Lawyers, Cyborgs, and Our Dark Future

How Far Are You Willing to Go to Be Successful? A Modern Fantasy.

Erik P.M. Vermeulen, PhD
13 min readOct 11, 2024

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Photo courtesy of author

“So, where do your students end up?”

It’s one of the most common questions I get as a law professor. Potential students want to know. And it makes sense. They want to know if it’s worth it. The tuition. The time. The effort. Will the decision to become a law student lead to a well-paid, fulfilling job?

My response used to be straightforward. At least, I thought. I’d rattle off the numbers. Statistics. Percentages. Trends. I’d tell them how many students received job offers before they graduated. How many walked into top law firms immediately after leaving campus.

My story always sounded great.

But now I wonder if it’s just blah-blah-blah.

It’s the same message you’d hear from any professor at any other school. We all have the same pitch and the same polished numbers. It’s easy to tweak the data, manipulate it just enough to make it seem like our school is the best.

But there’s something else that lingers in my mind, a question that makes me wonder if any of this will even matter in the future.

Will we still have law schools? Will we still need schools at all? The future may offer alternative…

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