ELS on the Cheap (i.e., without Graduate School)

In the short life of the ELS Blog, it appears that I am the first JD-only guest blogger. With the proliferation of JD/PhDs, some legal academics are probably intimidated by the social science credentials of many ELS scholars. When I first started doing empirical work, I was modestly embarrassed by my lack of formal training. Yet, I was in my mid-30s with a wife and child.  My one-year judicial clerkship was already a financial hardship on my family; graduate school was simply out of the question.

Therefore, if your life circumstances preclude graduate school in economics, sociology, political science, etc., here are some tips, based on my own experience, for doing ELS on the cheap:

1. Find and read social science that is relevant to your legal research

This sounds elementary, but most legal academics don’t do it. During my 3L year at University of Chicago, I took “Law and Social Science” with Gerry Rosenberg and Lisa Bernstein. After reviewing a draft paper that I hoped to publish after graduation, Gerry Rosenberg banished me to the UC main library: “There is a whole social science literature on this topic.” Gerry was right.

After my article was published (here), several legal academics praised me for the social science component. In fact, it was nothing more than plying some solid library skills in the UC main library. To this day, I remain convinced that it is possible to build a respectable career in legal academia just by running a simple arbitrage between legal topics and relevant social science literature. (Proviso, be thorough or don’t do it.) Of course, it is possible to do more than translate between disciplines.

At an ABF function earlier this year, Stewart Macaulay, an early empiricist and one of the founders of the Law & Society movement, offered some good advice to J.D.’s interested in empirical work: “You can learn a lot about social science methodology by studying the methods of other studies related to your topic.”  Simple and powerful advice.

2. Apply for a grant

Empirical research is time-consuming and expensive. Fortunately, several foundations exist to mitigate this burden. Therefore, if have an empirical project, apply for research support through a grant.

During my clerkship year, I applied for a grant through the Law School Admission Council (program details here). This experience produced many expected and unexpected benefits.

First, I experienced several rites of passages that are common among ELS folks, such as writing a literature review, applying for IRB approval, drafting a realistic budget and timeline, and becoming a principal investigator for a funded project. Second, I requested funding for a statistical advisor—in this case, an expert with a PhD in quantitative psychology. During several days of data cleaning and formatting, I got to ask dozens of questions about methodology and analysis that expedited and improved the project. In that context, none of my questions seemed stupid (at least to me). Third, the grant bought out one semester of teaching; thus, 18 months worth of research got done in six months. Fourth, it was a huge confidence builder. The LSAC grant committee is run by academic social scientists with PhDs.  I thought to myself, “I can play on this level after all.” The resulting LSAC monograph is here. The law review version is here.

3.  Buy some accessible books on statistics

I took statistics as an undergraduate and loved it. I suspect I am a little unusual among law professors. Yet, absent problems and exercises that are part of a stats class, it is hard to learn about more advanced methods just by reading a book. When I read statistics manuals today, it is usually to learn about a methodology that might be appropriate for a current or future project. In other words, my reading has a specific context.  I can also experiment with a method using data I have already collected.  I actually think this learning-by-doing approach has some advantages.

Drawing on the advice of others, here are some of the books I have accumulated.

• Agresti & Finlay, Statistical Methods for the Social Sciences (3^rd ed. 1997)
• Cope, Fundamentals of Statistical Analysis (2005) (very basic primer)
• Fox, Applied Regression Analysis, Linear Models, and Related Methods (1997)
• Grimm & Yarnold, eds., Reading and Understanding Multivariate Statistics (1995)
• Grimm & Yarnold, eds., Reading and Understanding More Multivariate Statistics (2000)
• Kennedy, A Guide to Econometrics (5^th ed. 2003) (a model of clarity)
• Woodbridge, Introductory Econometrics (2d ed. 2003)

Also, Sage Publications has several dozen short, well-written monographs in its Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences series. I own three (Pampel, Logistic Regression; Achen, Interpreting and Using Regression; and Hagle, Basic Math Problems for Social Scientists). They are all very accessible.

4.  Attend methods workshops

I am an alumni of the 3-day “Conducting Empirical Legal Scholarship” at Washington University. Now that Lee Epstein has moved to Northwestern Law, it is being held in Chicago. (Here is the SSRN announcement.) One of the instructors is Andrew Martin, a brilliant methodologist who understands legal institutions.  Eight hours of lecture on statistics, and he held my attention the whole time. He starts with the basics. Even if you know something about the topic, Andrew is good at patching holes.  An advanced Epstein/Martin workshop is rumored for the fall.

There are other workshop options.  For example, to further my interest in the economic geography of law firms and legal labor markets, I am attending an ICPSR workshop on Spatial Regression Analysis. I have been working with GIS (i.e. mapping) software for years; this training should move me up a level. As a law professor, albeit with an ELS bent, it is great that this type of work fits within my research agenda.

For those with the time and resources, there is an eight-week ICPSR boot camp consisting of intensive graduate level statistics and methods. Law professors who have attended give it rave reviews.  At this juncture in my career, however, eight-weeks is more time and money than I am able to commit. To compensate, next year I hope to audit a graduate-level methods sequence at I.U.

5.  Ask for feedback from better-trained colleagues

Over the years, I have made mistakes that I would not have made if I had gone to graduate school. There is no point in denying this fact.  To mitigate this shortcoming, I have learned to ask questions of my better-trained colleagues who spent that four or five extra years in graduate school. But you cannot ask them to review all your papers in detail—similar to an advisor-student relationship in graduate school. Discrete questions are less burdensome and don’t exhaust their good will. (One solution to this problem is to ask them to be a co-author!) Also, it is important to network outside your home institution with people who share your research interests.

Finally, based on my own experience, there comes a day when your knowledge, at least on specific topics, approaches parity with the average PhD. As one distinguished JD/PhD once told me, “It’s all about the skills. You either have them [and maintain them] or you don’t. A PhD is a just a proxy.” In allocating my time, it is useful to know where that line is.

Comments

[William Henderson]

Thanks for the comments. Until Jason mentioned it, I had not attributed an interest in ELS to Univ of Chicago per se. But I know several recent UC alums interested in empirical work. To name four on this blog: Ford, Czarnezki, Pfaff, Henderson. There are many others. bh.

[Alfred Brophy]

Bill,

Great post, as always. This is one of my favorite lines I've seen in a blog in a long time: "I remain convinced that it is possible to build a respectable career in legal academia just by running a simple arbitrage between legal topics and relevant social science literature." Ah, so, so true. In fact, one of the things the legal academy needs are people who can import the insights of the social sciences into law school.

[Jason Czarnezki]

There are also good comments/advice for those beginning empirical legal scholars at:

http://www.elsblog.org/the_empirical_legal_studi/2006/04/its_my_first_ti.html

[Jason Czarnezki]

This is a great post. I would only add that any perspective empirical legal scholars shouldn't be initimidated by any statistical software, and I'd encourage experimentation with various STATA commands and sample data sets; though gaining familiarity with stats programs is clearly a benefit of Bill's suggestion that one should attend workshops.

It's clear Bill and I, as JD-only empirical legal scholars, have the same roots at Chicago having been both taught by Rosenberg and Bernstein (though having transferred from Wisconsin to Chicago, I was fortunate enough to also have Macaulay as my contracts professor). Students' future careers seem to be influenced by their past professors. Concurring opinions asks whether this can be empirically evaluated (at least for students who turn into judges) at:

http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2006/04/quantifying_the_1.html

[frankcross]

Great stuff. I found a new book I wanted and (thanks to the miracle of Amazon's recommendation algorithm) two others that you didn't list.

I would add: find an empiricist co-author and find somebody from elsewhere on the campus. Could be a professor who provides casual advice or could be a good economics PhD student research assistant.