Question for parents, from a professor

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any job with tenure is not ‘the real world’

I work at a university and 70% of the classes are taught by non-tenure track faculty. Most of those people are on yearly contracts.

Which is unfortunate and I'm sure people would be surprised at how low the salaries are.

[Anonymous]

Treat them like the adults they are. Provide clear deadlines and communicate the consequences early. True emergencies arise but that has to be a very high bar. ADHD, Family/roommate/boyfriend troubles don’t qualify.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most academic teaching jobs don’t involve tenure and tenure isn’t what you think it is.

Partnership at Big Law is closely equivalent to tenure — is that not the real world? K-12 teachers often have a form of tenure after a probationary period — don’t they work in the real world? Unionized workers and civil servants have various protections based on seniority and designed to prevent them from being fired for the wrong reasons. Do they work in the real world?

I think by “real world” you mean some (largely fictional) model of how capitalism works.

I have great respect for professors, as many in my family are fortunate to be tenured professors and work incredibly hard.

But my DH is a partner in Big Law, and it's not like tenure. The firm will boot you out pretty quickly if you don't continue to bring in revenue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most academic teaching jobs don’t involve tenure and tenure isn’t what you think it is.

Partnership at Big Law is closely equivalent to tenure — is that not the real world? K-12 teachers often have a form of tenure after a probationary period — don’t they work in the real world? Unionized workers and civil servants have various protections based on seniority and designed to prevent them from being fired for the wrong reasons. Do they work in the real world?

I think by “real world” you mean some (largely fictional) model of how capitalism works.

I have great respect for professors, as many in my family are fortunate to be tenured professors and work incredibly hard.

But my DH is a partner in Big Law, and it's not like tenure. The firm will boot you out pretty quickly if you don't continue to bring in revenue.

My DH’s firm isn’t like that AT ALL. The biggest difference I saw between partnership and tenure was that your partners were well aware they’d be financially responsible if you effed-up big time while faculty colleagues cared more if you were a good lunch date and not an intellectual threat.

[Anonymous]

That said, both partnership and tenure have been changing. DH’s firm, at the time he was up for partner and I was tenure-track, worked on an up-or-out model. All partners were equity partners and (almost all) lawyers who weren’t partners were associates on a partnership track. There were very few lateral hires at the the partnership level at his firm in those days. All of this has since changed. Lots of staff attorneys, of counsels, laterals who cut various deals, etc.

And the same is true wrt academia, see, e.g. increasing reliance on adjuncts, few TT hires of newly-minted PhDs, and (most recently) dissolution of departments as a way of getting rid of some faculty with tenure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I despise profs who are sticklers for student deadlines. It’s cruel and completely unnecessary.

You know who misses all the deadlines at work and who never gets fired? Tenured profs.

You know who misses deadlines at work and gets fired? Lawyers. As a law professor, I enforce deadlines, for the very simple reason that courts enforce them. I'm not trying to train a bunch of people who get sanctioned.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I despise profs who are sticklers for student deadlines. It’s cruel and completely unnecessary.

You know who misses all the deadlines at work and who never gets fired? Tenured profs.

You know who misses deadlines at work and gets fired? Lawyers. As a law professor, I enforce deadlines, for the very simple reason that courts enforce them. I'm not trying to train a bunch of people who get sanctioned.

That’s only part of the picture — deadlines are constantly moved/renegotiated in the course of litigation and, in some types of practice, parties have a lot of input re the initial scheduling. And the official/filing deadline may not be the urgent one (e.g. need client sign-off and time to revise if necessary). It’s like lots of complex jobs where you have to constantly make judgments re which deadlines matter most (or how) and when you need to recognize/acknowledge that you’re in a situation where you need to ask for more time or more help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I despise profs who are sticklers for student deadlines. It’s cruel and completely unnecessary.

You know who misses all the deadlines at work and who never gets fired? Tenured profs.

You know who misses deadlines at work and gets fired? Lawyers. As a law professor, I enforce deadlines, for the very simple reason that courts enforce them. I'm not trying to train a bunch of people who get sanctioned.

That’s only part of the picture — deadlines are constantly moved/renegotiated in the course of litigation and, in some types of practice, parties have a lot of input re the initial scheduling. And the official/filing deadline may not be the urgent one (e.g. need client sign-off and time to revise if necessary). It’s like lots of complex jobs where you have to constantly make judgments re which deadlines matter most (or how) and when you need to recognize/acknowledge that you’re in a situation where you need to ask for more time or more help.

Thank you for educating me on how that works. As a professor who frequently serves as an expert in cases and argues cases, I was totally unaware of how things actually worked in litigation. The reality is that law school doesn't involve as many submissions as litigation involves. Of course, some submissions will be renegotiated, either with the judge or co-counsel or both. To the extent law school encompasses these sorts of submissions, flexibility is often part of the deal. However, there are some deadlines that are simply firm, and deviation from those deadlines gets you in trouble, period. The few assignments in law school tend to be more like the latter required submissions. But you know this already.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I despise profs who are sticklers for student deadlines. It’s cruel and completely unnecessary.

You know who misses all the deadlines at work and who never gets fired? Tenured profs.

You know who misses deadlines at work and gets fired? Lawyers. As a law professor, I enforce deadlines, for the very simple reason that courts enforce them. I'm not trying to train a bunch of people who get sanctioned.

That’s only part of the picture — deadlines are constantly moved/renegotiated in the course of litigation and, in some types of practice, parties have a lot of input re the initial scheduling. And the official/filing deadline may not be the urgent one (e.g. need client sign-off and time to revise if necessary). It’s like lots of complex jobs where you have to constantly make judgments re which deadlines matter most (or how) and when you need to recognize/acknowledge that you’re in a situation where you need to ask for more time or more help.

Yeah. 30 year lawyer here. Sure there is input but quite often things are forced on you with deadlines that can't be moved.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I despise profs who are sticklers for student deadlines. It’s cruel and completely unnecessary.

You know who misses all the deadlines at work and who never gets fired? Tenured profs.

You know who misses deadlines at work and gets fired? Lawyers. As a law professor, I enforce deadlines, for the very simple reason that courts enforce them. I'm not trying to train a bunch of people who get sanctioned.

That’s only part of the picture — deadlines are constantly moved/renegotiated in the course of litigation and, in some types of practice, parties have a lot of input re the initial scheduling. And the official/filing deadline may not be the urgent one (e.g. need client sign-off and time to revise if necessary). It’s like lots of complex jobs where you have to constantly make judgments re which deadlines matter most (or how) and when you need to recognize/acknowledge that you’re in a situation where you need to ask for more time or more help.

Thank you for educating me on how that works. As a professor who frequently serves as an expert in cases and argues cases, I was totally unaware of how things actually worked in litigation. The reality is that law school doesn't involve as many submissions as litigation involves. Of course, some submissions will be renegotiated, either with the judge or co-counsel or both. To the extent law school encompasses these sorts of submissions, flexibility is often part of the deal. However, there are some deadlines that are simply firm, and deviation from those deadlines gets you in trouble, period. The few assignments in law school tend to be more like the latter required submissions. But you know this already.

I didn’t assume you were unaware — I was just pointing out you were misrepresenting how deadlines work in legal practice to support your classroom policy.