Law School Innovation

Supreme Court Justices are now doing work on iPads and Kindles, when will law students?

The question in the title of this post is prompted by this new video from a portion of a C-SPAN interview with new Justice Elena Kagan. The video is titled "Justice Kagan on Using a Kindle to Read Briefs," and in the segment Justice Kagan reports on how she uses the Kindle to read all the SCOTUS briefs, and also discusses that Justice Scalia has his briefs on an iPad. (Hat tip: How Appealing.)

In a series of prior posts about technology and legal education, I have suggested that the advancement of new reading technologies will at some point transform legal education. I articulated the point this way in this post after first seeing the iPad in action earlier this year:

[A] casebook-friendly e-tablet is only the tip of the new media iceberg that could be facilitated by an iPad or some other tablet that becomes to casebooks what the iPod became to vinyl records.  Of course, just as record companies (and some artists) resisted music being packaged and distributed via new media, casebook publishers (and some authors) may resist legal materials being packaged distributed via new media.  But, as the iPod and the DVR and other digital innovations have demonstrated, a better means to distribute content digitally will eventually prevail over analog precursors.  The iPad may not prove to be the casebook tipping-point technology, but it seems to me to be only a question of when, not whether, the traditional casebook will go the way of vinyl records and VCR tapes.

When traveling to speak at various conferences, I have noticed more and more lawyers with iPads and other e-readers. I expect that buzz about the Justices reading briefs on e-readers might add even more juice to the on-going digital revolution in the collection and distribution of legal materials.  And if law schools do not get with the program soon, I fear we will be doing even worse than usual in training the next generation of lawyers.

Posted by DAB

Negotiation as the Connective Skill

As many schools consider further developing the skills component of their programs, I'd like to make a pitch for putting a thorough, required negotiation class at the center of that development.

First, the balance between negotiation and trial practice training at many schools is all out of proportion to what the real world requires.  My own field of criminal law is the most trial-intensive of practice areas, yet even there 95% of cases plead out.  That means that negotiation is the most important skill in 19 out of 20 cases.  Litigators certainly must know how to litigate-- but they must know how to negotiate, too.

Second, and relatedly, negotiation is a skill crucial to all practice areas.  It is essential to work in big firms and solo practice, legal aid and family law.  It is, along with legal writing, the skill that is perhaps most commonly needed across the lines of legal practice.

Third, negotiation is a learned skill.  A few simple techniques can transform a practice.  For example, social science tells us that making a first offer confers huge advantages.  Yet, it is traditional in criminal law for the government to always make the first offer.  A defense attorney who upsets this convention at well-chosen times may get disproportionate benefits for her client.

Fourth, the ethical issues that arise in negotiation require more intense study than we typically give them in PR class.  Again, looking at my own field, the ethical requirement that all plea offers be made clear to the defendant is embedded in the negotiation process, and to fully understand those principles the process must be revealed.

Finally, negotiation offers great opportunities for inter-disciplinary collaboration.  The social sciences (including business administration) are far ahead of us in using science to analyze techniques and outcome in negotiation, and we need to lean on and borrow from them.

-- Mark Osler