.
Enjoyment.
Some people, like myself (though I am not pursing academia), enjoy teaching.
Tenure.
comp is pretty darn good, work/life balance, publish stuff you’re interested in as opposed to doing ridiculous research and writing stuff nobody will ever see for the first 3 years, twead jackets with patches on the elbows, the ability to grow a handsome neckbeard
Teaching is about 10% of what legal academia is about. Charitably.
As opposed to stuff no one will ever see (i.e., the stuff academics spew out).
You wouldn’t be okay with someone paying you $150k to write bs all day?
I won’t say that you couldn’t pay me enough to do that job, because that isn’t true, but suffice to say I am not even putting feelers out for the academic market. I can’t think of a more useless job.
The pay is quite good for the work, you can live wherever there is a law school (as opposed to only the big markets for biglaw), once you get tenure you have incredible job security, the hours are much, much less than biglaw, and generally lower than a 9-5 job, and you get to spend most of your time researching and writing on stuff that interests you. Sounds pretty great to me. That’s why it is so hard to become a prof.
Also, I just want to add: Producing legitimately good legal academic writing is actually quite hard. Most things that are worth writing about are preempted to death, etc. Writing about corporate law stuff requires a knowledge of economics and finance that most people getting law degrees don’t command. Many articles these days involve knowing high-level math. And coming up with novel topics is hard.
This is not to say that I think the actual work that is produced is useful. There are exceptions - basically, some of the empirical articles are helpful and can even be transformative - but man, most of it is godawful.
Regardless of its utility, the author is probably much more interested in the topic. This would drive significant enjoyment for a lot of people.
Oh I’m sure it does. I honestly wish that I could force myself to enjoy coming up with/writing articles. But I just.. yeah. Ugh.
It probably offers the best blend of work/life balance, compensation, job security, and interesting work of any job in the legal field, other than maybe judge (its a toss up).
Tenured professors at top law schools make a comfortable 6-figure salary (Like, 200-300k or more). At other law schools, they still usually make a hefty sum. And, they’re tenured, so there’s that job security. They can research and write papers on obscure stuff no one really cares about but them and get a research budget so they can pay law students to do the boring things for them (this is coming from someone who has RA’d). They work comparatively lax hours so on a per hour basis, I’m sure they make far more than an associate at a big law firm, and don’t hate themselves. They get to see their children, who actually know their names and acknowledge them as an important figure in their lives. They receive heartwarming and sentimental gifts from these children and they are aware of their children’s likes, dislikes, and daily activities.
In exchange for this, they toss exams down a staircase twice a year and randomly assign grades, and teach a handful of obscure courses where they pontificate about their latest research interest. Some are unlucky enough to be assigned to teach 1L core classes like Contracts or Torts, and they so do begrudgingly.
A bit cynical, but academia is probably one of few avenues for happiness as a JD. A professor’s idea of a bad day is not getting their usual parking spot and having to walk an extra minute.
20 hour “work” week.
Money for nothin’
But again… you have to churn out fucking terrible legal articles (after coming up with ‘novel’ ideas), and that’s really, really awful. 
Give me a DIP order any day over that.
See, a lot of them actually like writing about arcane things that no one else cares about. No one reads the articles other than the poor kids on journals, so who cares what they write about?
Yeah, to each their own. I get the jist, but I just become ill whenever I think of trying to write an article (or whenever I even try to think of a topic, for that matter).
I guess part of it is that i don’t have the skills/knowledge in finance, empirics/stats, or math, to write anything I’d actually be interested in.
Well, picture that instead of having to write that paper for a class for a grade that will be determined subjectively, you’re being paid a handsome 6 figure salary to do it, and you can make law students do all the b**** work for you. And, you can write it on anything that you want as long as it remotely relates to the law. Does that make it sound better?
No 
I have enough downtime in my current job that I could write an article if I wanted to - and I have a non-note published as it stands - but I troll TLS instead because the idea of writing an article makes me ill
Anyway, not trying to detract from the thread or anything. I just think a lot of people think “I can write whatever BS I want!!” without realizing that writing about rando LR BS stuff sucks.