Canadian Law of Work Forum (CLWF)
  • Home
  • About
    • Professor David Doorey
  • Guest Contributors
  • Useful Links
    • Archive
  • Submissions
  • Student Blog Initiative
  • Home
  • About
    • Professor David Doorey
  • Guest Contributors
  • Useful Links
    • Archive
  • Submissions
  • Student Blog Initiative
Canadian Law of Work Forum (CLWF)
Law of Work Archive

Advice for Future Labour Law Professors

by David Doorey February 10, 2009
written by David Doorey February 10, 2009

All labour law professors get asked for their advice by law students about how best to prepare for an academic career.  I am a relatively newcomer to academia, but that does give me the benefit of having recently gone through the training and recruitment process.  In my case, I came from a practice background.  Recently I was asked the following questions by a law student interested in a career as an employment law professor.  Here are my answers, for what they are worth.  I’d encourage anyone else (especially academics) who have their own advice or think I am just wrong to chime in by adding comments.
1. Is there any particular school that is best to do an LLM/PhD?
The advice I received when I was thinking of returning to academia was to try and do a graduate degree in the U.S. or Britain at a major school, since degrees from named foreign schools carry more weight on Canadian hiring committees than a list of exclusively Canadian schools.  That is not at all a rule: lots of great professors in Canadian law schools did all their degrees in Canada (Michael Lynk, Sara Slinn, Gillian Demeyere, Stephanie Bernstein). But if you play the odds, I’d think that most law professors have at least one degree from abroad.  Below you can see a rough list of the degrees of some Canadian labour law scholars.
I  did my LLM at LSE, which has a great labour law faculty and a long  history of labour law scholarship. It also has a specialist labour law LLM.  But, of course, Oxford carries a lot of weight (Judy Fudge, Brian Langille, Bernie Adell, among others) as well as Cambridge and Kings College at U. of London has a great labour law faculty.  But England is expensive.  
As are the major U.S. universities, but if you look at people being hired in law schools, a disproportionate number have degrees from Harvard (Harry Arthurs, Paul Weiler, George Adams,Kerry Rittich, Ravi Malhotra, Kevin Banks), Yale (Brian Etherington, Eric Tucker), Berkeley (David Beatty), and Cornell is great for labour issues.  Doesn’t mean you need to go to a foreign school, but the statistics suggest that can help in job competitions.   I don’t think you need to do both your LLM and PhD at a foreign school, but having one of them helps and the LLM is shorter and therefore cheaper.
2. Should I article?
If you are absolutely sure you have no intention of practicing, then I suppose there is no need to article.  But my own thought would be to article so you have the option down the road of practicing, plus you can learn a lot and earn some money to pay for your grad degrees.
3. Is there a benefit to practicing law before returning to grad studies?
I actually think that having practiced law doesn’t help you in search for academic job, and can sometimes work against you, as there appears to be a bias against people who are practitioners first.  There is a sense that they are not sufficiently academic and theoretical.  I think having practiced law actually makes me a better law professor, since I have a sense of how things work in the ‘real’ world and this allows me to link theory to practice, which I think students like.  But I certainly don’t think my law practice experience was a strong benefit in my attempt to retool from a practitioner to an academic.
4.  What are job prospects like in labour law academia?
Not good, is the short answer, and that’s unfortunate.  Labour law has slowly been falling off the priority lists at most law schools for years.  When I started my PhD at Osgoode, there were 4 labour law professors (5 if you include Harry Glasbeek, who still appeared occasionally to teach the odd course) and in one year, that number was reduced to 1 due to faculty moves and Harry Arthurs’ retirement.  It is now back to 2 since Sara Slinn moved over from Queens.  But there appears to be little interest in growing that number.  Queens used to have 4 labour law professors, and is down to 1 (Kevin Banks).  UBC has been using mostly practitioners to teach labour law courses for years (although Janine Benedit is there now).
The point is that labour law is not a sexy topic in law schools right now, which is odd because labour policy  is an extremely important topic right now and there are loads of jobs in practice for labour and employment lawyers.  Maybe if some of the law firms started to complain more about the decline of labour law scholarship in Canada, some of these Deans would listen.
The advice I received from a number of senior labour law professors when I started my Phd was not to focus too narrowly on labour law proper, but to expand my area of speciality to sexy topics, like corporate governance, legal theory, and globalization.   So I did that.  Now that I have a job as a professor, I can write about whatever I like.  But my Ph.D focused on legal theory, globalization, supply chain management, and risk theory, as applied to labour practices.  This has opened up a huge range of research areas beyond simply domestic labour and employment law, and has allowed me to engage in a dialogue with academics who know little about labour law.  It also allowed me to sell myself more broadly than just a labour law expert.  So it was very good advice I received to branch out in my graduate research to areas beyond pure labour law.  
That is not to say that there will not be labour law jobs down the road.  Much has to do with timing. Of course, I’m not even in a law faculty, I’m in a business school, and there will also be those types of opportunities.  I think law faculties will always have someone specializing in these areas, there’s just fewer positions than in the past.  That is why it is good to have other complimentary areas of specialization, if possible.
That’s my two cents worth.  Anyone have anything else to add?

1 comment
0
FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmail
David Doorey

Professor Doorey is an Associate Professor of Work Law and Industrial Relations at York University. He is the Director of the School of HRM at York and Director of Osgoode Hall Law School’s executive LLM Program in Labour and Employment Law and on the Advisory Board of the Osgoode Certificate program in Labour Law. He is a Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program and a member of the International Advisory Committee on Harvard University’s Clean Slate Project, which is re-imaging labor law for the 21st century

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

previous post
Epstein on American Labor Law Reform
next post
Some More (Mis)Information About the American Employee Free Choice Act

You may also like

A Cross Country Update on the Card-Check versus...

October 3, 2018

A Successful Strike Vote is All That Stands...

September 16, 2018

Unifor Posts Photos of Replacement Workers as Gander...

September 10, 2018

A Wrongful Dismissal Case and the Absence of...

August 29, 2018

China Said to Quickly Withdraw Approval for New...

August 27, 2018

The Latest Hot E-Commerce Idea in China: The...

August 27, 2018

The Trump Administration Just Did Something Unambiguously Good...

August 27, 2018

Unstable Situations Require Police In Riot Gear Face...

August 27, 2018

Trump’s War on the Justice System Threatens to...

August 27, 2018

Putin Invites Trump to Moscow for Second Meeting...

August 27, 2018

Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 218 other subscribers

Follow Us On Social Media

Twitter

Latest Tweets

CLWFFollow

CLWF
Retweet on TwitterCLWF Retweeted
RSandillRicha Sandill@RSandill·
24 Feb

@SCLSclinic and I were so fortunate to represent this client last year. I am thrilled that this decision brings more clarity for family status accommodations rights amidst a pandemic that has tested parents, caregivers, and families like never before. https://twitter.com/CanLawWorkForum/status/1364605259071561730

CLWF@CanLawWorkForum

New from @RSandill (counsel for applicant), discussing important new "family status" discrimination decision from OHRT:

"Kovintharajah v. Paragon Linen & Laundry: When Failure to Accommodate Child Care Needs is “Family Status” Discrimination"

https://lawofwork.ca/13360-2/

Reply on Twitter 1364627677785821185Retweet on Twitter 13646276777858211851Like on Twitter 13646276777858211853Twitter 1364627677785821185
Retweet on TwitterCLWF Retweeted
TheLawofWorkDavid J. Doorey@TheLawofWork·
24 Feb

Here's my latest in @jacobinmag.

If Ontario's labor laws applied in Alabama, the Amazon vote would have been held months ago so workers could get back to their jobs. Instead, the NLRA permits Amazon to conduct a months' long onslaught of anti-union propaganda. https://twitter.com/jacobinmag/status/1364613560425275392

Jacobin@jacobinmag

Amazon workers in Alabama are voting on whether to unionize, but the company is bombarding them with anti-union propaganda. In Canada, by contrast, votes are held quickly, making it harder for companies to stack the deck — a model that can work in the US. http://jacobinmag.com/2021/02/amazon-alabama-canada-labor-law-union-vote

Reply on Twitter 1364623976174092316Retweet on Twitter 13646239761740923168Like on Twitter 136462397617409231613Twitter 1364623976174092316
CanLawWorkForumCLWF@CanLawWorkForum·
24 Feb

New from @RSandill (counsel for applicant), discussing important new "family status" discrimination decision from OHRT:

"Kovintharajah v. Paragon Linen & Laundry: When Failure to Accommodate Child Care Needs is “Family Status” Discrimination"

https://lawofwork.ca/13360-2/

Reply on Twitter 1364605259071561730Retweet on Twitter 13646052590715617304Like on Twitter 13646052590715617304Twitter 1364605259071561730
Load More...

Categories

  • Alberta
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Australia
  • British Columbia
  • Charter of Rights and Freedoms
  • Childcare
  • Class Action
  • Collective Bargaining
  • Common Law of Employment
  • Comparative Work Law
  • competition law
  • construction
  • COVID-19
  • Diversity
  • Employee Classification
  • Employment Insurance
  • Employment Regulation
  • Europe
  • Financial Industry
  • Fissured Work
  • Freedom of Association
  • frustration of contract
  • Gig Work
  • Health and Safety
  • Health Care
  • Human Rights
  • Immigration
  • Interest Arbitration
  • International Law
  • Labour Arbitration
  • Labour Economics
  • Law of Work Archive
  • Legal Profession
  • Manitoba
  • Migrant Workers
  • Minimum Wage
  • Nova Scotia
  • OLRB
  • Ontario
  • Pension Bankruptcy
  • Privacy
  • Public Sector
  • Quebec
  • Real Life Pleadings
  • Saskatchewan
  • Scholarship
  • Strikes and Lockouts
  • Student Post
  • Supreme Court of Canada
  • technology
  • Transnational Law
  • Uncategorized
  • Unions and Collective Bargaining
  • United States
  • Videos
  • Women and Work
  • Wrongful Dismissal
  • Home
  • About
  • Guest Contributors
Menu
  • Home
  • About
  • Guest Contributors
  • Legal Scholarship
  • Useful Links
  • Archive
Menu
  • Legal Scholarship
  • Useful Links
  • Archive

2020. Canadian Law of Work Forum. All Rights Reserved.