Legal Education: A New Growth Vision Part III — The Path Forward: Being Both Human and Digital

Abstract

In the decades ahead, innovative and status quo-breaking law schools will leverage and combine multidisciplinary, multigenerational human expertise with digital platform and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to create vibrant legal education ecosystems. These combinations will deliver market-valued knowledge and skill transfer and development services that are high-quality, cost-effective, omnichannel, pedagogically sound, data-validated, personalized, on-demand or just-in-time, and multi-format (e.g., hybrid, HyFlex, digitalfirst, digital-live, etc.).

Modern business models (e.g., platform and open) will provide these future-focused law schools with solid foundations for reimagining legal education. These agile, shape-shifting programs are also likely to discover diverse revenue opportunities by offering complementary services to adjacent markets. Growth opportunities for inventive law schools abound, so long as entrepreneurial program leaders embrace a human-AI integrated future. Simply put, digital and business model innovations represent the only firewalls to obsolescence.

Keywords: legal education, strategic inflection point, technology, innovation, artificial intelligence, omni-channel, platform, hybrid, human-AI, business model, open, platform, referral, agile, lean startup, MVP, prototypes, teams, 70/20/10, OKRs, data, metrics, MOOCs, cannibalization, cost containment