Law Schools
Would-Be Law Prof Sues for Age Bias, Asks Why Schools Don’t Value Experience
Posted Aug 21, 2009 6:22 AM CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Updated: A Michigan lawyer who didn’t get an interview for a faculty job at the University of Iowa has sued for age discrimination.
Immigration lawyer Donald Dobkin says he was 55 when he responded to a law school ad last year seeking teachers with experience in administrative law, immigration and other practice areas, the National Law Journal (reg. req.) reports.
Dobkin, a professor at Central Michigan University, claims the Iowa school offered the job to two applicants under 40 with lesser qualifications. Dobkin has written several articles on immigration and constitutional law, and he has handled more than 7,000 immigration cases. But he didn’t even get an interview, according to the complaint.
"Academia is not above the law," Dobkin said in an e-mail to the ABA Journal. "The legal academy is the only professional educational body which has professors teaching who have never practiced their profession (with some exceptions) yet purport to be competent to train the future lawyers of the 21st century."
Dobkin told the ABA Journal that if the court awards him the Iowa job, he will donate his first year's salary, after expenses, to homeless children.
Updated at 9:15 a.m. to include comments by Dobkin.
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Comments
Stevie B
Aug 21, 2009 7:12 AM CST
The situation is worse in medicine—where Ive spent 2 years looking for first year residency.
One place admitted: “You have had prior careers—therefore you must not be adequately motivated for Medicine”
Note that only the very young immature baby-doctors will NOT have had prior careers!
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Anon
Aug 21, 2009 11:00 AM CST
Age discrimination is rampant in our profession. Look at all the job ads (er, all the job ads that there used to be) to the effect that applicants more than X years out of law school need not apply. Older lawyers are generally consigned to the contract attorney market.
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John
Aug 22, 2009 10:30 PM CST
Heck, where are these jobs wanting people with less experience? All the ones I see are 5-7 years experience minimum. It used to be 3-5. I guess the experience requirement will keep moving as I gain more experience, only snapping back after I’m past the ‘too many years’ point. Ha.
Nevertheless, on the academy side, legal academics hires in odd ways. People with a couple of publications and 1 or 2 years experience post-law school get hired over people with years of experience and many articles. Why?
What I’ve seen is less age discrimination and school discrimination. Too many years experience hurts, but what hurts more are not graduating from a top-tier school. Doesn’t necessarily matter if you graduated highly in said top-tier school, only if you graduated.
Eh. Professions. Doing things inefficiently since the beginning of time.
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