Law School Skips the AI Debate, Trains $320K 'Forward-Deployed Legal Engineers'
jkubicki · x · 2026-08-20
A professor at IU Maurer School of Law describes day one of a hands-on generative AI course: no theory seminars, no panels on whether AI will replace lawyers — 25 second- and third-year students just open laptops and build.
Students can already get a usable draft from a model in 90 seconds; fluency isn't the point. The harder skill is judgment: knowing when the tool is confidently wrong, what a lawyer must still own, and how to supervise work product they never watched being produced. He calls the target profile a "forward-deployed legal engineer" — part lawyer, part builder who can read a process and wire AI in end to end. Firms are paying $320K+ for this profile and struggling to find it; he expects these students to match many lateral candidates after one semester.
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