Vol. 34, No. 1, 42. Law School News.

• Author: by Steve Easton, Dean University of Wyoming College of Law

Wyoming Bar Journal

2011.

Vol. 34, No. 1, 42.

Law School News

Wyoming Bar JournalIssue: February, 2011Law School Newsby Steve Easton, Dean University of Wyoming College of LawAs a veteran of a decade and a half of full-time law practice before my . teaching career started, I am well aware of the occasional tension between the practicing bar and the academic bar. That tension is both inevitable and, at least if kept under control, healthy, because practicing attorneys, sitting judges, and full-time instructors contribute in somewhat different ways to the growth of our profession.

Still, certain misunderstandings exist that can create too much distance between practitioners and law professors. In this column, I would like to briefly address one of them. Allow me to take a quick time machine trip back to my days in full-time practice. As a practitioner, I might have asked (and perhaps did ask) a question that contained implicit criticism of the law school environment: "Why do those law professors spend so much time on scholarship?"

The answer, of course, is "For lots of reasons." Scholarship is one way law professors contribute to the advancement of the law. Researching and writing about a topic also force us to develop and maintain expertise that makes us better teachers. [Despite what some think, scholarship and teaching are not competing, or even separate, endeavors. Strong scholarship leads to stronger teaching.] Publications by our faculty advance the reputation of the University of Wyoming College of Law. And, let's be frank, we also pursue scholarship because it is part of our job descriptions. Universities are "publish or perish" environments.

All of those reasons, and several others, more than justify our pursuit of scholarship. But the Wyoming Lawyer is a publication for practicing lawyers and judges, not academics, so let's concentrate on another-service to the bar. Our scholarly endeavors can have a direct impact on your practice, if you let them have that impact. Allow me to cite just a few examples.

In the past few issues alone, several members of our faculty have contributed articles to the Wyoming Lawyer that you can put to use in your practice. Off the top of my head, while almost certainly missing several others, I know that the following members of our faculty have written articles published in...