There are, obviously, many law professors who have already dutifully turned in their grades, allowing their students the relief of knowing where they stand after another torturous semester. Grading isn’t a pleasant exercise — reading essay after essay on the same topic can wear on anyone and no one is suggesting it’s easy. Unless, of course, the professor is so intellectually lazy that they employ multiple choice exams for Civ Pro, but I digress. It’s not a simple exercise, but neither was sitting through a semester and hunkering down for a multiple-hour exam, and the students who managed to pull off those feats — with a hefty tuition price tag — deserve some closure on the semester.
Which is why this weekend’s Association of American Law Schools annual meeting in New Orleans comes at such an aggravating time for a lot of law students. Or, perhaps more accurately, it would come at an aggravating time if law students were even aware of its existence. But academic conferences rarely appear on a 1L’s radar so they remain blissfully unaware that the professors who are still holding out on entering grades are already five Hurricanes deep and hanging from the balconies along Bourbon Street.
At least they were unaware until I raised the issue with a number of law students with this message:
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For those of you waiting on grades, this is where I point out that your professors are all partying in New Orleans at the Association of American Law Schools annual meeting.
It turns out my decision to invoke film history’s greatest representation of blind rage accurately captured the mood as law students hopped onto the thread to start working out if their deadbeat professors were in fact in attendance. At least a few offenders were found among the AALS roster. One attendee was overheard declaring, “my 1L grades were due yesterday but I just realized my other grades are due….” That this is something professors feel comfortable discussing out loud suggests the problem is more widespread and socially accepted than it should be.
But that’s what New Orleans can do to a person. Instead of focusing on their responsibilities, some fresh-faced Yale grad has a few too many drinks and suddenly decides to tell a crowd about how a disciplined law and economics approach requires bringing back dowries or some s**t so they can hoard more beads thrown at them by the Federalist Society hacks. On the flight home, there may be pangs of guilt and some soul-searching about just how deeply they’ve compromised their intellectual reputation arguing that Torts should be replaced with a Chamber of Commerce presentation titled, “Suck It Up, Cupcake! Everyone Gets Black Lung Sometimes.” Then the in-flight service begins and the hair of the dog brings on that gentle sense of ease. Nothing is too debasing if it keeps you in this law professor gig.
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After all, who can complain about a job where you don’t even have to enter your grades to go to a party?