Law Professor

As a Law Professor, you use your extensive schooling and knowledge of the law to teach students at the undergraduate or graduate level. This is generally a position that requires a Master’s or Doctorate, and provides an alternative to practicing, once you’ve earned your law degree.

When you’re a Law Professor, you’re charged with creating the lesson plans for a term or an entire year of classes. The coursework might cover a specific subject, such as Introduction to Law, or span a breadth of topics from basic to advanced. Throughout the course, as the Law Professor it is your role to assign homework, projects, research papers, and tests.

The size of your class varies from a few dozen to a few hundred, and may include remote location (via video stream) or online students. Because of this, you grade thousands of assignments, tests, term papers, and group projects each term. In larger universities, you may have an Teaching Assistant who helps with grading papers, making copies, preparing homework or test assignments, and possibly giving some classroom lectures.

Inside the classroom, you present lecture material and facilitate discussions centered around law topics. Outside the classroom, you maintain office hours to meet with students, grade assignments, prepare lectures, and attend seminars and meetings. Law is an ever-changing field, so you constantly update your knowledge and keep informed on pertinent changes in the law. In order to relay this knowledge, you need outstanding communication skills and a passion for the law that projects onto your students.