Osler's Razor

Recently, a student who was interested in teaching someday asked me what, exactly, professors do all day. It was a pretty good question, and made me realize that much of what we do is unseen by our students.

What follows is a rough breakdown of what I do as a professor. It does not include the usual church/family/community things. It also does not include the various hobbies I have, like growing mis-shapen tomatoes, or skiing. Nor does it include various frolics and detours—for example I have published two articles in the Wittenberg Door, a Christian satire magazine, under the pseudonym “Phyllis N. Lewis” (this is true—it was before I had tenure).

1) Teaching

The greatest part of my time, of course, is taken up with teaching class and preparing for class. I have a very heavy teaching load at times—in the Spring, for example, I was teaching four different classes. My teaching has two aspects; first, traditional classroom teachings, and second, critiquing student performances in practice court exercises. During large parts of the year, I am spending 25-40 hours a week just doing that. Baylor, unlike most law schools, has a summer quarter, so I teach nearly the entire year.

2) Pro Bono Work

The past two years, especially, I have done a large amount of pro bono work (400-600 hours over those two years), mostly on cases involving federal sentencing at the appellate level. I have worked on cases in six U.S. Circuits, and two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Where I can, I include students in this work.

3) Scholarship

I usually write two or three articles a year. Mostly, these fall into two categories: Law Review articles, and pieces for peer-reviewed journals (mostly the Federal Sentencing Reporter, the peer journal in my field). I do lots of this at night, since there is not time in the day to get it done. You can see a list of these articles here. Also, I am just finishing a book called “Jesus Christ, Defendant,” which I have worked on for the past few years. This does get noticed, and has been cited in law reviews from Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago and others, and in court opinions including a Supreme Court case.

4) Coaching Teams

I coach one or two advocacy teams a year. This helps me to get to know students better, and improve their skills one-on-one. My teams usually do pretty well—the last five have all ended up in either third or first in their competitions. More importantly, there are a lot of students who got the chance to get better at the craft of trial advocacy.

5) Committee Stuff

I’m on the admissions and curriculum committees for the law school, and I’m the chair of the University’s Civil Rights Committee. The time these take varies—the admissions committee consumes the most time, since we often review lots of files.

6) Blogging

My blogging almost all relates to my work at Baylor in one way or another. I work on three blogs (this one, Law School Innovation, and Religiously Affiliated Law Schools), and contribute sometimes to others, such as Sentencing Law and Policy and Scotusblog.

7) Giving CLE lectures

Together with Federal Defender (and personal Hero of the Law) Henry Bemporad, I train the panel lawyers who represent indigent clients in federal criminal cases in the Western District of Texas. In the past year or so, I have lectured in Alpine, Midland, San Antonio, Waco, Austin, El Paso, and Del Rio.

8) Singing Karaoke at Scruffy’s

Ok, I don’t do that, and I never will. But, I have been there.