Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/87421
Additional courses include: • Digital Drafting taught by Oliver Goodenough at Vermont Law School. This course focuses on the evolution of law practice technologies, including their impact on a broad view of legal drafting. Students develop programming and automated drafting skills, work with expert systems, and look at ways that law practice is transformed in an online environment. • Lawyering in the Digital Age Clinic offered at Columbia Law School, where students get hands-on experience using technologies that are reshaping the legal profession. As an example, clinic students, working with the New York City Civil Court have begun to develop an automated system for tenants involved in eviction proceedings. These projects are complemented with classroom learning that focuses on how technology can assist everything from interviewing and counseling clients to drafting pleadings and planning strategy. Law school technology innovation has resulted in more than just prototypes. A good example is HotDocs. Law schools built that. Innovation: Not Just for Big Law Incorporating innovation into the practice of law is not just for big law firms, and it won't serve exclusively rich clients. There are some important developments focused on helping legal clinics and self-represented people. Also, several apps with immense potential were built by Georgetown students, largely for people who cannot afford lawyers. Ron Staudt leads the Center for Access to Justice and Technology. The Center conducts research, builds software programs, provides courses and supports students, faculty and staff with projects focused on access to justice and technology. A very successful project they've developed is the A2J Author platform (www.a2jauthor.org), which 78 AALL/ILTA White Paper legal aid societies, courts and other organizations can use to automate interaction with courts. This can be in the form of guided interviews or assisted document creation for materials to file with courts. The flexibility of the A2J authoring tools is expanding, and there are plans to make it available on a broader range of computer platforms. Together with Staudt, Marc Lauritsen is pursuing an "Apps for Justice" program to pilot app development at a few law schools across the United States, with hopes of expanding this to many more institutions if the model can be sustained. A core goal underlying this project is to give more people access to justice and the court systems. The Future of Innovation in the Academy Several law schools continue to pursue new ways for law students to develop technology skills and prepare for future law practice. Innovation in the academy is happening, though it isn't happening everywhere just yet. To paraphrase William Gibson, maybe the future of legal education is here, it's just not evenly distributed. Here's hoping more professors, librarians and technology enthusiasts continue to develop ways to train lawyers for the future. A/I