Crises in the justice systems across the world leave a huge imprint on the legal education system, which already has enough internal and external problems. Even reputable universities in the world are now actively seeking innovative solutions and people who are able to provide them with a qualitative push in the direction of improving the efficiency of educational services. In addition, small law faculties are fighting for survival in the competition.
The necessity for legal education reforms at the state level is confirmed by such factors as outdated training programmes and lack of access to education. Paradoxically, despite an excessive number of students in law departments, many citizens, especially in the US, cannot afford classical legal education because of the high cost and the distance between universities and the places where people live. The quality of knowledge that universities give to students also leaves doubts about their relevance.
I spoke to a Ph.D. in Law, Visiting Lecturer, and Innovation Consultant at Ukrainian Catholic University Law School Denis Ivanov about how the future law school will look.
As there is no one pill for all ailments, there is also no single plan of action to guarantee the way out of this situation. The President of "Law Schools Global League", Javier de Cendra, proposed a few universal pieces of advice that will help universities become leaders.
- Сreation of multicultural academic groups. This would help students get a lot of software skills inside the university environment.
- Project-based learning. Active learning where students independently control their own learning in groups, asking the professor for help only when necessary.
- Сollaborations with law schools, legal clinics, laboratories, incubators, and accelerators from around the world where law students can learn from entrepreneurs and become entrepreneurs themselves.
- Strategic partnerships with non-law schools in the fields of political science, economics, philosophy, anthropology, and STEM. Law students can interact with students from other universities in basic courses to develop the ability to work productively and collectively on multidisciplinary projects.
- Cooperation with law firms, IT companies, and the state, as this will ensure the continuing relevance of the curriculum.
This strategy is intended not only for rich law schools since most of the recommendations can be implemented with minimal financial costs. But it’s important to have a strong innovative and entrepreneurial spirit from the leaders of the law school, administration, and teachers.
Can technology upgrade legal education?
If we are promoting a society where everyone feels enfranchised, we must come up with ways to democratize access to legal education.
To speak about access to legal education in the US, only a small sliver of American citizens can afford to get a legal education at a university. Even part-time degree programs typically extend over four years and require three to four nights a week of extensive study time on top of lengthy commutes.
Also, a significant percentage of the country's population doesn't live within commuting distance of a law school.
For example, there are no American Bar Association accredited law schools based in Alaska, and just one each in Montana, Delaware, Hawaii, Vermont, Nevada, New Mexico, and other states. One of the solutions to solve these issues is online education. However, without accreditation by the American Bar Association, which is not provided for online-education, getting a J.D. degree is impossible. Often, this is not necessary for all lawyers.
Another issue is that classical universities often don’t give people the necessary knowledge. In addition, students spend 4-5 years passing the full-time education process, and after university, they should look for additional knowledge that they will be able to apply in practice. Here, such schools as Stanford Law School, Pritzker School of Law, Harvard Law School, and others are adopting innovations in their programmes that may help students find their professional way.
Why do law schools integrate technology into education?
We are at the beginning of a gigantic world trend in law schools and universities, investing major resources in technological solutions to ensure that future lawyers will exhibit competitiveness and a high level of training. Already, at least 10% of US law schools teach knowledge related to the use of AI. Their number will increase as law schools begin to more effectively implement technologies in the practice of applying current legislation.
Here are a few examples of how it’s already working in the world:
- At the Pritzker School of Law (Northwestern University), professors were intrigued by the possibilities of incorporating technology into their classes after a conference held at all faculties where they were able to try some technologies first-hand. As a result of the conference, they created the TEaCH Law Competence Center, with modern classrooms equipped with large touch screens, video conferencing tools, and the necessary software package comprising Poll Everywhere, Nearpod, Solstice, Spark, and Cisco WebEx.
- For the system implementation of automated technologies in law practice, Michigan State University College of Law has created Legal RnD, a legal research center focused on innovations in law.
- Cleveland-Marshall College of Law (Cleveland State University) announced the launch of a new technology hub, offering students new courses on the Internet of things and cybersecurity.
- In the Duke Law Tech Lab incubator at Duke University, some companies have attracted investment for legal technology innovations. One company, Skopos Labs, last year created an artificial intelligence system that can predict whether a bill will pass a congressional hearing with an accuracy of 65 percent.
Harvard University created Harvard Law School Clinics, which help students to get knowledge in interviewing and advising clients, representing clients in court, conducting legal writing and research, drafting policy, investigating and analyzing facts, and developing negotiation skills.
Law students need to learn programming skills to understand how technologies can optimize their work and make the process of providing services easier. They should also track trends that appear in the industry in the world and how legal tech can interact with related industries.
The legal tech industry is growing rapidly. I wrote about the growth dynamics of investments in legal tech in my previous article. In addition to development within the ecosystem, the legal tech begins to actively interact with related industries. There is a great demand in legal tech for blockchain specialists, and I think that one of the unicorns will be a product at the intersection of legal tech and blockchain. For example, in the jurisprudence of blockchain technology, there are several possible applications, one of which is smart contracts. The British edition of The Economist called them “the most progressive technology implemented on the blockchain, which will gain momentum”. Also, the U.K. legal tech blogs predict “legal blockchain” to be a trend in creating legal innovations and providing access to relevant legal expertise in 2019. Legal Nodes is at the intersection of legal tech and blockchain, as I wrote here.
Now, there are programmes that aim to educate lawyers through a blockchain. I spoke to Alexander Zhuravlev, managing partner of law firm "Effective business resources". The program that they have created is called BCL, and it’s aimed at training lawyers to work with various aspects of the projects of the blockchain technology, cryptocurrency, the regulation of initial coin offerings, and Legal Tech products.
Alexander Zhuravlev: “We created a course in December 2017, and during this time students from six flows of the program from Europe, US, CIS countries, and Russia have successfully graduated; that confirms the high level of interest among lawyers around the world. What is also spectacular, the teachers of the course are practicing lawyers from Russia and Switzerland and other countries, which makes it possible to remove the boundaries and create international startups. Also, we created a commission on legal support of the digital economy at the Moscow branch of the Russian Association of Lawyers to improve the legal and regulatory environment and support technological projects at the state level. I hope that our example will demonstrate the importance of the interaction of business and government for the introduction of technology.”
Lawyers can also gain important practical knowledge and networking at relevant events. For example, there are lots of hackathons, legal tech conferences, and summits all over the world where experts discuss different ways to apply technology to solve problems.
Sometimes, getting the necessary knowledge is not necessary to even attend an event. A large volume of knowledge is also concentrated in webinars from accelerators or startup schools and Telegram-channels about Future Law School or Lawyerpreneurship etc. One of the examples, Startup School by YCombinator, allows you to learn about building a business, succeeding in marketing, establishing partnerships in the U.S., etc.
One more important issue is that the number of lawyers exceeds the number of jobs. On the one hand, legal tech solutions compounded the problem, but on the other hand, they help to create new and necessary jobs, simplifying the process of providing services to a lawyer and receiving services by the client.
Much depends on the desire of the student or practicing lawyer to keep up with the times. Technology develops so rapidly that a program that was relevant 10 years ago is irrelevant in the present. So, it is important to look for ways to simplify the provision of services through automation and follow and create your own trends. By understanding which problems in the justice field need to be solved, there will be worthy solutions. Perhaps it is these decisions that will change the world and make justice available to everyone.
This is only part of how proper education can change the course of your career, giving you the opportunity to keep up with the times. In the future, together with Denis Ivanov, we will continue to review innovations in legal education. Stay tuned.
