Why Law Profs Are Miserable

A new book supports the idea that law professors are an unhappy lot because of the nature of their job.

That’s the conclusion of associate dean of faculty Paul Caron of the University of Cincinnati law school. On his TaxProf Blog, he notes his friend’s theory that law professors are unhappy because the job is competitive, uncooperative and lacking objective standards to measure success.

Caron concludes the theory is supported by a new book called The Three Signs of a Miserable Job. Those signs are:

--Anonymity, when managers have little interest in employees’ personal lives.

--Irrelevance, when employees can’t see how their job is affecting others’ lives.

--Immeasurement, when employees have to rely on their managers’ subjective opinions about how well they are doing, rather than on objective criteria.