Gordon Smith posts an interesting anecdote and some pertinent thoughts on the titular subject, concluding that times have changed. In the old days, he relates, greatness was measued by whether one had written "a casebook, a treatise, and a Restatement." (For the benefit of those keeping score at home, I've notched the first two.) Today, however:
The highest achievement of a law professor today is creating a new concept or theory that is used widely by other academics in the field. In the areas we write about on this blog, many of our foundational ideas were developed by economists or organizational theorists, not law professors, but you might think of the "separation of ownership and control" by Adolf Berle or "transaction-cost engineering" by Ron Gilson. These ideas shape the way we think about the world, and that is no small accomplishment.
Modesty, of course, prevents me from mentioning "director primacy" in this exalted company.