Adjunct Professor Positions at UC Hastings

Thank you for your interest in serving as a member of the adjunct faculty at UC Hastings! We appreciate your inquiry, especially the enthusiasm of our graduates for this type of service.

We benefit from the expertise of talented members of the bench and the bar, many of them our alumni, who teach specialized courses at the law school. Adjunct professors add breadth and depth to the curriculum, incorporating lessons from practice into the classroom. They are vital to our success. Many of them continue in this role for years, even decades, integrating their practices and their part-time teaching.

Yet we also must be mindful about the limitations on the use of adjunct faculty. The American Bar Association, which accredits law schools, and the American Association of Law Schools, a membership organization consisting of the better law schools, strictly limit the usage of adjunct professors at any given time. These organizations expect that the required courses and other core courses be taught by the regular faculty. The proportion of full-time faculty to students also affects our rankings. At this time, we have the full complement of adjuncts that we are permitted. We are not considering additional adjuncts.

Judges and practitioners are often surprised to learn of the workload for adjunct faculty. They must spend countless hours preparing for class, meeting with students, and grading papers and exams: it is not surprising for a new teacher to spend more than three hours outside of the classroom for each hour inside the classroom, aside from time during office hours and the reading period. Serving as an adjunct professor seldom, if ever, leads to a full-time tenure-track position at the same institution. Only one of our faculty members started out as an adjunct professor for us.

Nonetheless, we would welcome your participation in the life of the law school in other ways.