What Do Law Profs Do All Day?

Well, it's not just sitting in their offices complaining all day to whomever will listen, meaning other faculty members or research assistants as the Hitler videos suggest at What Do You Mean I Have to Teach on Fridays!, Reaction to News About the Forthcoming New Bluebook Edition and Law School Dreams When JD Meant "Ju$t Dollars. But it is a question many inside and outside the legal academy ask and since the new academic year is commencing... .

Becoming a Law Professor: A Candidate's Guide by Brannon Denning, Marcia McCormick and Jeffrey Lipshaw will be published by the ABA soon. Been looking but haven't found a link on the ABA bookstore site. The work's table of contents and introduction can be viewed on SSRN here. A snip:

We are writing this book to provide information to, and encourage, more law school students to approach academia as a realistic career choice. We believe that non-Order of the Coif, non-law review, and even non-Ivy League graduates can become excellent teachers and scholars, and that legal academia in general would be enhanced by the presence in significant numbers of professors who possess a diversity of academic backgrounds and experiences.

Chapter 1 is titled "What Do Law Professors Do All Day?" which, quoting the introductory chapter, "describes the types of teaching jobs available in law schools and the responsibilities of each. As you will see, not everyone on a law school faculty teaches two courses a semester and writes 1.5 law review articles a year." That chapter alone may be worth the price of the book. If it's a frank review of the realities of the legal academy, it may send some wannabe law profs fleeing to pursue other career options, like blogging for a living.

Larry Solum's forward to the book, The New Realities of the Legal Academy, is also available right now on SSRN. For more about Becoming a Law Professor: A Candidate's Guide, see Jeff Lipshaw's post on Legal Profession Blog. [JH]