Switching legal careers: Texas' Emerging Scholars Program is a bridge from prosecutor to...

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Samuel Buell is the first Visiting Assistant

Professor and Fellow in the Emerging Schol-

ars Program. While his professional résumé

is impressive, he, like most practicing attor-

neys, did not have any scholarly publications

to his name when he decided he wanted to

change careers and enter academia.

Law professors used to prepare for the

academic careers by being former top law

students and excellent judicial clerks. Now,

like professors in other disciplines, law pro-

fessors need a body of written scholarship

to back them up in the pursuit of a tenure-

track teaching job. Texas’ ESP has fellows

take a half load of teaching courses for each

semester. Fellows devote the rest of their

energies the first year towards developing a

body of published work. For the second year,

fellows work on teaching, publishing, and job

hunting.

After 10 years as a federal prosecutor, Buell

had “reached the peak of what I wanted to

do.” An alumnus of New York University Law

School, Buell started off as a prosecutor in

the U.S. Attorney’s office in Brooklyn, NY.

Then, he worked as a prosecutor in the U.S.

Attorney’s office in Boston for four years and

rounded out his work spending two years in

Washington, DC, on the Enron task force at

the Department of Justice.

Buell had always been interested in teach-

ing; but considering he has been out of law

school for 10 years and has a family, it “was

not feasible” to take a year off to do research

and writing, and he could not take the time

to do it while practicing. So he looked for

temporary positions in academia, knowing

it would be “invaluable” to take that time to

develop his skills.

The ESP allows him to teach, attend col-

loquia, work on his research and writing, and

also to get feedback on his ideas from other

faculty members. It is “ideal” to be able to do

research and teach, which he enjoys a great

deal. Buell taught federal criminal law this

semester and will teach criminal law in the

fall next year. Being able to teach courses on

law, and not on legal writing and research

methods, was “really attractive to me,” says

Buell. The Texas program “is a real preview

of being a professor at a law school.”

There are other fellowship programs and

visiting assistant professorships out there.

Some do involve teaching, but most of those

are classes on legal writing and research.

Some fellowships only come with research

components and no teaching work at all.

There are relatively few temporary law

school jobs out there, and the positions are

difficult to get. Still, there are more law

schools offering temporary positions, includ-

ing the Bigelow Program at the University of

Chicago.

Since Buell is on a half schedule for teach-

ing, he has time to develop his legal scholar-

ship. He currently has a manuscript for a law

review article on entity criminal liability, and

he is researching his next piece on individual

responsibility in white-collar crime. In addi-

tion to having time to do research, Buell says

another draw to the ESP is that “the Univer-

sity of Texas law faculty is outstanding; it’s

one of the top law faculties in the country.”

Scholarly writing uses different muscles than

legal writing. The former is expounding on a

theory; the latter, setting out an argument.

Scholarship is more abstract and broader

than argumentation, says Buell, which draws

on a confined set of materials, most on the

relevant law on a particular issue. Academic

legal scholarship draws on law, but also on

historical economic, philosophical, and even

psychological analysis of an issue. In this

arena, the writer decides what is relevant

to the inquiry, which is very challenging, ac-

cording to Buell.

The transition from law practice to law

teaching is a little smoother. Buell is able

to draw on his practical experience in the

courtroom and bring it to the classroom,

describing to students real examples of legal

practice, such as examples of prosecutorial

discretion. The relevance of his work experi-

ence to teaching is “all very immediate.”

There are other connections between Buell’s

law practice and his academic career. As a

prosecutor, his job was to find the truth and,

on a more basic level, to achieve “the right

result.” Academics and professors also seek

truth, he says, and have a socially useful pur-

pose. As for leaving behind his prosecutor’s

career, “I was ready for a new challenge.”

Buell adds, “Career change can be a wonder-

fully revitalizing thing.”

Switching legal careers: Texas’ Emerging Scholars Program is a bridge from prosecutor to professor [by Erica Winter]

The University of Texas at Austin School of Law’s Emerging Scholars Program (ESP) bridges the gap between law school, or law practice, and the increas-

ingly competitive world of legal academia. The two-year program allows fellows to get teaching experience while having access to tenured law faculty exper-

tise in order to develop bodies of scholarly work.