Co Authoring in Legal Academia

Co authoring saved me. Literally.  But for the fact that my senior colleagues at UCLA did not care whether I ever wrote anything sole authored, I don't think I would have written anything. I was (and am) just too racked with insecurities.  And then I'd probably have had to get a real job. Aiyiyiyi.  I owe an ever lasting debt to those colleagues -- thank you to Bill Klein, Devon Carbado, Steve Bainbridge, Rick Sander and more.

But I had heard, at the time (a long long time ago) that other schools were not so encouraging. Some of them, the rumor was, discounted co authored work or refused to count it at all in the tenure file.  The model of the worthy scholar was the solo romantic creator toiling away on the magnum opus in solitude.  

Things have changed since then though, as this brilliant piece, The Evolving Network of Legal Scholars,  by Andrew Hayashi shows (although, I have to ask Andrew: Why is the article on co authorship not co authored?).  Even putting aside the fact that I find the topic fascinating (of course, I'd like anything about co authorship), it is beautifully written and has the coolest graphs.  Every section says something new and insightful and one is left wanting more at the end. That is not how I feel at the end of most law journal articles -- actually, I don't even reach the end of most law journal articles because they are such torture to read (especially mine).

Abstract is here:

The law professoriate is a network connected by scholarly interactions of various kinds, including co-authorship. I study the evolution of the co-authorship network from 1980-2020 and document a sharp increase in the number of scholars, the amount of scholarship, and explosive growth in the network of legal scholars during this period. Despite this growth, however, the distance between legal scholars has shrunk such that legal academia can be characterized as a “small world.” I describe the increase in the number and scholarly contributions of women, minorities, and lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) scholars and the rise of co-authorship, including “mixed” co-authorship. I find that members of the same gender or minority groups tend to coauthor with each other, but that this correlation has declined over time resulting in more co-authorship across identity categories. Finally, examining the ordering of author names on coauthored articles, I find that racial minority scholars make up a greater share of first authors than their share of authors in general, while women and LGB scholars make up a smaller share of first authors than one might expect if authorship were randomly assigned.

Just a few questions for Andrew, for his next article on this topic:

1. The article focuses on co authorship in law journals. But what about peer review journals.  Might it be the case that the types of folks who migrate towards the co authorship model tend to publish more in peer review journals? Especially in fields like health law? Does that create an under count?

2. Do things change over the life cycle of a scholar?  Does co authoring at some stage lead to working on larger and larger teams over time? (as one sees the benefits - I'm thinking of Eric Posner's podcast  conversation with Orin Kerr about this topic (here))

3. Can you tell us more about the schools where co authorship thrives more than others?  Are they more collaborative? Do they produce better (more creative) or worse ideas?

4. What about co teaching?  Some schools encourage co teaching in the way they give credit.  Does that result in more co authorship?

Comments

[Bob Lawless]

This is really interesting, Mitu. Thanks for posting it. I have been co-authoring since early in my career and have been at places both more or less friendly to it. The legal academy's reluctance (hostility?) on co-authoring always has been a mystery.

I was once talking with a scholar in another field who commented negatively on someone else's record, noting they never co-authored (among other things). That seemed odd, given our disciplinary priors. "Why is it bad that they don't co-author," I asked. The response--"Because it shows the person's peers don't respect them enough to work with them." That was an eye-opening perspective.

[steven]

You could teach a class in insecurities law