Thread by @CBHessick

The lack of context in this @washingtonpost story on Elizabeth Warren is outrageous. Did the reporters not know, or not care what the hourly rate is for law professors who consult for private clients? Or the hourly rate for attorneys with Warren's expertise and experience?

So let me provide some context. Several years ago I was approached to consult on a case about a matter in which I had expertise. At the time, I'd had tenure for less than three years, and while I knew a lot about the particular topic, I didn't have a national reputation.

I asked several of my colleagues about what an appropriate hourly rate would be for someone in my position. They all suggested $450-$500 per hour. Now I thought that sounded like a high figure. But one colleague asked what my hourly rate would have been if I'd stayed at my firm

Obviously, the answer was much higher than $500 per hour. And so I took the figure back to the lawyer who called. He said that figure was totally fine. (Though I ultimately ended up not doing the work for other reasons.)

As I hope that story illustrates, Warren charging $675 per hour to consult is not an unusually high figure. In fact, I wonder how that rate compares to the other professors who were taking at Harvard Law School at the time.

I should add that, as a @washingtonpost reader, I shouldn't have to wonder about this. That information should have appeared in the story about Warren, along with additional information about the prevalence of law faculty engaging in such activities.

Reading through the story, it is entirely unclear to me why these reporters failed to gather and present that information. It isn't as though they did no research for the story. Calling a couple of law professors would have been less work than crawling through court documents.

To be clear, I think that one could write a story that included this context and still question whether it is appropriate for law professors to engage in this sort of external paid work. Indeed, some profs criticize these activities, and I myself have some reservations about it.

(Those reservations include whether such work might inappropriately affect a professor's scholarly works, whether it takes too much time away from their other duties, and whether it is even compatible with law professors' objective expert role.)

I'd welcome a story like that. I think the legal academy and the broader public would benefit from it.
And it would be far more befitting of a paper like the Post to spark a thoughtful discussion like that. /end