My Law Professor Year...
I would apologize that this blog went into hiding for the past few months, but of course you understand that a good lawyer can’t apologize for anything. Instead, I’ll just tell you that I’ve been diligently writing posts every week and some lousy associate messed up and deleted them. Yep, I like that story. Let’s call it true.
Anyway, I’ve emerged because I just read New York magazine’s amazing article on Yale Law supervillains Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld, and I couldn’t resist a comment. Reading it brought me right back to the year I took a sabbatical from the firm and managed to blackmail my way into a visiting professor spot at a law school I won’t name (but if you like to read class action suits for fun, you’ve definitely heard of it).
I was young, idealistic, barely-married, and the truth is that years as an associate wore my spirit down more than I like to admit these days. I was tired of feeling (and being) spat on. I wanted people to worship me, fear me, obey me, respect me. So I figured a year as a professor, needlessly tormenting a group of desperate 1Ls, would be exactly the jolt that my psyche needed.
The New York article really captures the fun of being a law professor — drinking with students, grooming them for emotional abuse…. It brings me back, it really does. I remember hosting a party at my university-owned apartment. I went through the class roster and chose my 15 favorites, plus the obnoxious future-politician I knew no one could stand (he’s a county sanitation commissioner now, so… I guess that letter of recommendation I lied to him about writing really helped!), since I was sure he’d add some excitement.
I purposely talked about the party in class — “some of you might be getting an invite from me for a special event for top students — sorry there isn’t space for you all” — to make the excluded folks paranoid and the invitees feel special. And then I had the law school caterer deliver me what they called the “professor special” — a pitcher of quasi-Sangria (cheap wine, orange slices, and powdered oxycodone), and a large platter of assorted cheese leftovers, stale crackers, and a dollop of quince jam that expired more than twenty years earlier.
When the students began to arrive, I was of course still in my pajamas, pretending to be on the phone with a Supreme Court Justice, having a lively, one-sided conversation about how I have the perfect clerk recommendation, “a highly attractive individual who knows exactly what kind of personal sacrifices you need to make in order to get ahead in this world — but we can talk more about that in the hot tub when I see you next month, right now I have some very important company!”
The stage effectively set, before the night was through we were all playing a game of Twister in our underwear and debating whether or not it should be legal to eat my dog. Of course I didn’t have a dog, and I also did nothing to address any suspicions the students might have had when right on the heels of our hypothetical discussion I brought out a platter of “homemade meatballs” and urged everyone to give them a try.
It was a wonderful evening that ended with three complaints to the Dean of Students (who in fact did not exist — he was a made-up name with an email address and auto-responder) and an offer to return as full-time faculty the following year.
I turned it down and returned to the firm. I missed the abuse, kind of. Well, I guess I mostly missed the paycheck. But that’s when I decided to throw my hat in the ring to be a hiring partner. I figured the next best thing to law students were summer associates — and I couldn’t have been more right.