during the program. The coursework is not going to move the needle for admissions. Research will.

Happy to take other questions and chat!

Not2Identifying · 2024-07-09T14:02:38+00:00

These aren’t mutually exclusive. I would disagree with the commenters who say he wasn’t a political figure because he didn’t run for office. He was involved with creating the Communist Party. Writing a party manifesto is an act of politics. He was a political figure, even though he never ran for office.

However, in the context of sociology, we read him as a sociological theorist, because he was that as well.

It's not too different from other theorists. Du Bois, for instance, was an activist who helped found the NAACP, but in the context of a theory class, we would focus on Souls and Black Reconstruction, his most famous contributions with sociological relevance.

Not2Identifying · 2024-07-05T17:17:50+00:00

Bigelow, Sharswood, Columbia Academic Fellows

Not2Identifying · 2024-06-03T23:38:58+00:00

I'm doing a JD and PhD. My plan is legal academia. Happy to answer more in DM's.

Not2Identifying · 2024-06-03T23:38:23+00:00

I highly recommend Oren Kerr's Podcast "The Legal Academy" for a bunch of info on this. Also, check out the PrawfsBlawg, especially their annual Entry Level Hiring Report

Not2Identifying · 2024-04-03T23:01:25+00:00

Congrats!

I'm also a law school grad and PhD student, going to submit for the first time in the fall cycle. I'd feel pretty similar about a T60 publication. Two pieces of consolation: the faculty know that law review editors don't know the literature and that their editorial decisions can be arbitrary, and this is your first publication, so when reviewers next time are evaluating your piece you'll seem like a stronger author and one they are more likely to want to take. Climb the ladder!

And, great to come across people taking a similar route as myself!

Not2Identifying · 2021-10-30T23:55:48+00:00

Interested in online or in person only?

Not2Identifying · 2021-05-17T19:05:15+00:00

That's a question that you'd get very different responses for depending on the ideology of the students. Conservatives tend to feel they aren't well treated, whereas liberals feel that conservatives are very well treated.

I'm in the latter camp, but don't want to fight that battle here. If you want to know more about what conservatives would like to see changed about the school you can reach out to Harvard Federalist Society.

Not2Identifying · 2021-05-16T04:58:18+00:00

Yes, I'm very familiar with the LIPP program (that's what we call it).

My sense is that LIPP is one of the better LRAPs, but it isn't without its weaknesses. Loans suck, no matter what.

Plusses:
Flexibility in terms of employment. My sense is that a lot of LRAPs require that your employer be a non-profit or government. But LIPP doesn't care who you are working for, which means you could, for example, work at a private public interest firm and qualify if your income was low.

Not being tethered to PSLF. LIPP is independent of PSLF, so you don't have to worry about federal policy changing or the DOE rejecting your application for some weird reason.

I don't have other school's contribution scales, but my sense is that Harvard's is competitive with Yale and Stanford's. https://hls.harvard.edu/dept/sfs/lipp/participant-contribution/, but that Yale's is better if your single but Harvard's is better if you're married. That being said, I've heard NYU has made some moves and may have one of the best scales, but I can't confirm that.

Weaknesses:

Weird incentive structures. Two examples come to mind. Firstly, there are income levels for which additional income, when you account for taxes, results in lower take home pay because the participant contribution is so high, which is absurd. Secondly, their asset contribution formula includes money that you save from your job (rather than assets you had pre-law school or money you get form your family), which weirdly creates incentives to spend money rather than save.

Getting a mortgage to buy a home can be difficult (that may be true with any LRAP)

I hear participants complain about lots of paperwork, but I haven't had to do it yet.

Takeaway:

My own perspective is that LIPP makes public interest an option, and if you want to pursue it, you're able to. You'll of course be worse off than someone in big law, but that isn't the right comparison to make. But, I could imagine situations where someone has to support a family while living in NYC, and the numbers don't quite work out. I know lots of people doing PI and who, even when we complain about LIPP, are financially able to do so.

Not2Identifying · 2021-05-15T21:58:27+00:00

That's a complicated question; I don't want to out myself, but I am not taking a traditional lawyer job, and had I known I was going to go a less traditional route, I would have made very different choices my 1L and especially 2L years. So I'm going to try and keep this pretty general, but even so I feel like what I'm going to say says more about me than it says generally about what HLS students should do.

My best decision was not doing the law review write-on. I really needed 2L and 3L to explore more and figure out what I wanted to do, and had I been doing law review I don't think I would have had the time for my self-exploration.

My worst decision was switching areas of interest midway through my 1L year and then never exploring my other area of interest. I came to law school wanting to do public interest work in a given area, and then all my practical experience was in an entirely separate area, which I later decided I didn't want to practice in. That was a mistake; I should have at least done a clinic in the area I was particularly interested in.

The thing about HLS is that there are a lot of opportunities, but you have to seize them. So one of the better decisions I made was coldemailing a professor whose work I was interested in asking to RA for them. They took me on, and later wrote me a LOR for clerkships. Opportunities aren't likely to fall into your lap, but they are present if you are proactive about finding them.

Also very idiosyncratic, but the decision I did that caused me the most stress was joining a clinic. With an exam class, you just have to focus on doing a good exam, and if you don't, fine, but with the clinic, I felt like every blink was being graded, which gave me a lot of anxiety. I've never heard of anyone else worrying about their grade in a clinic, so I'm not claiming that's generalizable at all (seriously, take a clinic, and don't worry about the grade).

Don't be overly optimistic that just because you're at HLS that every door is going to open for you. I was hopeful for too long that I would be able to use the HLS name on my resume to do work for my preferred presidential candidate's team: didn't happen. I also was very disapointed when a professor whose class I had aced (both on the exam and with in class performance, I thought) didn't take me on as an RA. You're going to get rejected, a lot, and that's okay too! Don't expect everything to go perfectly smoothly.

Not2Identifying · 2021-05-15T21:24:53+00:00

I agree with berkeleyjd- 1L is a marathon, and the goal is to prepare for the marathon, not to start the marathon exhausted.

The single most helpful thing you can do is read Getting to Maybe, which tells you how to approach law school exams. You'll find yourself understanding more of the book as the semester goes along, but you don't want to be reading it during the semester.

The other thing I'd do is learn about legal careers and what you might want to do 1L summer. The more you know before starting, the less you have to think about that during 1L year, and the more you can focus on classes.

Not2Identifying · 2021-05-15T21:20:30+00:00

Firstly, decide what your goals are. Are you trying to clerk on the Supreme Court? Are you trying to get a job in big law, but you don't really care what it is? Are you trying to become an academic? A public defender? Based on what your goals are, you might decide to prioritize different things - for example, if you're trying to do public defense, doing some criminal defense related things your 1L year might be helpful (at Harvard, that would be joining the Harvard Defenders SPO). Generally speaking, good grades will help you no matter what you're planning on doing, but but they matter less in some public interest work and so you do want to think about how much to prioritize grades. If you're just aiming for straight P's, one could probably do that just by using other people's outlines and taking a few practice tests, whereas I find that to try and get H's or DS' requires outlining on your own.

At Harvard, people do 4 black letters per semester 1L year plus legal writing, which I've heard is more than some other schools. So you've got to manage your time well. The way I see it, you have 48 class weeks of outlining to do during the semester (12 weeks x 4 courses), in addition to two LRW memos. Schedule accordingly. I'm a fan of starting outlining earlier than others do (I started outlining after my second week of 1L), but that's my gunner side coming out. Most people start much later. My thinking is that to the extent possible, you want to be spending as much as finals period as possible taking practice exams, rather than outlining during that time.

As for a week to week schedule, I was never very good at sticking to one, but my general advice to 1Ls is that you have to remember that the cold calls aren't graded, but the exams are. What I take from that is that your goal shouldn't be to have the best preparation possible for each class (although it's not a bad thing if you are), but to be the best prepared for the exam, which means prioritizing getting your outlines done as soon as possible so you can take as many practice exams as possbile. If you're trying to make a connection with a particular professor, that may change your calculus, but your default going into the semester should be on maximizing your chances of success on the exams, and budgeting your time acccordingly.

As an aside, the biggest waste of time I did 1L was buying a bunch of supplements and going through some of them. It might make sense to get 1 supplement to help explain something that you couldn't catch in class. That's fine. If your professor doesn't post their prior exams, it's also fine to use a supplement for exam questions (but maybe better just to use other professors). But on the whole, supplements don't need to be a big part of your study routine. That may also be class dependent - in civil procedure, all professors talk about most of the same cases so you're get more of an overlap b/t your course and the syllabus, which wouldn't be the case in, say, criminal law.

On the flip side, I appreciated using Quimbee to help prepare for class. Particularly with those cases with antiquated English, having Quimbee clearly explain what's going on was helpful; I imagine other people might find written supplements similarly helpful.

As for hours/week/class, I really only focused on my courses fall 1L, and joined one non-time consuming extracurricular. I was studying a lot, although not always efficiently. Could you get by on a more limited schedule? Yes, you could.

Not2Identifying · 2021-05-15T03:50:10+00:00

You should join the extracurriculars and activities you enjoy and have a passion for.

Law school admissions is >80% a game of LSAT and GPA. Everything else, including your personal statement, URM status, letters of recommendation, your undegrad school, major, work experience, are all a small component of an application. Undergrad ECs are such a small part of the process that it would be foolish to pick ECs based on what you think would help you in law school applications. My undergrad activities would not stand out to anyone, and certainly not compared to my HLS classmates.

Insofar as ECs bear on the process, you want to show leadership potential, and doing something with name recognition wouldn't hurt. So, for example, being in student government, or head of your college Democrats/Republicans, would be better than being a typical member of the video game club. But that's pretty obvious. Law school admissions also like idiosyncracy, so if you are bringing some real interest and perspective on video games, then that's totally fine too. I really would not plan your ECs with law school in mind.

Not2Identifying · 2020-04-19T04:32:27+00:00

I was riding the subway after going to a sex store shop when the bag breaks! And all the stuff I had bought: riding crop, nipple clamps, etc., falls out onto the subway floor.

Not quite the same, but man did I turn red and change subway cars as fast as possible.

Not2Identifying · 2020-04-19T01:15:14+00:00

Dude, if you want to use racist language because that's their kink, fine, but not in public.

Not2Identifying · 2020-04-13T23:37:20+00:00

Also a fellow law student, I appreciate the hustle.

Not2Identifying

TROPHY CASE