Law Schools, Technology

Why Doesn't Law School Teach Us What We Need to Know?

Should law schools adapt to the needs of the law students and the changes in the industry and offer more e-discovery-related classes?

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One of the questions I get asked the most is: “Where can I find more information about [e-discovery/trial technology/lawyer’s ethical duty re: cloud computing\legal technology/etc.]?” The fact that people who have gone through years of legal education and passed the bar exam need to ask me that question is odd to me. It’s not odd that they don’t know – it’s odd that they weren’t taught. I realize we only have 6 semesters generally to learn all that we need to know, but, look at what else they teach us: the law about who the dead fox actually belongs to, remedies for selling a haunted house, and the arsonist hitchhiker with nunchucks.

I get it that a lot of these cases are the foundation for important legal principles, and even if they are never cited in any legal briefs we write after graduation, there is still value in learning historical cases. I understand that learning how to brief a case, any case, is like doing push-ups – it’s just an exercise that helps us get better at legal reasoning. But does that mean that there is really no room at all for practical stuff? Imagine if you buy an IKEA desk and you open up the instructions and they go on for thousands of pages about the history of Sweden and the role furniture has played throughout the world. Then at the very end, under how to actually build it, it says, “Find a mentor.” That’s why I always have to laugh a little when I read through consumer reviews and see things like, “I bought a $1,500 laptop and sometimes the headphones jack doesn’t work. This is outrageous!” Well, I bought a $150,000 legal education, and it didn’t teach me very much about being a lawyer.

What Needs to Be Taught

The ABA recognizes that attorneys need to be taught about legal technology. They mention it in the comment to the very first model rule of professional conduct, the rule about minimum competency:

Maintaining Competence

[8] To maintain the requisite knowledge and skill, a lawyer should keep abreast of changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology, engage in continuing study and education and comply with all continuing legal education requirements to which the lawyer is subject.

So, they have guidelines about what you are supposed to know when you get out of school and they have guidelines for what you are supposed be taught in school, but those are different for some reason. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the bulk of the changes to the recent FRCP amendments are related to electronic discovery. California has recognized that litigators should have at least a basic understanding of electronic discovery in a recent ethics opinion. Take a look at this list of the top 10 legal trends. Number 1 is e-discovery. Social networking and virtual law offices are other technology-related trends that also made the list. So, if e-discovery is so prominent, why do so few schools offer classes on e-discovery? We asked this question years ago, and not much has changed.

The Hurdles

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I think part of the problem is that law schools are slow-moving barges when it comes to their curriculum, and it’s hard to add new areas of law into the mix. While e-discovery has been around for a while, it’s really only become a hot industry in the last decade or so. So, those who have been in academia for the last 10 years have probably never run into it and are probably not very familiar with it. That means finding and hiring new professors, which can be tedious. We recently added a Legal Technology Management certificate program in the UCSD Extension legal studies department where I teach. The administrative work involved in creating new classes and finding instructors is significant, especially in newer areas of law, such as e-discovery.

Should Law Schools Adapt?

The job climate is tough right now for attorneys. E-discovery is a huge industry that has seen steady growth in the last 10 years and more integration into wider areas of litigation beyond just class action and mass torts. So, should law schools adapt to the needs of the law students and the changes in the industry and offer more e-discovery-related classes? I think they probably should to stay competitive and to actually help their students get jobs and know how to do things after they graduate.

Jeff Bennion is Of Counsel at Estey & Bomberger LLP, a plaintiffs’ law firm specializing in mass torts and catastrophic injuries. Although he serves on the Executive Committee for the State Bar of California’s Law Practice Management and Technology section, the thoughts and opinions in this column are his own and are not made on behalf of the State Bar of California. Follow him on Twitter here or on Facebook here, or contact him by email at jeff@trial.technology.

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