Preparing for the future of law

Legal Technology Assessments, artificial intelligence, and T-Shaped lawyers—learn how law schools are adapting to the evolution of the legal field.

Legal education and the legal services market have been under significant transformation for the last decade, and many law schools have struggled to keep up. But those willing to innovate can better prepare their students for careers after graduation.

Read on to learn about current trends influencing the legal field and how some law schools, including The Santa Barbara & Ventura Colleges of Law, are adapting to prepare students for the future of law.

Integrating legal technology into the curriculum

Many changes in the legal services market have been driven by advancements in legal technology, yet few law school graduates are being prepared with the skills to navigate this new reality. Traditionally, legal technology refers to the use of technology and software to help a law firm with practice management, document storage, billing, accounting, and electronic discovery.

There is also an increasing need for attorneys to be exposed to how data security and analytics can affect their clients and their practice; the American Bar Association reports that as many as 25 percent of all law firms in the United States has been the victim of a security breach and legal analytics is transforming how sophisticated lawyers make business and legal decisions. Many states have even begun requiring lawyers to keep up with the latest technology that can impact their practice.

“This is both an ethical necessity and a business necessity in the 21^st century,” says Colleges of Law Dean Jackie Gardina, J.D., citing both the Panama Papers and the trial of Paul Manafort as prime examples of why this type of knowledge is essential for practicing attorneys. “Paul Manafort’s attorney submitted a document to the court that was supposed to be redacted, but it wasn’t. In doing so, they exposed classified information. They didn’t know how to appropriately redact in a PDF. And the Panama papers were the result of a cyber attack on a small law firm. The information released toppled at least one world leader.”

To address this issue, Dean Gardina says that the Colleges of Law has begun incorporating a Legal Technology Assessment (LTA) into some of its program curricula. The LTA teaches students how to use word, excel, and create PDFs through a series of exercises that focus on legal documents they may encounter during their career.

While the LTA tool doesn’t deal with data security, the law school does offer a course that examines this topic.

“These are the building blocks,” says Dean Gardina. “We are committed to being a pioneer in modernizing legal education. We want our students to be prepared to practice in the 21st-century legal market.”

Attorneys that understand technology and can use it appropriately—whether it be understanding data security and encryption or helping to ensure they can maintain confidentiality and protect their client’s secrets—will be more appealing to law firms and future clients.

An emerging legal field

Technology is transforming the legal field in other ways. It is important to understand the difference between technology that impacts legal practice and the law of technology. While the former is outlined above, the latter pertains to legal questions that arise around the topics of artificial intelligence, big data, privacy concerns, and other related topics—ostensibly creating a new legal field.

For example, consider the legal implications of self-driving cars. “Traditionally, when you get into a car accident and you are the driver, we know that you can be held liable,” Dean Gardina says. “But if someone gets into an accident with a self-driving car, who is liable? Is it the software manufacturer, the car manufacturer, or the owner of the vehicle? It raises a host of unresolved issues.

“And think about big data. Certainly data analytics can be used in the legal sphere to predict certain outcomes. But how do we deal with big data, facial recognition, and privacy issues with tech companies? The law has not yet caught up with these advancements. And so training attorneys to be prepared to respond and keep up with technology through the legal lens, in contrast to the practice lens, is very important.”

While there are lawyers who have expertise in privacy, cybersecurity, and identity theft, legal cases at the intersection of technology and law often force lawyers to become the expert on something they were never exposed to in law school.

“This is why it’s called the practice of law,” Gardina says. “You’re constantly learning new things all the time—the law is not static, it’s constantly changing. “

Creating the “T-shaped” lawyer

When imagining the expertise of future lawyers, it may help to picture the letter “T”. The stem of the “T” represents their deep knowledge of law while the top of the “T” represents a lawyer’s interdisciplinary knowledge in fields like business, marketing, and other various specialties. This can help lawyers who wish to practice in a range of different fields better understand their client’s specific needs. It can also better develop a lawyer’s business acumen for potentially beginning their own private practice.

The responsibility for training this future lawyer rests with law schools. Creating an opportunity for law students to receive cross-disciplinary training, not just in law but an introduction across many disciplines, is essential to meet the demands of the current market.

“Right now we’re only allowed to have people transfer in credit from other law schools,” says Dean Gardina, adding that the goal is to create partnerships with other schools where students can take courses in business process, mental health law, or other electives and count it toward their J.D.

She likes the idea of students from law school sitting in classrooms with students from other disciplines. “It is a much different experience to hear business students talk about business-related issues,” she adds. “Law students should be introduced to things such as business practices, processes, and understand the business of law, so they can speak the language of business. There is just a completely different mindset. Lawyers are trained to be risk-averse—business students are trained to be risk-takers, entrepreneurs that think outside the box.”

Another option for interdisciplinary training opportunities is dual degrees, which the Colleges of Law already offers in partnership with The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. “There are multiple ways to create that T-shaped lawyer,” Dean Gardina says. “It is our goal to train attorneys who know how these other disciplines think, which can help them discover multiple ways to address their client’s problems.”

Learn more

If you would like to learn about The Santa Barbara & Ventura Colleges of Law, fill out the form below to request more information. Or you can apply today through our application portal.