From WSJ Law Blog:
When University of Utah law professor Shima Baradaran Baughman introduces herself to her students each year, she refers to herself as “Professor Baughman.” Or “Prof. B.” if she’s signing off an email to her class.
Her students, though, prefer to call her “Shima,” lopping off the academic honorific.
That wasn’t always the case. When she started out teaching six years ago, most students addressed her using her last name and the professor title. But such formality among her millennial pupils is now the exception.
She explains:
I actually think the legal profession is one of the few remaining professions where there is a sense of formality in our practice of law. We have to address judges by a certain title (or they will correct you at oral argument), we have to carefully include exact language, color, and formatting on briefs or they are rejected, addressing of opposing counsel and often clients often has to do this by their full name and title. And I believe an awkward situation may arise where a student may call his judge by her first name and it may be seen as a sign of disrespect.
Ms. Baughman argues that the first-name calling is a symptom of the “growing casual nature of law teaching”:
Students have called me on my cell phone regularly (I’m not sure how they have obtained this number) and two students asked me if I could Skype their study group before one of my finals since they had a few extra questions and email responses just didn’t suffice. I regularly am asked if I can review a student’s 40+ page outline to see if there are any mistakes. These are requests I would never have made in law school even if I was paid a large amount of money. I worry that students have an extremely casual view of their professors and calling them by their first names may be exasperating what I think is an already bigger issue of casual Millennials and respect.
I'm with Professor Baughman. I haven't worked this hard in my life to have some millennial kid call me Stevie. It's Professor Bainbridge, damn it.
