Orin Kerr at  Volokh alerts us to a great new opportunity.  None other than Harvard Law School (known as HLS to those who consider Yale Law School to be a sinkhole for the great unwashed) is initiating a program to get “practicing lawyers,” a somewhat vague yet undefined description, to come teach.

Harvard Law School, oops HLS, Dean Elena Kagan has announced in the  Harvard Law Record (I guess that should be HLR if I want to be consistent) a Visiting Assistant Professor program that will seek real lawyers to come to Harvard for 2 years in order to create credentials to enable them to put themselves in the academic job market.

The program is as yet unnamed.  According to Dean Kagan:

The program does not yet have a formal name, but Kagan noted with a laugh that “we usually name programs when someone has given money€¦so if someone wanted to donate to the program we would be happy to come up with a name.”

I bet she laughed when she said that, all the way to the bank.  However, since it’s hard to promote such an innovative program when it has no name, and since no one has as yet stepped forward to put their money on the polished mahogany table, I will call it the Greenfield Visiting Real Lawyer Program.  I know.  I just have a gift with names.

So there you have it, all you lawyers in the trenches who have pondered the question of how to get your hands on some of those young minds at Harvard La . . ., sorry, HLS.  The door’s been thrown wide open, and all you need do is trot on through.

But here’s the nagging question for me.  So you go to Harvard for a couple of years, and then what?   Whatever practice you had when packed your bags is long gone.  You know how those crazy clients expect their lawyer to be there when they get their one phone call.  After two years, what do you have left?

By the end of the program, members should be prepared to go on the general academic market. “We like to think we’re good mentors,” said Kagan, explaining that senior faculty consult with fellows on articles they write and go through a moot “job talk” that fellows use to interview for faculty positions at other schools.

So this is an on-the-job training program?  And you go from a real practicing lawyer to a “fellow”?  Aren’t “fellows” the ones who work their butts off and get paid slightly less than a rookie public defender in the hope that somebody offers them a real job.  Wait, that’s pretty much what Dean Kagan said, isn’t it.

Still, for anyone who missed the boat on the first go-round by leaving law school and actually practicing law, this is your way to get your foot in the door in legal academia, where actual experience is frowned upon by those scholarly types who believe it is better to write with big words than have a clue what they’re writing about. 

So dust off that Curriculum Vitae (that’s scholar-talk for resume) and grab your old letterman cardigan.  There’s a place for you in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  Unfortunately, you won’t be able to room with Norm Pattis, because he’s not going.