Rare is the lawyer who hasn't entertained the fantasy of summers off and a billable-free career, especially while slogging to the office through the heat in a suit.

Ah, for the law professor's life. It may seem particularly seductive during the long hot days of summer, when law firms continue to crank it out while schools across the country sit mostly dark and empty.

The fantasy, however, remains just that for most attorneys because they have practiced too long and strayed too far from anything resembling a work of rigorous scholarship to make it as a law professor.

But it may be changing -- a little.

While the odds of landing a job at any law school are still slim for practitioners without a proven track record of scholarship, full-time academic opportunities for attorneys with experience outside the Ivory Tower, apparently, are on the rise.

In the last few years, several law schools have implemented so-called visiting assistant professorships, or VAPs. These programs enable attorneys who have experience beyond the two or three years' practice of most professors to join a faculty so that they can concentrate on writing and teaching.

Many visiting professorships are not geared specifically toward longtime practitioners, but most are designed to give lawyers who show promise in academics the time to prove themselves capable of handling the scholarship and the instruction.

"Anytime someone has practiced out in the world it brings an additional level of value to the students," said Akiba Covitz, director of academic affairs at Harvard Law School.

Starting in the fall, Harvard will launch its first VAP program. The school has selected the single recipient for the upcoming academic year, although it has not publicly disclosed who among 200 or so applicants landed the two-year appointment. It is someone with a substantial amount of private practice experience, Covitz said.

The goal of Harvard's program, as of many other VAP programs, is to allow attorneys with private sector, government or nonprofit backgrounds to join the faculty and receive mentoring in writing and teaching from other professors. Although Harvard does not assure visiting assistant professors that it will bring them aboard for long-term jobs at the end of the appointment, the faculty will strongly consider them for such positions, Covitz said.

PROMISING NEWCOMERS

Law schools that offer VAP assignments have the benefit of bringing in promising newcomers and either sending them along to carry the school's name or retaining them if they make a strong showing during the VAP. And with the call growing louder among critics of traditional legal education to teach more practical skills, experienced attorneys bring an added dimension to schools' curricula.

Law schools that have initiated or expanded VAP programs in the past few years include Duke Law School, University of Texas School of Law, Cornell Law School and many more.

The compensation for the stepping-stone appointments at most schools is not great and can vary widely, said Christine Hurt, associate professor at University of Illinois College of Law. Hurt is one of several law professors who has blogged about landing a job as a law professor.

VAP pay in general depends on the location of the school, she said, but $60,000 for nine months' work is a ballpark figure, she said.

Her school also just launched a VAP program. At Illinois, the expectation is that visiting professors will not stay long term. "They get a lot of help while they're there," Hurt said. "It's hard to do that if you're angling for a job. It's good for a candidate to come in with the understanding that we'll push you out of the nest."

One of the big advantages to getting a visiting assistant professorship is the ability to then compete in the Association of American Law School's annual faculty-recruiting conference.

Commonly known as the "meat market," it is where hundreds of hopefuls come to snag professor jobs among the 160 law schools that belong to the association. Competition for jobs among those schools is fierce. For the 2007-2008 academic year, law faculty among association member schools totaled 10,780 individuals. The number of people seeking appointments totaled 913.

For those who get a permanent job, the median salary for an associate professor was $101,163 as of January 2008, according to Salary.com, an online compensation tracker. Associate professors in the 75th percentile made $134,640, and those in the 25th percentile brought in $73,672.

John Bessler, who was a litigator for 15 years and is a former partner at Kelly & Berens in Minneapolis, just finished his first year of a two-year appointment as a visiting professor at George Washington University Law School. "There's definitely a learning curve," he said.

In some ways, he looks back fondly on law practice. "You do miss the adrenaline," he said.

For those who have the impression that a professor's job is an easy ride, they're wrong, he said.

"It's a lot of work, actually," he said.

Last year, Bessler taught civil procedure, a good match with his litigation experience.

Although the pay as a visiting professor is a fraction of what he earned as a practitioner, working with students and the camaraderie of the faculty make up for it, he said.

Visiting assistant professorships may have made it easier for practicing lawyers to shift into academics, but law schools still look for the typical credentials, said Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at University of Tennessee College of Law. Reynolds also has blogged on the topic.

A degree from a top school garners lots of attention, as do law review experience and a federal court clerkship. Without those credentials, having an established practice at even the most notable of law firms will not tip the scales, he said.

"It's a prestige game," he said.