Say sayonara to "Spidey sense"

A CBS News profile of Nate Silver, author of 538.

Not that we should expect law professors, a group whose political sensitivities vastly exceed its collective quantitative talent, to have taken close note, but the 2012 election staged "a pitched battle between two self-assured rivals: those who relied on an unscientific mixture of experience, anecdotal details and 'Spidey sense,'and those who stuck to cold, hard numbers." Quite unsurprisingly, the quants won.

In MoneyLaw terms, the lesson for legal education should be obvious. Law as a purely instinctive enterprise is giving way — in many respects, it has already given way — to law as a branch of engineering and the quantitative arts. This forum will have many future occasions to demonstrate exactly why this is true. For now, sit back and just enjoy the show.