One Professor's Approach to Increasing Technology Use in Legal Education

Abstract

Although there are many technological advances that can enhance legal education, there is a dearth of legal educators who are both willing and able to use them. Legal educators should not wait to be dragged onto the “information superhighway” when they have the opportunity to plan for the wild ride of change and to enjoy the excitement. Technology can be incorporated and adapted to legal education in a plethora of areas, including: computer-assisted legal research, expanded law school services, computer-assisted legal instruction (CALI), word processing, law review publication process, examinations and grading, electronic casebooks, multimedia presentations, e-mail and discussion lists, the Internet and distance learning.

Project management principles, commonly used by information systems departments, can assist legal educators to implement technology as an integral part of teaching and learning. Professors will have more of an investment in the technology if they are involved in selecting technological solutions, and if the specific solutions supplied are designed to meet their individual needs. Using project teams and faculty liaisons will encourage legal educators to keep discovering ways in which technology can make them more effective. With technological guidance and help from fellow educators in library services or information systems, those who need to spend time with substantive law and scholarship will still be able to move ahead technologically and, thus, successfully prepare students to practice law in a modern society.

Keywords: legal education, law school, CALI, computer-assisted legal research, computer-assisted legal instruction, electronic casebooks, multimedia, distance learning, educational technology

JEL Classification: K49