I was thinking about this today - how does the professional career of a law professor/academic/researcher differ from that of a professor/academic/researcher in the biomedical sciences? I read quite often about law academics who say they have relative freedom to pursue their own research in their own time. Of course funding is an issue but I get the impression that it is not as desperately urgent and competitive as it can be in the biomedical sector. Because funding isn't as big a driving force, publications also aren't driven by the almost detrimental need to secure funding. Is that a correct perception or am I far off? That, and the fact that law academics aren't bogged down by laboratory requirements and procedures by which to pursue research (I know, that's a very crude way of putting it).

what's the point of being a law academic when you can earn ten times more being a lawyer. what motivates them?

I think it has a lot to do with freedom from the dreaded '6-minute-increment' and constant performance reviews. As I was saying before I've read about law profs who often talk about the freedom they have in pursuing their own research in their own time as law academics. It's a very different lifestyle compared to working in the constant pressure-cooker environment of a law firm.

A few of the academic staff in the law faculty (I checked out their online profiles) are part-time academics and part-time at the law firm so I guess they can have the best of both worlds.

So yeah, it's not always about the money. Some of them see it as re-gaining some measure of their lives back after quitting the law firm.

The average annual income of a lawyer in the UK is around 78,000 pounds, according to some legal publication. But they have to work very hard, sometimes from 7:00 am till late night. Maybe the better side of staying in academia is freedom and less working hours in the workplace, but again there is "publish or perish" pressure......You simply can't get both.....

Yes but that was my initial query - I get the impression that there isn't such an acute 'publish or perish' atmosphere in the law faculty, as compared to the health sciences sector. I may be completely wrong though.

plus you can wear sandals and socks in academia, which are illegal in the courtroom

Is it really illegal or more a show of disrespect of tradition? Wait a minute, a judge could charge you with contempt of the court and send you to the slammer, so although it's not technically 'illegal', you could still end up in the slammer.

There is a law professor at my university who looks like a real rough down-trodden, torn-jeans, leather jacket wearing, handle bar moustache, harley riding biker. The first few times I saw him I thought he was either lost, or a mature-age student. Then of course I see his mug in the faculty website...

My partner is pursuing a PhD in Law as a means to enter 'Law academia'. This is partly because he wants to teach & do research, and secondly because at this stage in his life he doesnt want to be a barrister etc.

From what I have picked up there is pressure to publish as he got turned down for a lecturing job purely because he had no publications to date.

Really? I take it he's completed the PhD already if he was applying for lectureship positions? Was he expected to publish in a couple of law reviews during the course of his PhD? What area of law did he conduct his PhD research in?

Another point that I'm curious about is the fact that a law faculty is presumably much cheaper to run than a healthsciences/medical faculty where a huge chunk of funding and finances must go into buying and maintaining very expensive laboratories and lab equipment. It just feels like a very different world.

He hasn't completed a PhD yet, he is starting in October. It was suggested he applied for the lectureship on merit of his undergrad and masters courses as he had achieved a First in both. The interviewers told him that it was purely the lack of publications that meant he didn't get the job and a PhD wasn't always necessary.

He had two PhD offers one of which didn't appear to focused on him publishing articles during the PhD but the other one (the one which he is going to do and is the place where he did his undergrad) want him to publish stuff but will support him all the way.

I see your point regarding the differences in what would be needed to do a law phd and a science phd (as I am a science phd student). Saying that I know we in the sciences are quite lucky in that we have great resources such as pubmed etc for getting articles where as alot of law texts can be obscure and it can mean sitting for ages in a dusty library trying to find cases etc.

Oh and he is going be researching trusts in the family home or something like that.. Stuff to do with cohabitation and distribution of wealth.