What I Do For a Living
posted by Nate Oman
Kim’s ruminations on the nature of our profession have got me thinking somewhat less articulate thoughts on being a law professor. I was recently talking with my wife over dinner and she asked me what I had been working on that day. I eagerly replied that I had been researching the legislative history of the Thirteenth Amendment and had found some interesting cases construing apprenticeship agreements under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. She looked at me somewhat incredulously. I knew what she was thinking.
“You are willing to grant me that teaching students is real work,” I said, “but when I talk about doing my research you think of it as a hobby that I have somehow scammed the Commonwealth of Virginia into paying me for, don’t you?”
“That’s about right,” she said. As near as I can tell, her attitude is shared by virtually all of my family and friends (at least the ones who aren’t professors). It is a wonderful life. I also hasten to add that the legislative history of the Thirteenth Amendment matters a great deal. I am still amazed, however, that I actually get paid for doing what I do.
April 19, 2007 at 10:46 pm
Posted in: Law School (Scholarship)
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Responses (9)
Brent D - April 20, 2007 at 1:16 am
Have no fear, there are far greater wastes of tax money than your profession.
NE2d - April 20, 2007 at 12:52 pm
As a 3L who will be in debt for decades for paying the salaries of people who make a comfortable living working an hour a day, I have to say that the reputation that professors have is richly deserved.
Jeff Lipshaw - April 20, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Nate, I think your wife has been talking to my wife. Except when I am beaming with pride for having placed an article, she pops the balloon with “so when do you get paid for the articles?”
Miriam Cherry - April 20, 2007 at 5:47 pm
NE2d, I wonder where you go to school, where the professors work only an hour a day. The faculty at Pacific-McGeorge are a hard working crew. Perhaps you can clue us into where this luxurious lifestyle exists.
NE2d - April 21, 2007 at 10:46 am
The “hour a day” was an exaggeration, of course, but I stand by my charge that professors are overpaid and underworked, and live fairly leisurely and privileged lives on the backs of America’s young people. Mr. Lipshaw gets paid for writing that article when his students fork over their tuition checks.
This is a very sore subject for me and I would like to hear the view from the other side, so I’m trying to keep the tone civil.
Jack - April 21, 2007 at 9:31 pm
NE2d,
I’m neither a lawyer nor a law student, so my position might seem strange to a lot of readers here, but I’d have to suggest the crazy idea that law school is optional at best (and for many people the idea of affording a graduate education is iffy or flatly impossible, regardless of abilities or desires). Don’t like paying what it costs, leave, do something else. (I’d also guess tuition prices have a lot more to do with the institution than the professors; how likely do you think it is that most of them are seeing the 5% yearly tuition increases that most universities have been averaging over the last decade?)
Back to lurk mode
Larry - April 21, 2007 at 11:38 pm
In successful countries, a large number of people are paid for doing what they enjoy doing. Bakers, bankers, teachers, journalists, fire fighters what have you. The concept is not remotely unique to law professors.
Scott Moss - April 23, 2007 at 1:25 pm
What’s always amazed me is that this complaint by law students — “our tuition is too high b/c the professors get paid too much and do too little relevant work” — is equally true of (at least high-profile) colleges. Yet college students don’t levy this complaint — and neither do law students levy this complaint about colleges, even though their 4-yr college tuition was about the same as (or more than) their 3-yr law school tuition.
This leads me to suspect that law students have other reasons for being hostile to their law schools. Why else would they let colleges off the hook but complain so loudly and regularly about law school?
Mar - April 26, 2007 at 10:38 pm
… These complaining law students… Are they the same ones banking on being overpaid lawyers upon graduation?
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