This short paper explores, albeit in a preliminary fashion, challenges to legal education arising from the significant impact of new information and communications technologies (ICTs) on law and legal practice. It uses the pervasiveness of ICTs to reframe the question of “law and technology” from a philosophical perspective that sees information technology as an “environmental…
Qualitative research into SMEs’ legal needs and adoption of Lawtech
On behalf of LawtechUK and the Legal Services Board, Community Research conducted qualitative research with 40 SMEs from different sectors (10 of whom had previously used lawtech) to explore how they address their legal needs and access legal advice and support, in order to understand how lawtech can better support SMEs. Read the full paper…
Legal Education in Nigeria: A Chronicle of Reforms and Transformation Under Tahir Mamman
Legal Education in Nigeria: A Chronicle of Reforms and Transformation Under Tahir Mamman is a case study of change that tells the story of opportunities to transform legal education. We can trace the history of legal education to about 1962 when the first indigenous law faculties and the Nigerian Law School were established. In spite…
Current State of Automated Legal Advice Tools
This paper is the first from the Regulating Automated Legal Advice Technologies (RALAT) project supported by the University of Melbourne’s Networked Society Institute. The project focuses on a cutting-edge development in legal technology: the automation of legal advice. It seeks to understand the practice settings in which Automated Legal Advice Tools (ALATs) are being adopted,…
Digging into Algorithms: Legal Ethics and Legal Access
Abstract The current discussions around algorithms, legal ethics, and expanding legal access through technological tools gravitate around two themes: (1) protection of the integrity of the legal profession and (2) a desire to ensure greater access to legal services. The hype cycle often pits the desire to protect the integrity of the legal profession against the ability to use algorithms to provide greater access to legal services,…
Keep Distance Education for Law Schools: Online Education, the Pandemic, and Access to Justice
Abstract While distance education made inroads throughout higher education, law schools kept their distance—until a global pandemic forced them all online for a time. Then the gatekeepers to the profession at the American Bar Association and state bars temporarily dropped their limits on distance learning. Now as American law schools prepare to return to normalcy,…
Ordinary clients, overreaching lawyers, and the failure to implement adequate client protection measures
Abstract Every year, thousands of individual clients are victimized by overreaching lawyers who overcharge clients, refuse to return unearned fees, or steal client money. Starting in the 1980s, the American Bar Association considered, and often proposed, client protection measures aimed at protecting clients from overreaching lawyers. These measures include requirements that lawyers use written fee…
Predict and Suspect: The Emergence of Artificial Legal Meaning
Abstract Recent theoretical writings on the possibility that algorithms would someday be able to create law have delayed algorithmic law-making, and the need to decide on its legitimacy, to some future time in which algorithms would be able to replace human lawmakers. This Article argues that such discussions risk essentializing an anthropomorphic image of the…
The Intersection of Technology Competence and Professional Responsibility: Opportunities and Obligations for Legal Education
Abstract Technology has fundamentally changed the legal profession and the delivery of legal services. Lawyers routinely use technology, including artificial intelligence, for legal research, e-discovery, document review, practice management, timekeeping and billing, document drafting, and many other tasks. The American Bar Association (ABA) amended the Model Rules of Professional Conduct in 2012 to include an explicit duty of technology competence, and…
Understanding the Metacognitive “Space” and Its Implications for Law Students’ Learning
Abstract This article builds upon our prior work, contributing to the growing literature addressing development of metacognitive skills in law students. Metacognitive skills include knowledge of strategies that impact thinking and learning, and regulation of thinking and learning related to specific learning tasks. Metacognitive skills are important for learning in law school as well as for successful…