The Real Most Influential People in Legal Education

Paul Caron has posted the top ten from National Jurist.

No Paul Campos, although Tamanaha still lingers on the back-end of the list like a rude houseguest who just won't leave.  Kyle McEntee, of the organization that should be known as Law School Confusion and Opacity, also shows up.  Same with Jerry Organ, who's had a nice little run of riding the tanking LSATs and bar scores "news" "narrative."  Dick.

But the real gems of the list are in the top ten.  Chemerinksy.  Leiter.  Katz.  Morant and Testy.  Simkovic.  It's a veritable who's-who of invitees to the secret club where tried and true scam artists wear fancy hats, wink at tight-lipped bartenders, and sip vintage Cognac. 

Indeed, were men like these to leave legal education, the void of influence would swallow our good sense like a black hole; the oncoming confusion and fear would envelop us with an imprisoning mental fog, such that the survivors, the remnants of so-called legal education unfairly burdened with carrying forth The Rule of Law like Atlas tasked with carrying the heavens on his shoulders, would start to stumble and do ridiculously silly things like embrace honesty, face legal education's problems head-on, slash tuition, and take a skeptical view of accreditation standards that allow for 200+ law schools to pump out double the country's new lawyer capacity.

But the list arguably omits the most important people in legal education.  The prospective students.

So here's to you, Mr. 148.  You know that with a legal education at any one of the fine accredited institutions in America, you can pay down debt financing in no time with your easy-bake upper middle class salaries.  And if you can't, there's always IBR, which thankfully has no effect on how one's life is lived outside of reducing monthly student loan payments.  If you've got the work ethic, the 148 smarts, and a valid enough social security number to slip it past some GS-5 rubber stamper, apply today!

For Brian Leiter is but one man standing as a principled, embodied legal Rechtuebermensch against the tidal wave of barbaric and insolent irrationality that speaks of "crisis" as-if people aren't still making bank off this carnival game.  You, my friends, are the 50,000, the able footsoldiers of justice ready to defend the law, each one a knight of jurisprudence inducted into that round table we call the bar association.  Yes, you may bleed and your career may die the second you go over the top or try to board the transports where only two-thirds of you can fit by design, but damn it, you know that you are the torch-bearers, givers of light against darkness and cynicism who, purely incidentally, happen to generate enough revenue to allow for in-ground pools and in-home movie theaters and spa treatments for the second wife.

You are justice.  You are law.  You are America.  And it would be a damn shame if you let this enrollment period pass by without taking your tuition-paying spot on the Million Dollar Express, leaving your free money from the government on the table and a spot in the ranks sadly unfilled.  Sure, the Express will be back next year - and in fact never stops thanks to rolling admissions - but we're not fucking around when we tell you that there's no reason to wait except to damage yourself.

You, prospective students, are numbers one through fifty thousand on any list of influence.  Without you and your beautiful, well-spent tuition payments, none of the other magic - including, but not limited to, the world's greatest court system - would be possible.