CCollegeMatcher

Law Teachers, Postsecondary

US occupation · SOC 25-1112

Job titles people report: Business Law Professor, Clinical Law Professor, Law Instructor, Law Professor, Legal Studies Professor, Legal Writing Professor, Paralegal Instructor, Paralegal Studies Professor, School Law Professor, Special Education Law Professor

Pay and outlook

Median annual wage, May 2025
$128,500
Half earn more, half earn less
Middle half earn
$88,700 – $176,490
25th to 75th percentile
People employed, May 2025
20,060
Wage and salary jobs (OEWS)
Projected change, 2025–35
+2.6%
Growing slower than all jobs (0% to under 3.5%)
Openings a year (projected)
1,800
New jobs plus replacing people who leave
Typical education to enter
Doctoral or professional degree
BLS
  • All figures are for the United States as a whole. Pay varies a lot by state and city.
  • Wages are for everyone working in the occupation in May 2025, at every career stage. They are not starting salaries or figures for new graduates.
  • Growth and openings are BLS projections for 2025–35. They are estimates, not promises. Openings include jobs that open up when people retire or change occupation, not just new jobs.

What the work involves

Teach courses in law. Includes both teachers primarily engaged in teaching and those who do a combination of teaching and research.

Main tasks

  • Initiate, facilitate, and moderate classroom discussions.
  • Prepare course materials, such as syllabi, homework assignments, and handouts.
  • Compile, administer, and grade examinations, or assign this work to others.
  • Evaluate and grade students' class work, assignments, papers, and oral presentations.
  • Conduct research in a particular field of knowledge and publish findings in professional journals, books, or electronic media.
  • Keep abreast of developments in the field by reading current literature, talking with colleagues, and participating in professional conferences.
  • Maintain student attendance records, grades, and other required records.
  • Prepare and deliver lectures to undergraduate or graduate students on topics such as civil procedure, contracts, and torts.

Description and tasks from the O*NET® 31.0 Database.

Getting in

Typical education to enter (BLS)
Doctoral or professional degree
Work experience in a related job: less than 5 years
O*NET Job Zone 5
Extensive preparation
Most of these occupations require graduate school. For example, they may require a master's degree, and some require a Ph.D., M.D., or J.D. (law degree).

Interests it suits

The strongest of the six O*NET interest types for this occupation, highest first. The short glosses are ours.

  • Social: helping, teaching and caring for people
  • Investigative: research, analysis and solving problems with ideas
  • Conventional: organising information, records and procedures

Fields of study that lead here

From the federal CIP–SOC crosswalk, which links 28 programmes to this occupation. A link means the programme prepares people for this kind of work. It doesn't mean the programme is required, or that it's the only route.

Business

  • Labor and Industrial Relations

Find colleges that fit you with our matcher: choose Business at the Major step.

Where many students take business

Ordered by the field's share of degrees awarded times undergraduate enrolment (College Scorecard), among colleges with at least 1,000 undergraduates. Online universities are included. It's a rough measure of how big the programme is. It says nothing about quality. The share counts every programme in the field, not only the ones linked to this career.

Other fields

Our college matcher doesn't offer these fields as a major, so we can't suggest colleges for them here.

Legal Professions and Studies

  • Law
  • Advanced Legal Research/Studies, General
  • American/U.S. Law/Legal Studies/Jurisprudence
  • Canadian Law/Legal Studies/Jurisprudence
  • Banking, Corporate, Finance, and Securities Law
  • Comparative Law
  • Energy, Environment, and Natural Resources Law
  • Health Law
17 more programmes
  • International Law and Legal Studies
  • International Business, Trade, and Tax Law
  • Tax Law/Taxation
  • Intellectual Property Law
  • Patent Law
  • Agriculture Law
  • Arts and Entertainment Law
  • Compliance Law
  • Criminal Law and Procedure
  • Entrepreneurship Law
  • Family/Child/Elder Law
  • Human Resources Law
  • Insurance Law
  • Real Estate and Land Development Law
  • Transportation Law
  • Tribal/Indigenous Law
  • Legal Research and Advanced Professional Studies, Other

Multi/Interdisciplinary Studies

  • Dispute Resolution

Theology and Religious Vocations

  • Religious/Canon Law

Related careers

Related occupations from the O*NET database, in its order.

← All careers

Sources

This page includes information from the O*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. CollegeMatcher has modified all or some of this information. USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications. O*NET 31.0 Database · CC BY 4.0

Changes: we show the core tasks in the O*NET database with the highest importance ratings (up to eight, in that order), the top three O*NET interest types by score, and shortened Job Zone names. Titles, descriptions and task text are unchanged.

Wages: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. Projections, typical entry education and training: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Projections 2025–35. Fields of study: NCES and BLS CIP 2020–SOC 2018 Crosswalk. All public domain. OEWS · Employment Projections · CIP–SOC crosswalk