Dean Matthew Diller wrote an op-ed in the National Law Journal about the importance of law schools integrating technology-focused courses in their curricula.
The legal profession is sometimes criticized as being willfully resistant to change. Some within the industry even wear this stubbornness as a badge of honor; partners may boast that, if their white-shoe law firm has weathered economic and social vicissitudes for decades or even centuries, then surely the firm’s continued existence is inevitable. In my more than 30 years in the legal profession, the only inevitability I have observed is the accelerating pace of technological change and the need for the legal professional to change with it.
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Law schools must do better to adapt their curricula to technological change. If they don’t, they risk underserving the students in their care and, by extension, disappointing the future employers of those students. Ultimately and most egregiously, they risk failing the clients those students will one day represent.These curricular enhancements need not completely supplant the skills training that law firms provide their new associates. And they must not take the place of core, foundational classes that students need to understand the law. But along with this fundamental understanding, schools need to expose students to the 21st century tools and concepts of the legal profession.
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Legal educators must help their students become more confident learning new technology. The resulting level of comfort will hold these future lawyers in good stead as they advance in their careers, where they will be expected to know how to safeguard private and privileged data, among other best practices in the law. Additionally, the increased focus on technology at law schools will help incubate new ideas for addressing critical access to justice. For example, simply sending texts to remind defendants of court dates is a low-cost solution some courts have started to use to decrease “failure to appear” violations.