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Do tcs provide any early joining bonus?
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Chief
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How many trials per year do "trial lawyers" do?
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Also how you got into those roles? Thanks
Chief
I teach one law school class per semester. One of the classes is once a week. The other is twice a week. Adjunct pay is garbage - like $3500 a semester for a three credit class and $4,500 for a four credit. It works out to about $1.25 an hour. So as a side hustle I would t recommend it. But I love it. I developed each class literally from scratch - designed the syllabus, selected the readings from a wide range of materials, built the exercises and lectures, wrote the tests, the whole nine. Because I did that the workload the first year I taught each was very intense - almost a full time job on top of my full time job. But I’ve now taught each course enough times that they are dialed in. I now probably spend a couple hours preparing for every hour of class time and have another hour or two per week of discussions with students. One of the courses has exams and papers. The grading burden is pretty intense.
To answer the question about how I got into the courses, I developed the class concepts and a content summary for each and then reached out to the dean who deals with curriculum. Because adjunct pay is bad, courses that adjuncts teach are very profitable if fully subscribed. Especially today law schools like that. So if your concept is something the dean thinks students will like, they will often out the course on the schedule and see how many students register. That frankly is the hard part. Especially when you’re an unknown people may not know enough to give you a shot. So you have to figure out how to sell the course.
Happy to answer other questions.
I’ve taught an early morning class and an evening class. Salary depends on level of class—the morning class was a 1L legal writing class and paid crap (we’re talking like $2500 for the semester). Evening was an advanced legal writing class and paid better (maybe $4K). As an adjunct you’re just not going to make much money. It’s good for a few extra bucks, but that’s it. Not going to be a lifestyle changer. Wasn’t terribly stressful though. The stress was really in the planning and making sure there would be relevant, interesting material each week. Grading papers...okay, that sucked. Reading the same assignment 15 times can get mind-numbing.
I’m shocked at the pay. Truly
Chief
Yah. Teaching as an adjunct is something one does for fun. I just checked the pay for adjusts law professors on salary.com. Who knows how accurate their numbers are but they report a range of $21 (10th percentile) to $61 (90th percentile) per hour and a median of $33 per hour. I was kidding about $1.25 and don’t track my hours, but last fall for my three credit class I would guess that I worked 150 hours total, including grading exams. I teach the class with a friend of mine so we split the pay. My take home for the semester was $2,600. That works out to $17.34 per hours if my hours guess is right. Had I taught it alone I would have raked in $34.66 per hour — just about the Salary.com median.
The irony in all of this, of course, is that career academics are paid a lot more and I would argue produce almost nothing of practical value for the profession, while practitioners who teach as adjuncts earn peanuts to teach the only real vocational material students are likely to get in law school. Go figure.
Sorry to disappoint you but I think a lot of lawyers consider part time teaching an ideal side hustle. It is but not for the money.