Hire Me
It is time for me to leave my current law school. Oh, I am in good standing and everything. 
It’s just the external politics. And an internal academic life on a starvation budget all the time. There is no good reason to endure those things anymore.
I came to Florida A&M University Law School from the exceedingly comfortable confines of Stetson Law School. There is a white sand beach barely five minutes from that law school. The whole place — Gulfport, Florida about about 100 miles west of here — smells like Margaritaville. Stetson is a private law school and like most private schools, tuition isn’t cheap. And faculty are absolutely pampered by comparison to most public law schools. Before that, I taught at Pitt Law where life was much more blue collar and the professional football team way better. I was a lousy teacher at first, but I always wrote like hell. Real teaching isn’t as easy as the closing arguments I had become pretty good at before joining the academy. I think I am an expert teacher now, especially because of the immediate real time access to primary sources that I also use on this blog. Every law school class should be at least as engaging as a podcast, what with all the technology.
I was minding my own business at Stetson when FAMU called one day. FAMU needed a tax scholar. It also needed experienced faculty to help get accredited. When FAMU reopened in 2002, it was touted as the greatest thing for diversity in legal education and the legal profession since Brown v. Board of Education. Maybe then it was, but its not that now really. DEI is out everywhere in Florida. The only reason I ever agreed to accept the professional deprivations of FAMU Law, and certainly the lower compensation, was that I needed to contribute to “the cause,” rather than just talk a good game. FAMU is an historically black university born of illicit motives but now generating access and advancement. So it was sort of a personal “put up or shut up” moment for me when they came calling. These days, I sometimes wish I had just shut up. The cause is no more; there is no reason to stay.
I teach Business Organizations along with individual and business tax courses. Business Organizations has become one of my favorites because it enlightens my tax scholarship and teaching. I teach federal income tax, partnership tax, estate and gift tax, and of course Nonprofit Organizations. Business Organizations is a required course too, so it’s almost like teaching in 1L year — before students get jaded by the real 1L experience. I have written about all the topics I teach, though I am recently focused on nonprofit and tax exempt organizations. I wrote an obscure article that inspired IRC 4965. I have written enough traditional stuff to put an insomniac to sleep.
I am not the smartest nonprofit scholar, but I bet I talk and write about nonprofit and tax exemption more than anybody else these days. This blog is read here and in Germany, Thailand, Australia, Great Britain, China, India, Ukraine, Russia, Mexico, Canada and even Kenya and Madagascar. We are garnering about 1500 clicks per weekday lately. I like to think my decision to start writing daily two years ago has a lot to do with that. I want to make the Blog a regularly consulted source in the nonprofit/tax exempt world. I want it to be more than just a curation of nonprofit or tax exemption media, statutes, and court opinions so I mix in my own sometimes insufferable opinions. I try to entertain without being cute.
I am writing as much or more than anybody else on the subject and I intend to do so for a long time. Not just on the blog, for those who value only traditional scholarship. I am not doing this blog for fame or fortune but I get quoted all over the world these days because of it. Most importantly, the Blog makes me a better teacher and leads me to write deeper scholarship. I like to think the blog helps make other nonprofit and tax exempt scholars better too.
I have two accepted law review articles sitting in some law review editor’s que right now and I am working another tax/constitutional law piece — on the terrorist tax exemption bill. Information technology is way too advanced for the law review editorial process. Law Reviews might as well be employing Bartleby the Scrivener. My work, my school affiliation and this Blog were cited in Fortune two weeks ago. The reporter called me from Germany. That’s a trivial example and seeing my name in media hardly carries a thrill anymore. But if your school is into that sort of thing — for rankings, reputation, and fancy brochures nobody reads — I can contribute.
Click “About” in the mast above to find my email. Hire me. I don’t have geographical limitations.
darryll k. jones