Erwin Chemerinsky Interview: Legal Education, Practical Training, and Preparing Future Lawyers

^{Last Updated: September 2026}

Erwin Chemerinsky has long been one of the most prominent voices in American legal education and constitutional law. In this Top-Law-Schools.com interview, originally conducted in 2009 while the University of California, Irvine School of Law was preparing to welcome its first class, Chemerinsky discussed an ambitious question that remains highly relevant to law students today: What should a law school actually do to prepare students to become successful lawyers?

Although some portions of the original discussion focused on the launch of a new law school, Chemerinsky’s broader observations about legal education remain useful. He emphasized practical training, legal writing and research, experiential learning, interdisciplinary study, professional responsibility, clinical education, and exposure to the realities of working as a lawyer.

For prospective and current students considering how law school can prepare them for professional life, his perspective provides a useful framework for evaluating legal education beyond rankings alone.

Readers interested specifically in UCI can also review the UC Irvine School of Law profile on Top-Law-Schools.com.

Editor’s Note: This interview was originally conducted in 2009 during the establishment of UC Irvine School of Law. References to the school’s early admissions statistics, accreditation plans, scholarships, projected class sizes, rankings, and employer outreach reflect circumstances and expectations at that time. The discussion below has been reorganized to emphasize the broader and more enduring lessons about legal education.

What Is the Fundamental Purpose of Law School?

One of the central themes in Chemerinsky’s approach to legal education was straightforward: a law school should prepare students to practice law.

Traditional legal education has often placed considerable emphasis on doctrinal analysis, appellate cases, classroom discussion, and theoretical reasoning. Those skills are essential, but Chemerinsky argued that they should exist alongside practical preparation for the work lawyers actually perform.

Most graduates will use their legal training in some professional capacity, whether they practice in a law firm, government agency, public-interest organization, corporation, academic institution, or another setting.

That means legal education should help students develop more than an ability to analyze judicial opinions. Students also need opportunities to learn how lawyers communicate with clients, investigate facts, negotiate, solve practical problems, understand professional obligations, and operate within legal organizations.

For students preparing to enter the profession, LawCrossing’s guide to Career Readiness for Law Students offers additional strategies for building those abilities before graduation.

Why Practical Legal Skills Matter

Chemerinsky envisioned practical skills as part of the academic curriculum rather than something students would simply learn after graduation.

Among the skills emphasized in the original discussion were:

Legal research and writing
Client interviewing
Negotiation
Fact investigation
Professional responsibility
Legal analysis
Client interaction
Practical problem-solving

These competencies are relevant regardless of whether a graduate ultimately chooses litigation, transactional work, public service, government, or another legal career.

A lawyer might understand legal doctrine extremely well but still struggle professionally without the ability to communicate clearly, understand a client’s objectives, investigate the relevant facts, manage competing responsibilities, or convert legal analysis into useful advice.

Students who want to strengthen these abilities can also explore LawCrossing’s Law Student’s Guide to Strategic Skill Development.

Combining Legal Theory With Real-World Experience

One of the recurring challenges in legal education is determining how to balance theory with practice.

Chemerinsky did not view the two as competing approaches. Strong lawyers need both.

Legal theory helps students understand why rules exist, how legal systems operate, how doctrines develop, and how different principles interact. Practical education shows students how those principles function when real clients, deadlines, negotiations, factual uncertainty, professional judgment, and strategic considerations enter the picture.

A strong legal education therefore connects analytical reasoning with practical application.

Students may develop this combination through:

Legal clinics
Externships
Judicial internships
Moot court
Mock trial
Pro bono projects
Legal research positions
Summer employment
Client interviewing exercises
Transactional or litigation simulations

LawCrossing discusses these opportunities in greater detail in From Classroom to Courtroom: Building Real-World Experience as a Law Student.

The Importance of Clinical Legal Education

Clinical programs were an important component of Chemerinsky’s conception of legal education.

Clinics offer something that doctrinal courses cannot fully reproduce: responsibility for legal problems involving actual people and organizations.

Depending on the program, students may interview clients, conduct legal research, prepare documents, investigate facts, participate in negotiations, work with supervising attorneys, or assist with litigation and advocacy.

The educational value goes beyond acquiring technical skills.

Clinical work can teach students that legal problems rarely arrive in the organized form presented on a final examination. Facts may be incomplete. Clients may have competing objectives. Ethical concerns may arise. Deadlines matter. Communication matters. Judgment matters.

These experiences can help narrow the gap between learning what the law says and understanding what lawyers actually do.

Understanding the Legal Profession Itself

Another notable element of Chemerinsky’s educational philosophy was the idea that students should study the legal profession—not simply legal doctrine.

Future lawyers benefit from understanding professional responsibility, workplace structures, economics, professional relationships, client expectations, and the institutions in which lawyers operate.

Law school students naturally spend much of their time thinking about courses, examinations, journals, grades, and recruiting. Yet the profession they are preparing to enter also requires them to understand organizations, teamwork, clients, deadlines, communication, professional reputation, and career development.

Students can complement their academic training with resources such as LawCrossing’s Navigating Law School: A Career-Focused Guide for Aspiring Attorneys.

Why Interdisciplinary Learning Matters in Law

Chemerinsky also emphasized the interdisciplinary character of legal practice.

Legal disputes rarely exist in isolation from the rest of society. Lawyers routinely encounter questions involving economics, business, technology, psychology, medicine, politics, public policy, sociology, science, and other fields.

Understanding those connections can improve a lawyer’s ability to analyze problems and communicate with clients.

A corporate attorney may benefit from understanding finance and business operations. A litigator may draw on psychology and communication. Intellectual property lawyers routinely encounter technology and scientific concepts. Employment attorneys need insight into organizational structures and workplace behavior.

Interdisciplinary learning therefore helps students understand legal problems in the wider environments in which those problems actually occur.

What Makes a Strong Law School Faculty?

The original interview also explored the development of UC Irvine’s faculty during the school’s formative period.

For Chemerinsky, creating an institution offered an unusual opportunity to build an academic culture intentionally rather than inheriting one.

For prospective law students, the broader lesson is that faculty quality should be evaluated from several perspectives.

Research reputation can matter, but students should also consider:

Accessibility of professors
Teaching quality
Faculty mentorship
Clinical faculty
Opportunities for research
Practitioner involvement
Breadth of academic specialties
Intellectual diversity

Students interested in particular practice areas should examine whether a school offers professors, clinics, courses, journals, research centers, and experiential opportunities connected with those interests.

Intellectual Diversity and the Law School Environment

Another enduring topic from the interview concerns intellectual diversity.

Chemerinsky described law school as a place where people holding different ideological perspectives should be able to participate in serious discussion.

This matters because legal education routinely involves questions on which reasonable people disagree.

Law students examine competing interpretations of statutes and constitutional provisions, conflicting policy arguments, judicial philosophies, regulatory approaches, and disputes involving significant social issues.

Learning to understand, challenge, and respond to competing arguments is part of developing as an advocate.

Students therefore benefit from academic environments where disagreement can be explored analytically and professionally rather than avoided.

Preparing for a Career Beyond the Classroom

Another lesson from Chemerinsky’s educational philosophy is that career preparation should begin during law school rather than after graduation.

Students can use their time in law school to build professional experience progressively.

That can mean developing strong research and writing skills during the first year, participating in clinics or internships, building relationships with professors and practicing attorneys, exploring different practice areas, and learning how the legal employment market works.

LawCrossing’s Graduating Ready: Essential Career Skills Every Law Student Must Develop identifies several areas students can develop before entering practice, while its guide on Choosing the Right Practice Area Before You Graduate can help students think strategically about specialization.

What Prospective Students Can Learn From the Interview

Although the original conversation took place during a distinctive moment in UC Irvine Law’s history, it raises questions that prospective law students can still use when evaluating schools.

Instead of looking only at rankings or admissions statistics, applicants might ask:

How Does This Law School Prepare Students for Actual Practice?

Does the curriculum include substantial legal writing and practical training?

What Experiential Opportunities Are Available?

Look at clinics, externships, simulations, internships, pro bono programs, and other opportunities to work on practical legal problems.

How Accessible Are Professors?

Faculty mentorship can influence academic development, career planning, research opportunities, clerkship applications, and professional networks.

Does the School Connect Legal Theory With Professional Skills?

A strong program should develop sophisticated legal reasoning while also preparing students to apply that reasoning effectively.

What Career Resources Are Available?

Applicants should examine career counseling, alumni networks, recruiting programs, employment information, and opportunities to connect with practicing attorneys.

Does the School Expose Students to Different Perspectives?

Students benefit from learning environments where complex legal questions can be examined from multiple viewpoints.

Historical Context: The Founding of UC Irvine School of Law

When this interview originally appeared in 2009, UC Irvine School of Law was preparing to welcome its inaugural class.

Much of the conversation consequently focused on building a new institution: recruiting faculty, attracting students, creating a curriculum, developing relationships with employers, pursuing accreditation, providing scholarships, and establishing a national reputation.

Chemerinsky expressed ambitious expectations for the school and emphasized the opportunity to design a law school around a particular conception of modern legal education.

Those early circumstances are now part of the institution’s history rather than current admissions guidance. Students researching UCI today should consult current admissions, tuition, employment, accreditation, and academic information rather than relying on figures or projections from the original 2009 interview.

For additional background, see the Top-Law-Schools.com UC Irvine School of Law profile.

Key Takeaways From Erwin Chemerinsky’s Approach to Legal Education

Several themes from the interview remain relevant for current and future law students.

A strong legal education should develop analytical ability while also helping students understand the realities of legal practice.
Practical skills such as writing, negotiation, interviewing, factual investigation, communication, and professional judgment deserve a meaningful place in legal education.
Clinical and experiential opportunities allow students to apply classroom knowledge in situations resembling professional practice.
Interdisciplinary study can help lawyers understand the broader economic, social, technological, scientific, and institutional context of legal problems.
Students should view law school as professional preparation rather than simply a three-year academic experience.

The precise structure of legal education will continue to evolve, but the central question raised by Chemerinsky remains important: Does law school prepare students not simply to understand law, but to use it effectively as lawyers?