Legal Research

Law School Curriculum: What is technology's role?

By jlutz99

There's an interesting article in the November 8, 2006 National Law Journal, The Law School Curriculum: What is technology's role?  Here's an excerpt:

Professor Charles Nesson, a pioneer in the use of technology in legal education and a founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, is teaching an experimental class called "CyberOne: Law and the Court of Public Opinion." He's talking to students about how to make an argument not just to a judge, but to a global audience. As he puts it, CyberOne is "a course in persuasive, empathic argument in the Internet space." Students are figuring out how to use blogs, podcasts, wikis, online video and virtual worlds to build their cases inside and outside of the courtroom. It's out there-both figuratively and literally, as it's also being taught in Second Life, a virtual world. Then again, Nesson is usually onto something when he's out there.

These experiments may well lead to greater use of technology in law school classrooms. But the broader question lingers: Can technology play a transformative role in legal education at a systemic level? At the Berkman Center, in partnership with LexisNexis, we've begun a research project this fall to survey lawyers and law faculties about what they think on this front. By the end of the year, we expect to publish the results and highlight some of the most promising ways forward. We don't yet know where this study will lead, but it's pretty clear that the answer doesn't lie in law schools starting to teach technology-specific courses. After all, a smart young lawyer can figure out how to use a new e-discovery software package in a few hours.

Read the entire article here.

Posted by Jon Lutz

Full post as published by FSU College of Law Library Blog on November 14, 2006 (boomark / email).