Online Learning and the Future of Legal Education

Abstract

This article explores the practical and theoretical challenges that online education poses for law schools and the legal profession. Drawing in part on contributions to the symposium that it introduces, the article makes the case that that a high-quality legal education can be delivered online, that a move toward online education can spark valuable innovation, and that allowing students to earn their law degrees online can increase access to justice. However, it warns that the fact that high-quality legal education can be delivered online does not mean that it will be, and explains that further research is needed to determine what combinations of online elements, or of online and residential elements, are best suited to delivering high-quality legal education. It suggests that it will be particularly important to compare live online instruction with asynchronous online instruction because the “radical” move in online legal education is not the move to teaching online, but rather the move to teaching asynchronously.

Keywords: legal education, online education, teaching, access to justice, ABA