Legal Commentary

The sign outside my door reads ?Professor David Fagundes,? and this puzzles me a bit.  Why is there a professional norm within the legal academy that lawprofs are addressed by their job title (i.e., ?Professor Smith? rather than just ?Mr. Smith?)?  It has always seemed to me kind of stilted and totally unnecessary to use ?professor? as a title.  Some other professions, most notably doctors, have similar practices, but this seems to be the exception rather than the rule.  And if other professionals insisted on similar forms of address (?Lawyer Jones? or ?Investment Banker McGee?), it would seem downright bizarre, kind of a medieval throwback (cf. Vlad the Impaler, William the Conqueror, or Joe the Plumber). 

This is the puzzle: Why do we incorporate some professional jobs into the titles by which we typically refer to those professionals, but not others?  My guess (and it?s only that) is that it?s path-dependent.  A tradition arose within academia to call professors ?Professor So-and-so? rather than just ?Mr.? or ?Ms.?, and it stuck (the stickiness is because, I suspect, I?m in the minority on this and most lawprofs probably like being referred to as ?professor?).  But this isn?t a very good theory because it doesn't explain why the practice arose in the first place, and why other professions haven?t followed suit.  If anyone has a plausible explanation, I?d be interested to hear it.