I agree with lots that Adam has written below, except maybe one thing, which is his claim that the jobs of people that work at different schools aren’t very different. I do think there’s a lot of truth to this. Compared to both lawyers and other academics, the differences are indeed less extreme.

But let’s be candid about the ends of the distribution. There are superstar law professors, usually but not always at the very top schools, whose job is different than most professors. They are so famous (at least in their field) that their work automatically gets attention, giving them access to prominent publishing venues, government officials, etc. You probably follow some of them on Twitter. Some of them use this power wisely, some of them use it to say irresponsibly careless things, but their research choices and public impact look totally different than the rest of us.

The job also varies depending both on how good your students are and on how good their future prospects are. I don’t mean that it’s only fun to teach smart students, or future millionaires. But there are law schools where some faculty worry that their students are effectively being cheated — paying too much money for too little prospects of future employment (and perhaps even too little prospect at bar passage). Indeed, I have had friends who quit their jobs as law professors in part because of this.

Neither of these is the typical case. But at the same time, you shouldn’t decide you want to be a law professor just because your very favorite professor in law school seems to have an awesome job.