Legal Commentary

I have a friend who has been on the market this fall.   He's certainly well qualified and credentialed, and has had a number of callbacks, but he hasn't gotten the offer he's hoping for yet.  He's now wondering if it would be a good or bad career move to seek out a VAP-type position as a writing/process professor for a year or two and then go through the meat market again.

He has gotten a lot of different advice.  More traditional folks have told him that accepting a writing position is a bad move--that it will slot him in the "writing" track--and won't help (and may actually hurt) his chances of eventually getting the doctrinal position he wants.  I, perhaps naively, suggested that I didn't think those two "tracks" existed to the extent that they may once have, and told him I thought a writing position would give him teaching experience, and, more importantly, time to keep writing the good doctrinal stuff he's already started to produce.  In the end, I said, it will be your writing that makes or breaks you.

But I'm young(ish), or at least very junior, and maybe I'm too optimistic about things like this.  So I thought I'd poll the broader prawfs world on the issue.  If I were savvy enough I'd put one of those cool "polls" in here--but I have absolutely no idea how to do that.  So, if you have thoughts, please post them the old-fashioned way.