Prof Wars: $600K To Teach Corporations?

I guess the market for law school professors is recession-proof. Stephen Bainbridge has it that Yale offfered a $600,000 poaching fee to secure a Harvard Law School corporate professor. Didn’t Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh read our coverage of Bill Henderson’s empirical evidence proving that Yale will be safe at the top for the rest of the Holocene epoch? Did they really need to spend $600K to prove a point?
And why are law school professors pulling down more than half a million anyway? Sure, communicating high concepts of legal import is a neat party trick, but can they redline a contract against a standard template at 2 a.m. with all the verb tenses in perfect agreement? I don’t think so.
Who do you think is the most overvalued generously compensated law professor in the U.S.? And what does (s)he teach? Guesses are welcome in the comments.
Keep in mind, we are talking about full-time positions. As Paul Caron points out, via David Rifkin, adjunct faculty can easily make more than $600K simply by ordering around an army of associates.
If you want to get in on this gravy train, check out PrawfsBlawg’s hiring thread.
Law Professor Salaries [Business Associations Blog]
$600k for a Tax Prof? [TaxProf Blog]
A law school hiring thread: 2008-09 [PrawfsBlawg]

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