But what about lawprofs? Aren’t they entitled to a little happiness too?

Backing up yet another effort to justify the value of legal scholarship, this time by lawprof  Tamara Piety at the  Faculty Lounge, which was met with some less than enthusiastic support by the poor disgruntled students and new lawyers who feel that it comes on their backs and at their expense,  Michael Mannheimer offers his views a PrawfsBlawg.

Coming out swinging, Mannheimer notes that the Philistines attack because of the cost of legal scholarship, while Piety’s arguments deal with their value and utility. Legal academia still smarts from smacks like that handed out by Chief Justice John Roberts, who made it clear that legal scholarship was a bore less than useful to judges, exacerbated by the latest efforts to defend the value of law faculty without practice experience charged with teaching students how to practice law. 

Her defense of scholarship is well inside the box. Sometimes it can useful, and besides, the baby was always ugly. So there. So what if the useful scholarship is overly burdened by obtuse jargon and 10,000 words too long? If there is one in a hundred that furthers legal thought, isn’t that worth it?

Her defense of academics who don’t practice, on the other hand, is lame, but then it was always a silly argument. Of course practice experience in the hands of a good teacher makes them better able to impart their knowledge to students. Too many words have been murdered on this obvious point already.

In contrast to the wasted effort of arguing a lost cause, Mannheimer spills the beans (which I’ve broken into multiple paragraphs for readability):

In addition, most of the professors I know at non-elite institutions are like me:  we went into academia because (1) we love teaching the few areas in which we have a real expertise and interest and (2) we love writing about them.  If I didn’t do scholarship and were weighted down teaching classes in which I have no interest, academia starts to look a lot like practice:  a 60-80 hour work week doing something I don’t particularly enjoy. 

But there’s one big difference:  in practice, I can do things I don’t particularly enjoy for a lot more money.  Most law professors at non-elite schools make far below their market value.  The trade-off is that we do what we enjoy, set our own research agenda, and have flexible hours.  Take that away and being in academia is not worth it. 

So, at least as far as the non-elite schools are concerned, faculty who can leave academia and get better pay will do so; those who can’t will put in as little effort as possible; and, perhaps most importantly, those schools will stop attracting faculty who go into academia as a choice and attract only those who do so because they can’t make it in practice.  As mediocrity of the faculty increases, of course, the salaries they demand should go down, which should lower tuition.  But that’s like saying that it’s cheaper to eat at McDonalds than at the Corner Bistro.

There’s the rub: lawprofs do what they enjoy doing.  Aren’t they entitled to be happy? Aren’t they entitled to leave a job they dislike, perhaps even hate, to take their place in the Academy where they do only what brings a smile to their face?

It’s not that they don’t love teaching, but that love teaching only those things they love to teach. Aren’t they entitled to only teach courses they love to teach? Isn’t their happiness more important the loading them up with teaching assignments in areas they “don’t particularly enjoy,” that would make them sad? Do you want a sad lawprof? 

They get to do only what pleases them. They get a paycheck while being free to indulge their interests. They have “flexible hours,” which smells remarkably like work/life balance. It makes them happy. Don’t you want them to be happy?

Take that away and being in academia is not worth it.

Then comes the fist in the velvet glove. They aren’t being happy for themselves, but for your benefit, grasshoppers. They are sacrificing horribly for you, forsaking the great wealth they would command in the legal marketplace for the pittance they receive as scholars.  And if they weren’t otherwise happy, they would flee en masse back to the trenches, where they would be miserably rich, leaving students in a cesspool of mediocrity.

And if law schools are staffed by cheeseburgers, as opposed to steak au poivre, tuition may well go down, but only because you’re buying off the dollar menu.  Who knows that’s in those burgers?

No doubt some lawprofs could command a mighty fine salary in the marketplace. But there is a great deal of doubt that most could. Indeed, there’s a pretty good argument to be made that few could survive practice, But since this claim is untested, there never having been a mass exodus from academia into practice, it can’t be proven. At the same time, neither can the lawprof myth that they are financially undervalued, which remains an article of faith in the academy, and a foundation upon which many of their rationalizations are built.

Yet it’s the manifestly cavalier concern for their own pleasure is what pisses everyone off, and Mannheimer appears completely tone-deaf. No, debt-laden law students and unemployed new lawyers really aren’t more concerned about your happiness than their misery.  To be frank, nobody feels particularly badly for the lawprof who is forced to teach a class that doesn’t interest him.  Big boys and girls do what they have to do, even when it isn’t fun. 

While it’s long been suspected that the stalwarts of the  legal academy’s resistance to change was just a matter of protecting a job and lifestyle made them happy, Mannheimer now confirms that it’s true.  Out of the closet in the Ivory Tower emerges the Slackoisie, entitled to a life that pleases them.  Your life sucks? Too bad you’re not them.

The irony is the threat, that absent the entitlement to a life of scholarly and financial pleasure, the law schools that have sucked the joy out of so many young people would collapse, leaving them at best to be trained as auto mechanics in the law.  Maybe it’s time to test this theory, to see whether academia is worth it, whether lawprofs could go to the trenches and command vast, even if miserable, wealth. I suspect their dreams of grandeur might be so easily fulfilled, and that they will come to appreciate how fabulous their life in the academy has been.  And I suspect they will be more than happy to teach an additional class, maybe even two, rather than have to face the harsh reality of practicing law.

Maybe then, tuition will come back down to earth. Maybe then, students will no longer be taught the practice of law by a prof who once read a book about it. And by the way, when your car is broken, what you need is a damn good mechanic. Don’t look down on them.