The Blunt Beauty of Dean Chemerinsky

Four years ago, Richard Susskind published a book about the future of lawyering.  Befitting the role of academics to always be publishing, Susskind has published a second edition.  Here is an excerpt from it that will restore your cynic-shot faith in academic writing.

In this section, Susskind addresses what law students should be teaching their students, i.e., how to train them for the post-Terminator reality of a legal profession that has no practical jobs for lawyers (spoiler alert: in the year 2000, the Million Dollar Express will run on solar power fuel cells and the money we swim in will be digital!).

As some of Susskind's more agressive conclusions could be perceived as potentially contradictory to the pump 'n' dump strategy of America's fine institutions of legal education, AMR appropriately asked for comments for the salted cashew gallery of American legal academia. 

As might be expected, Dean Chemerinsky cuts to the heart of the matter:

Legal education is better than Richard Susskind realizes.

Chemerinsky, the Graham Greene thoracic surgeon of legal academia. If he didn't believe in the long-term prosperity of legal education, he wouldn't have built a brand new vanity project law school in a congested metro area and bail to Berkeley.

Go to law school, kids.  It's better than Richard Susskind realizes.  If that doesn't convince you, you may not be law school material, but it's okay - someone's going to have to program our robots and clean the digital money pool.