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Dayton Docket

The Best Job In The World

Jim Durham wasn’t sure what to expect as he prepared to start his new job at the University of Dayton School of Law.

“I don’t think anybody who’s 29-years-old and moving across the country thinks it’s the permanent move,” Durham says.



Durham had been teaching in a non-tenure track position at the University of California Davis’ law school. He interviewed with UDSL at a conference and was invited to come to campus.

“I liked what I saw, they made me an offer and I came,” Durham says.

Now, 38 years later, Durham is retiring from UDSL.

“One of the other retired professors, Jeff Morris, said it was the best bleeping job in the world,” Durham says of being a law professor. “The reason is because teaching a law class is so intellectually stimulating.”

“It’s not a process of giving them information. It’s a process of getting them to come to grips with information and then to start reasoning with it and building constructs and working with the law. It’s a great process to watch.”

Durham has a particular love of real estate law.

“I really like solving problems,” Durham says. “Transactions solves problems. What I liked about it in particular, as a piece of transactions work, is you had to look for the win-win. You couldn’t win at the expense of someone else because the other party could walk away.”

Durham believes the transactions that go on in the classroom are similar.

“Teaching is also a win-win,” Durham says. “Because what I want in class is something good for the students.”

But Durham discovered early on, you never know exactly what a student will take away from a class.

The first time he ever taught Real Property, he was going through an old New York case, Pierson vs. Post, which involves the hunting of a fox on a beach.

“The concept is legal protection equals property,” Durham says of the case. “We run the fox on the beach and we do it for two classes, and as I’m walking out of the classroom at Albert Emanuel Hall, I overhear this student say, ‘Now I’ll know what to do if I get a case involving a fox.’ Which was not the point. It has nothing to do with the fox.”

That story aside, Durham has always had a knack for reaching students.

“Much to my real surprise at the time I was voted Professor of the Year at the end of that semester,” Durham says. “I’m assuming something good happened in those classrooms.”

When it comes to advice for law students or those in the legal profession, Durham says to remember that effort is important.

“A lot of times I think we get caught up in the idea that there is a way to do something, there’s a trick to it,” Durham says. “The fact of the matter is we’re going to approach things differently, but if you give it your all, you’re going to have success.”

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