Legal Commentary

Hello everyone -- good to be back for a guest stint, and thanks to Dan for inviting and the rest for tolerating. I'm going to mostly be posting about issues in legal education, but since everyone loves a good navel-gaze and people on the market are thirsty for anything related to hiring, let's start with a perennial favorite this time of year: what questions to ask interviewers at AALS or callback interviews? 

Here's one that I haven't seen so much, and is a moderately innocent, reasonable question to ask in a job interview, but also might tell you something about a school and its faculty. "At [Your School] what percentage of the job are the different pillars of research, teaching, and service?"  Now the reality is that the percentages vary widely for most depending on whether it's summer, when research is often close to 100%, or during the semester. But assume we're talking a full year, averaged across the year, and assume we're talking after year one when you may be spending more time on class preps than you will later on.

I'm not sure what I'd answer to this question (speaking just for myself, not my school): put a gun to my head, maybe research 55%, teaching 35%, service 10%. What would you say in response, and is this a good question to ask?