Paul Caron of TaxProfblog claims that law professors tend to be unhappy and tries to explain why. He argues that legal academia is a "miserable" job because it is characterized by 1) anonymity, 2) irrelevance (inability to see any impact your job has on the lives of others), and 3) "immeasurement," (inability to measure whether you are succeeding at the job or not). UCLA lawprof Steve Bainbridge takes issue with Caron's assessment, pointing out that there is no proof that law professors are, on average, more unhappy than professionals in other fields. He also notes that professors do not in fact generally suffer from anonymity, irrelevance, and immeasurement. I think Bainbridge generally has the better of this argument. In particular, he is absolutely right to note that academics don't lack for measures of their success (or lack thereof). Our achievements and failures are measured by citation rates, conference invitations, offers of visiting positions, promotion to tenure, pay increases (which at many schools are at least partly merit-based, and of course student evaluations. None of these measures are perfect. But collectively they should give most professors a reasonably good indication of their professional standing.
In addition to the points Bainbridge makes, I would note that it's hard to believe that being a lawprof is an unusually "miserable" job in light of the fact that there are so many more people who want get into legal academia than there are jobs available. According to AALS data, in most years, less than 15% of applicants for entry level law professor jobs succeed in getting a position. That is a very high demand for a "miserable" job, especially when we consider the fact that most of these applicants could earn higher salaries as private sector lawyers. It's possible that all these sophisticated graduates of top law schools (and sometimes of PhD programs as well) are misinformed, though I tend to doubt it. In any event, very few people leave legal academia to go into the private sector, even though people who already have lawprof jobs are presumably well-informed about how "miserable" such positions are.
There are also important advantages of being a professor relative to most other professional jobs. They include opportunities to travel to interesting locations, an unusually high degree of control over your schedule, and spending most of your time working on issues that interest you.
Obviously, some professors really are "miserable." And the job certainly isn't right for everybody. I know people who are happy working at law firms who would hate the academic life. However, it's unlikely that the life of the average lawprof is more miserable than that of the average professional in most other fields.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Jobs I Would Leave Academia For:
- Are Academics Unhappy about their Jobs?
- Law Professor Misery Roundup:
- Some Evidence on Law Professors' Relative Job Satisfaction:
- Are Law Professors Miserable, and if so Why?
At some point, you have to realize that all the invites, the travel, the articles nobody ready... probably y'all are smart and really could have done something with your lives -- contributed somewhere. A judge, a lawyer working on cases. One day you wake up and realize that when you're gone, really it doesn't matter because you didn't do much one way or the other -- except for youselves, that is.
That's why the Family becomes more and more important as you age, and the external badges of success -- to you -- start to seem shallow. How else do you explain the giddiness at writing on a blog, or appearing alongside movie stars? Surely you had a chance to contribute, but y'all sold out, so to speak and made it more about yourself. Eh-- the new crop of profs will come along, when they've planted these ones good and deep. Remember, it's not to late to contribute something for the inherent value of it, not just for the show.
Captive crowd, not much experience to compare with.
I'm not saying it's everybody. But the usefulness of professors in the academy is well past its heyday in contributing to the country, surely you can agree on that? But here's a prize to make you feel better about your choices. And a lovely banquet, of course. Maybe a bigger
celloffice would help? Outside of the academy, you're really not held in all that much esteem; you get the picture. Something about public trough, and the piggies lining up.See what I mean? Y'all start to blend together: this one posts, that one's quick to comment... Sadly indistinguishable really. It's a good thing those egos are supersized; it's just hard the day they start to deflate and you start to take a more honest accounting is all.
OK enough of the reality view. Your wives and kids still need you around, I suspect.
Having written three articles, I've come to this conclusion about much legal scholarship: nobody really cares about it. No matter how strong I think my arguments are in my articles, I don't think anyone is paying attention. Yet, in the context of law firm practice, I get to face actual client problems, think and write about the law, and help provide a conclusion that someone actually relies on.
I think the sweetest job would involve being a full-time professor, but also being of counsel to a law firm (or otherwise engaged in practice such that one's academic interests/theories can actually be applied). But, just trudging away and writing articles that only other academics might read would seem to make one irrelevant. That's my biggest fear about ever entering the meat market, anyway.
This is a common, but misplaced assumption. Even if a given article is only read by other academics, it can still influence the direction of a field of study, which in turn influences debates in the "real" world, and often the development of law and public policy as well. To be sure, only a very small percentage of articles have a truly significant influence. But the same can be said of most activities undertaken by other professionals. Only a very small percentage of work done by "real" lawyers impacts the lives of more than a handful of people, for example.
There's an important caveat to your perspective: As a professor, you decide how relevant your writing will be. If you want to write on a topic that will be relevant to the world, you can do that; if you want to write on a topic that you (or some small group) find really interesting but no one else does, you're free to do that, too.
True, there may be some professors who are frustrated that the Supreme Court does not care about their latest article, "Towards an Epistemological Theory of Foucault's Navel." But as I suggested in my 4:27 comment, that's really just about expectations; frustration that the universe does not revolve around you may be common, but in my view it's hard to have much sympathy for it.
True, I don't think my book and my articles have Changed the World, but I still get satisfaction from scholarship. And yes, I sometimes miss practice and the "real world" -- although I was lucky in practice to have clients whom I liked personally and whose cause I believed in, and many lawyers don't get that. Finally, sure, there are some law profs who are annoyingly hypercompetitive and therefore probably somewhat unhappy. But I think most of us think we have great jobs.
Except for that grading part. . . .
Exactly. Besides, most jobs, and certainly all the best jobs, are pretty much "irrelevant." Rock star, actor, professional athlete, etc.
I'm not sure this is accurate. Many of the profs I've met seem completely incapable of working in the private sector.
One thought to keep in mind is that publishing an article is kind of like planting a tree. When the article comes out, usually there is silence: the world goes on as before. But slowly over the course of time it starts to matter, as people will go over that ground and see your article and read it. Those in the area will remember it, and it can have influence (most likely quiet influence you never know of) years down the road.
Then the law profs have to back 'n' fill, and figure out how to teach their next class -- while incorporating the latest constitutional outlier, and trying to explain why the decision isn't really unconstitutional.
And all the while, the students keep their mouths shut while thinking, "Who's he trying to fool??"
I'd be miserable, too.
Yes, perhaps I am impatient (or perhaps my articles suck).
Another complaint though; what I like about being a tax attorney is that the people I work with actually care about tax *law*; people in this field write articles, speak at seminars about changes in the law, write many policy pieces for legislators, and so on.
But in the academic setting, actually focusing on the law -- even if doing so makes one relevant -- might make one the red-headed stepchild in the family. That is, it seems like most of the focus these days is on "Law and...", and there might not be much support (or respect) for academics who write to focus on the law. Writing a seminal treatise, for example, would be (in my view) an astounding accomplishment. Yet, I don't think treatise-writers are given the same respect that they used to.
The Judge Edwards piece has already been much-discussed, but this statement -- which he reproduces from a from a professor of law at a "well-regarded, midwestern law school" -- scares me:
It seems like even if one goes for the relevance route (by writing about the actual law), then one is doomed for "isolated despair"; I don't want to be "belittled" and treated as "unworthy" by my peers. On the other hand, if one wants to be treated as a "real scholar," then one has to go the route of irrelevance.
These are of course overstatements, but I imagine for those of us who aren't super-humans (i.e., able to become legends in our fields), there is a very real possibility of being marginalized by other faculty if we focus on the law.
The trick, I suppose, is to find a faculty where one's interests and goals are not devalued. Surely there is some diversity among the faculties among the 180 or so law schools, and I could see how being a part of a faculty that is a good "fit" would be a great experience.
But, anyhow, my simpler point is that there are aspects of the academy that lend some merit to the "irrelevance" contention.
I think Caron has to be joking, because his statements more accurately describe working as a BigLaw associate, and many BigLaw associates wish to become law professors when they retire. The joke is "the grass is brown everywhere".
All that this proves is that being a law prof is less miserable than being in practice! And the miserableness of lawyers is well-documented. See, e.g., the WSJ Law &Family column of Dec. 13, 2007.
Earlier this week someone emailed me the following from a fundamentalist Christian Web site, about how unhappy Christians are. So it would appear that unhappiness is the new national past-time:
>> The past few weeks I've have had a surprising number of conversations
with
>> men
>> (in their 20s and 30s) who have confessed that they have seriously asked
>> for, and
>> even prayed for, death. And it's all been for one reason: The "family
>> dream"
>> that they were sold as kids has not happened. On the surface things look
>> great,
>> but peel back one layer and you find excruciating pain. "Hey, bro,
how's
>> it going?" "Fine," the liar says. "Just fine."
>>
>> Families like the Keatons and the Cosbys (like the Cleavers and Nelsons
of
>> a previous
>> generation) were presented as the pinnacle and fullest expression of life
>> on earth.This
>> is what you want, fellas, a beautiful wife, a few kids, a nice house, a
>> good job.
>> . .then comes retirement, grandchildren and you die a fulfilled man. Ahh,
>> what a
>> life!
>>
>> Guess what? Lots of guys are finding out the hard way that in the real
>> world having
>> the perfect "American family" image is the rare exception. Here's
>> the truth: lots of guys I know are in completely miserable marriages, many
>> (I mean
>> MANY) wives have committed adultery, kids have chronic illnesses, guys
>> hate their
>> jobs but are stuck because of debt, divorced (even though they swore they
>> were not
>> going to do what their parents did by splitting up), many wives want to
>> leave their
>> husbands because they don't make enough money, lots of "great
guys"
>> never marry, many can't get over addictions because after praying for
>> 12-15
>> years they've discovered that it "doesn't work," depression,
dealing
>> with their own sexual abuse at a late age, mulling over a very long list
>> of regrets,
>> wanting to pack it all up and go "into the wild," your daughter
has a
>> reputation for being a "slut," your son's already a pot head,
etc.
>>
>> And for guys that I talk to who aren't Christians or part of any religious
>> tradition
>> some of the issues are worse than these.
>> Or even worse, you could be one of those guys whose wife just cuts him
>> down and
>> emasculates regularly (daily).
>>
>> I don't always know how to respond to hearing "bro, I want to
die,"
>> knowing that the guy is serious. Very serious. How were men taught to
>> handle the
>> dreams and expectations that never come true. How much of it is envy, the
>> "grass
>> is greener syndrome, or mystery?
>>
>> Few of us are growing in our ability to stomach being in the presence of
>> those men
>> who acquired the ideal existence as advertised--the anointed ones. It's
>> not
>> their fault they had it easy and continue to have it easy (or at least
>> they put
>> off like they do). This one guy recently talked about how easy it is for
>> the anointed
>> to believe that God loves them but it's very hard for those who
>> circumstances
>> are constantly hard and painful, "the cursed," walk in "grace."
>> What's ever worse is that the guys that do all the teaching in churches
>> are
>> the ones who appear to have the "ideal" as advertised and that
its working
>> out perfectly. So the "perfect" life guys are completely ignored
by the
>> rest. "Of course you can preach about God's love, look how easy
your life
>> is."
>>
>> Another guy said once, "yeah it's really easy for me to see how
God loves
>> other guys, just look at his wife and kids, they're nearly perfect."
What
>> do you say to that? But easy riders will say, "No, I can relate, my
wife
>> and
>> I get into fights all the time." And they guy who just caught his
wife
>> cheating
>> (again) just rolls his eyes and says, "yeah, wow, whew that's
hard stuff
>> for ya."
>>
>> So what the great American lie has produced is a profound cynicism. A
>> cynicism that
>> tempts men to end their life. Being a kid is so awesome because you're
>> often
>> oblivious to destruction that is guaranteed to visit most of us and will
>> completely
>> avoid others--a profound mystery.
>>
>> I know one guy who says that he's trying to get over his refusal to
even
>> have
>> a conversation with one of the anointed. He hasn't had much respect
for
>> them
>> as men. I know this one guy who asked, "if you can't have kids,
what's
>> the point of being alive?" Ahhhh, to spend the rest of life quarantined
in
>> the "40-plus" singles group at your church for local service
projects,
>> camping trips, and Bible studies."
>>
>> What are we suppose to say to this? I guess the Christian cliches will
do.
>> Fellas,
>> I wish I had more answers.
I don't know whether most of the law professors are happy or not. The ones I knew seemed to be, but of course that can be misleading.
But I will say that the idea that law professors are somehow irrelevant or inconsequential is ridiculous. I had several law professors who had a dramatic impact on me when I was in school. Whether their articles are read or not, I don't know. But I benefitted from their work. It changed the way I think analytically, and the way I look at the world. They worked very hard, and imparted themselves to me. Law school for me was a transformative experience, and I owe it primarily to some excellent professors.
My impression is that the professors who impact the lives of their students know it, and it does make them happy. Winning a case is one thing, but shaping a whole class of students is another thing entirely.
So any unhappy law professors reading this, take pride in your work, especially your teaching. Ignore the moron commenters here who call you irrelevant. Enjoy the fact that many of your students are being helped by you and even provoked by you to think in a more profound way than they ever knew before. The gaining of a broader and deeper way of thinking is something that will stay with your students for the rest of their lives.
So be happy!
Law professors blogging about their misery. Even your mother thinks you are a whiny little baby.
Face it. Nobody cares. Suck it up. Life is tough. Wear a cup, and STFU.
To respond to Andy Grewal, there is no denying that the modern legal academy prizes theoretical and interdisciplinary research more than non-academics would like. Having an article on your resume like "The Alienability and Devisability of Possibilities of Reverter and Rights of Entry" will probably hurt you at the meatmarket. This is despite the article perhaps being extremely useful to a biglaw associate burning the midnight oil on a real estate transaction.
But this should be the benefit of being a law professor. Unlike law firm associates who must tell the partner: "I've read through every case on the timing for routine discovery motions, and they all say the same thing," law professors get to do research on what they find interesting. The fact that other people will find it entirely useless is, within broad limits, beside the point. The fact that very few law professors find so-called "real law" interesting is a reflection of the fact that (1) real law is, 99% of the time, intellectually unchallenging and designed to be that way (commercial transactions should be routine and monotonous)--which explains why law firm associates are miserable; and (2) those rare people who find real law interesting can have much more lucrative careers as biglaw partners, and would never self-select into academia.
There is the darker side that, because of the existing population of academics and worldview, along with the fact that existing academics are the gatekeepers to new academics, the lawyer who has no wish to write about theoretical subjects at all--and instead just wants spend his life writing the most comprehensive tax treatise--will face an uphill slope if he want to become an academic. But that is not a problem of "anonymity," nor a problem of quality of life for existing law professors. If existing law professors wanted to write a tax treatise to become more "relevant" and less "anonymous," there is nothing stopping them from doing so.
The minus: In the law school context, it's irrelevant. No one needs to attend law school in order to become a lawyer. The only reason people do attend is that tha ABA convinced states to require guild-protecting requirements to enter the profession.
I am not sure that law teaching is intrinsically more or less significant than "real" law. If you are interested in the intellectual foundations of the law and how it ought to be adopted to serve selected policies, then most of us will certainly get to think more about those things in academia than in practice. If you like students, it has more of a "helping" feel to it. Because both of those things describe me, I regard my work at Marquette as more significant than most of what I did in private practice and the corporate world.
As I work on scholarship, I get that it helps to be at least a little interdisciplinary and display an intellectual erudition that people in the "real" world would find foggy. I know that there is a limited market for that. I have always been a nerd and I know that there are not many of us.
But I don't see it as irrelevant. Thinking about something at that level can, if kept in its place, help to teach it and, at least if you can remember that all that fancy theory should have some kind of a point that matters to someone somewhere, you may move the law a little - whether individually or as part of a group of like minded scholars.
The latter possibility might be a bit more salient if the legal academy was more interested in speaking to the public. Because I work at a law school in the community where I practiced (and still do on a limited basis), I already was writing and commenting on law and policy stuff. It is possible to take all that euridition down from thirty thousand feet to a level where others can see it.
This doesn't necessarily mean doing the nuts and bolts stuff that we see in bar journals, but engaging in a type of public scholarship where ideas and their implications are explained for a larger (although probably still small) audience.
There are lots of good lawprofs who do this, but it may be that the dominant attitude toward this kind of scholarship is indifference or derision. But if we can get beyond that, law schools will matter more and more law schools that, given inertia in the pecking order will never be elite, will have more opportunities to find a distinctive voice and mission.
(A distinct, but related, issue is the indifference of many schools to issues arising in the communities in which they are located.)
But, so far, I really enjoy it and hope that I can continue to do it.
Law Professors are hired (at leat theoretically) to teach students. But they are almost universally evaluated not according to their teaching ability, but rather according to their publications. That would be pretty depressing to me.
Whatever "Theory" suggests, scholarship plays a much bigger role in hiring at most schools than teaching does. Teaching does count, but usually only as a secondary factor. Most candidates are well aware of this when they go in. Those who find it depressing probably either 1) don't try to enter the field in the first place, or 2) don't succeed in getting a job.
While you sit on your tush, in one of the most cush jobs ever, where you earn well over six figures for a few hours of work a week, and one paper a year . . . do you ever wonder why no one else in society gets such an easy life? Do you know of anyone else who does jack all day and makes six figures?
do you ever ask who has to sacrifice to pay for this largesse?
I'm in $150,000 of debt, and after three years of hard work all I have to look forward to is the job below. All that stuff you "taught" me - preparing motions, interrogatories and so on - is worth a whopping $14 an hour. I paid a fortune in tuition to learn a skill no one wants to pay for. So while you're depressed about your anonymity and immeasurement, know that the people you taught are depressed because they don't know how they're going to eat.
...........................
Employer Name:
Contact Name: x
Address: x
City:
Telephone: x
Facsimile: x
E-Mail: x
Description: HOURS: Part-time (20hrs/week) SALARY: $11-$14 per hour. STUDENT LEVEL: 2L, 3L JOB DESCRIPTION: Small Monrovia automobile accident defense law firm looking for part-time law clerk to primarily assist in preparation of discovery responses. Responsibilities will include communicating with clients, preparing draft interrogatory and document request responses, and limited research and motion preparation work. HOW TO APPLY: Please fax resume to 626-471-1094.
Date Entered: 12/20/07
Job ID: 421929