Today's Tech: How A Law School Professor Uses Technology In Her Classroom

Technology has changed at an unprecedented rate and most law schools have simply failed to keep pace. This law professor, however, is trying to change that.

One of my goals in writing this column is to showcase how different lawyers are using technology in their practices. My hope is that by doing so, other lawyers will be encouraged to apply what they learn from these posts to make their own law practices more streamlined and efficient.

It’s unfortunate that this is even necessary. In an ideal world, most members of the legal profession would be armed with the latest information about available technologies right out of law school.

Sadly, that’s not the case. Technology has changed at an unprecedented rate and most law schools have simply failed to keep pace. In fact, many law school administrations have seemingly turned a blind eye to external changes, conducting business as usual circa 1995.

The good news is that there are a few progressive law school professors who have had the foresight and wherewithal to prepare their students for the practice of law in the 21st century.  Alyson Carrel is one of those people. She is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Law and Assistant Director for the Center on Negotiation and Mediation at Northwestern Law School in Chicago, Illinois.

She began experimenting with technology in her classroom three years ago, as a way to better engage her students in her dispute resolution classes. “Technology has the potential to make law school classrooms that much more engaging if done right,” she explains. “It will become increasingly important for professors do this as we try to engage the millennial generation. Another benefit of using technology is that the students graduate with a better skillset that prepares them to be practice ready — and that’s the name of the game these days.”

According to Alyson, the effects of technology are far reaching and cannot be ignored in the classroom, especially when it comes to the unique skills required for effective negotiation and mediation: “I’m in dispute resolution and our classes are all about communication skills and body language. So of course I want to help my students improve their verbal communication skills. But society is changing, including the ways that we communicate, so I try to reflect that change by bringing new technologies and new ways of communicating into the classroom.”

Alyson acknowledges that many professors are opposed to laptops in the classroom. For her it’s just the opposite. She encourages the use of laptops, but not in the way you might think. Her students don’t take notes using their laptops, but she does incorporate them into the curriculum with the end goal being to increase interaction and interest.

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“There are other ways to use technology and allow laptops in the classroom without the students using them as notetaking machines. But by doing so you’re required to conduct lectures differently,” she says. “For example, one tool I use is “Poll Everywhere.”  Using this app you can ask students questions and they can text responses from their phone or via the website. The responses are captured instantaneously in a bar graph on your screen, which you can then share with the class.”

She also uses Google Forms as a way to maintain her students’ interest and capture their impressions after conducting negotiations in class. “Because student negotiations take different amounts time, I make use of the downtime by having them reflect on their negotiation experience using Google Forms. They are able to capture their experience and then start conducting debriefs to discuss how they performed .”

Her use of technology doesn’t end there, however. She also encourages her students to incorporate technology into their presentations and projects. She explains: “For the end of semester project I give them credit for trying new technologies. So, in addition to PowerPoints, they’re exploring things like Prezi and Haiku Deck. I even had one group actually conduct a Twitter campaign where they posted tweets about ADR and mediation to real companies in the ADR context.”

For Alyson, the end goal isn’t to teach her students how to use specific technologies; instead she encourages them to explore new tools and to incorporate them into their practices upon graduation: “Technology advances so quickly that whatever tools we’re using will likely be outdated by the time they graduate. So teaching them how to learn how to use new technology is a skill in and of itself. In other words, it’s an opportunity for the students to interact with information in a way that better matches how we’re engaging with information as a society.”

As she explains, at the end of the day, it all about preparing them to be better lawyers: “I want the classroom to be relevant to students and reflect the world they’re in and not be just an academic bubble. So the more I can teach them about understanding and creatively using technology, the better they’ll be able to interact with clients and be on the forefront of new ways of delivering legal services.”

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So that’s how a law professor uses technology in her classroom to help prepare her students to practice law in the 21st century. As always, if you or an attorney you know is using technology in a creative or unusual way in your law firm, drop me an email at niki.black@mycase.com. I’m always looking for new attorneys — or judges — to feature in this column.


Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York attorney and Director of Business and Community Relations at MyCase, web-based law practice management software. She’s been blogging since 2005, has written a weekly column for the Daily Record since 2007, is the author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers, co-authors Social Media for Lawyers: the Next Frontier, and co-authors Criminal Law in New York. She’s easily distracted by the potential of bright and shiny tech gadgets, along with good food and wine. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikiblack and she can be reached atniki.black@mycase.com.

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