Texas Emerging Scholars Program: Move Your Legal Career from Prosecutor to Professor

Summary

The Texas Emerging Scholars Program (TESP) is a unique program designed to bridge the gap between prosecutors and professors in the legal profession. The program was created to assist prosecutors, who have already completed their law school education, to transition into teaching positions at a law school. It provides financial assistance and resources, such as mentorship and workshops, to help prosecutors to acquire the necessary skills and academic credentials to become successful law professors.


The program consists of two parts; the first is a fellowship that provides financial assistance of up to $7,500 for prosecutors to pursue academic credentials, such as a master's degree, Ph.D., or an advanced law degree. The other part of the program is a mentorship program that provides prosecutors with guidance on how to make the transition from prosecutor to professor, including guidance on navigating the job market.

The program is part of a nationwide effort to increase diversity in the legal profession and has been extremely successful at achieving this goal. The program has seen great success in helping prosecutors make the transition to teaching positions, with many prosecutors taking on teaching positions in law schools located in the state of Texas.

In addition to helping prosecutors make the transition to teaching, the TESP is also a great resource for law students who may want to pursue a career in prosecution after graduation. The program provides students with the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in prosecutorial work and gain valuable insight into how the criminal justice system works.

The Texas Emerging Scholars Program is a great resource for anyone looking to make the transition from prosecutor to professor in the legal profession. The program provides financial assistance and mentors to help prosecutors make the transition, as well as hands-on experience for law students who may want to pursue a career in prosecution after graduation. This program is part of a nationwide effort to increase diversity in the legal profession, and it has been extremely successful in achieving this goal.
 

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

 

From Prosecutor to Professor

The Texas Emerging Scholars Program is a unique program that works to transition criminal justice professionals, such as prosecutors, into careers as professors or lawyers. The program, which was founded by the Texas Office of the Attorney General in 2002, is open to both current law enforcement professionals and former prosecutors. The goal of the program is to give criminal justice professionals the knowledge, skills, and resources necessary to make the transition from prosecutor to professor.
 

Unique Educational Opportunities

The program offers a variety of educational opportunities, including classes and seminars on topics like criminal law, criminal justice theory, and legal writing. The program also provides mentorship and guidance to former prosecutors to ensure they have the necessary skills and experience to succeed in their new careers. Additionally, participants are given the opportunity to work with current law enforcement professionals, legal experts, and academics to gain further insight into the criminal justice field.
 

Developing Leadership Skills

The program also works to develop leadership skills in its participants, such as successful networking, public speaking, and problem solving. Participants are also encouraged to take on leadership roles within their communities, such as legal aid or pro bono work, to further their professional development. This helps former prosecutors gain valuable experience that will help them transition into their new careers.
 

Gaining Professional Recognition

Participants in the program are also given the opportunity to gain professional recognition by publishing their work in academic journals and presenting at conferences. This helps them to become more visible in the academic community and further advances their career. Additionally, the program helps participants to make valuable connections with other academics, lawyers, and law enforcement professionals, which can lead to career advancement opportunities in the future.

Samuel Buell is the first Visiting Assistant Professor and Fellow in the Emerging Scholars Program. While his professional résumé is impressive, he, like most practicing attorneys, 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 professors 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 teaching; 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 colloquia, 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, including the Bigelow Program at the University of Chicago.

Since Buell is on a half schedule for teaching, he has time to develop his legal scholarship. 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 addition to having time to do research, Buell says another draw to the ESP is that "the University 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, according 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 experience 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 purpose. As for leaving behind his prosecutor's career, "I was ready for a new challenge." Buell adds, "Career change can be a wonderfully revitalizing thing."