The Best Thing About Being a Law Professor
posted by Mike Dimino
Certainly there are more than a few great potential responses, most of which we have rehearsed anticipating the meat market question, “So why do you want to teach?” The fantastic schedule, the opportunity to introduce law students to the excitement of law study and the legal profession, and the chance to explore one’s area of scholarly interest in depth and, perhaps, influence public debate are all important factors making this a terrific job.
For me, however, the best aspect of law teaching has been a more general one: Being in legal academia gives me the opportunity to learn simply out of interest in the subject. This occupation gives me the opportunity to develop courses relating to my academic interests, and the freedom to pursue those interests without worrying about billable hours, even if they never materialize into scholarly production or courses. This opportunity to learn means that the intellectually curious professor can avoid the tedium that affects so many others, resulting in low job satisfaction (or so I hope).
Around Thanksgiving 2004 I began preparing to teach criminal procedure the ensuing semester. Though I had taken the subject in law school and had dealt with several criminal matters through my clerkships, I was hardly an authority on the subject upon entering teaching. It was, therefore, most important for me to try to get a handle on as much of the course as I could before it began in January. To my surprise, I loved the subject matter. And what was more, I loved the process of learning the material. I got into the treatises more thoroughly and with more interest than I ever did in law school.
The experience has spurred me to expend my knowledge into other areas. Last semester, embarassed at my relative ignorance of civil procedure (again, despite having taken the course in law school and despite having dealt with specific civil-procedure problems after law school), I read a study aid in that subject.
And this semester I’m taking it up a notch: I’m attending a course in my own law school. Sports law had a low enrollment, and my colleague who teaches the course responded favorably to my expressed desire to sit in, so I have been attending those classes and reading the assignments along with the other students in the class. It is a blast. The subject area is interesting, the students welcome my attendance and input (with appropriate self-restraint, of course), and the class discussion does not seem in the least inhibited by my presence. (If it were, that would be plenty of reason in itself to forego the experiment.)
There is no greater benefit for me than being turned loose to explore the law.
January 18, 2006 at 12:53 pm
Posted in: Law School
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