Beginning your Career in Legal Academia
Cameron Giles and Noel McGuirk
What is means to be an “early career” in Higher Education is not always immediately clear. The moniker early career researcher is commonly applied to those in academic roles within the academy but risks ignoring or underrepresenting the diverse ways through which people enter higher education, particularly in the context of legal higher education where entry from practice and entry from research roles outside of the HE sector is common. (Giles, Coyle and McGuirk 2023). Instead, it is perhaps helpful to consider early career academics (although still a broad label) when considering the ways in which the challenges and difficulties experienced across those working in higher education might be experienced differently and, perhaps, more extensively by those who more recently began working in HE (Giles and McGuirk 2024).
Legal education is not immune from the challenges and crisis facing contemporary education; it is also fair to say that it experiences these challenges in novel and/or specific ways, not always to its detriment. As Jones (2020, p.96) notes, in the context of the skills agenda in HE, ‘the law school has always been somewhat torn between the academic and vocational and therefore is better placed than some disciplines to respond to this challenge.’ Nevertheless, contemporary legal education is challenged by wider contexts. As Bromfield (2023) puts it ‘legal education can be tiring and isolating’ in part because of the isolating nature of the responsibilities which take up much of our roles such as teaching, which often involves interaction with students but less frequently involves opportunities for co-teaching with colleagues,[1] and research. This isolation along with increasing workloads present key challenges for the wellbeing of academics who ‘are often more focused on their students’ wellbeing than on their own’ (Strevens and Field 2025, p.441) Moreover, these pressures may further entrench the challenges which accompany developing an emerging academic career.
Duff and Webley (2022) note that those working in higher education ‘have often historically been expected to self-manage their careers’ and that whilst ‘sponsors and mentors’ are seen as important for career progression for early career academics, this is often in the context of research and not of teaching. This is changing: there is growing acknowledgement of the importance of the various dimensions of higher education practice and endeavours such as the Association of Law Teachers’ mentorship scheme and early career symposium which intend to support colleagues encountering some of the challenges mentioned above. There are also various resources available to support these endeavours. These include wide-ranging texts such as The Legal Academic’s Handbook (Ashford ang Guth (eds) 2016) and texts on specific themes such as How to Offer Effective Wellbeing Support to Law Students (Bleasdale (ed) 2025). This guide does not intend to supplant these excellent resources – nor do we think it would do a good job of doing so. Instead, it offers a further way of exploring and addressing the complexities associated with the early career stage of legal academia in what we hope is an accessible and engaging format.
Each entry, written by one of our wonderful contributors, reflects on one aspect of being an early career academic with advice, practical tips and links to further reading. Rather than each entry following on from the last, however, the guide is designed to be navigated through links at the end of each entry which ask you to decide “where next?” We hope that this approach will help demonstrate some of the connections between the different entries and the reflections which they incorporate.
Where Next?
As we discussed above, there are numerous ways that colleagues begin careers in legal academia, including Postgraduate Research as a Gateway to University Law Teaching.
Or
One of the many challenges common to the early career stage is the persistence of Precarious Employment in Higher Ed and how to navigate this.
Or
With a growing emphasis on employability in Higher Education many institutions continue to draw upon legal practitioners to teach and research resulting in further Practitioner to HE Transitions.
Sources:
Ashford, C and Guth J (eds), The Legal Academic’s Handbook (Palgrave 2016)
Bleasdale, LK (ed), How to Offer Effective Wellbeing Support to Law Students (Edward Elgar 2025)
Bromfield, L, ‘First attendance at the Annual ALT Conference, or “what I did on my holidays”’ (ALT Blog, 30 November 2023) <https://lawteacher.ac.uk/first-attendance-at-the-annual-alt-conference-or-what-i-did-on-my-holidays/>
Coyle, S and Gibbons-Jones, H, ‘“Make glorious mistakes!” Fostering growth and wellbeing in HE transition’ (2022) 56(1) The Law Teacher 37
Duff, L and Webley, L, ‘Gender and the legal academy in the UK: a product of proxies and hiring and promotion practices’ in Ulrike Schultz et al (eds) Gender and Careers in the Legal Academy (Hart 2022)
Giles, C, Coyle, S and McGuirk, N, ‘Law and the Early Career Law Teacher (Part 1)’ (ALT Blog, 6 November 2023) <https://lawteacher.ac.uk/law-and-the-early-career-law-teacher-part-1/>
Giles, C and McGuirk, N, ‘Law and the Early Career Law Teacher: What constitutes “early career”? (Part 2)’ (ALT Blog, 30 October 2024) <https://lawteacher.ac.uk/law-and-the-early-career-law-teacher-part-2/>
Jones, E, Emotions in the Law School (Routledge 2020)
Strevens, C and Field, R, ‘Wellbeing/mental health of legal academics’ in Fiona Cownie, Anthony Bradney and Emma Jones (eds) Elgar Concise Encyclopaedia of Legal Education (Edward Elgar 2025) 411
[1] Although notable exceptions to this do arise. See, for instance, Stella Coyle and Hannah Gibbons-Jones, ‘“Make glorious mistakes!” Fostering growth and wellbeing in HE transition’ (2022) 56(1) The Law Teacher 37
