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The Shift: The Pandemic Changed What the Next Generation of Attorneys Are Learning

The COVID-19 pandemic didn't just force law firms and corporate legal departments to adjust to a world of remote work and new technology—law students across the country too faced a whole new environment.

The result is a new generation of lawyers who have learned how to conduct remote proceedings and use business tools before they ever step foot in a firm's offices. Already largely viewed as knowledgeable technology consumers, today's law students have rapidly learned how to apply their skills to the working world.

Take Vanderbilt Law School, for instance. Caitlin "Cat" Moon, director of innovation, design at the school's Program on Law & Innovation, says she's been using Slack to manage class communications, rather than the school's standard Brightspace platform. Doing so, in her words, exposes "students to using a tool that is much more like a tool they will use in the real world as opposed to a university learning management system."

And now others are catching on—she says she's fielding calls from law professors all over the country about using these "common" legal practice tools. "This even predated COVID, but I think COVID has accelerated that interest in leveraging technology for those dual purposes to improve the pedagogical experiences and also to expose students to the technology and kinds of tools they will use in their practice," she says.

There have long been calls for law school curriculums to be more "practical." But the pandemic may have been just the push for legal educators and their students' future employers to get on the same page.

The Conversation

Technology's role in the legal profession has been already playing an increasing role in legal education over the past few years. But according to University of Miami School of Law professor Michele DeStefano, those plans are starting to take a much more targeted approach since the pandemic.

"I think future legal tech courses will focus on real-world use cases … [and] focus more on the experience of the client, and how do you make sure every time they interact with you it's delightful [and] how technology can help with that," she said.

That's what law firms and corporate legal departments are asking for, she noted. But as University of California, Hastings College of the Law professor and director of applied innovation Alice Armitage also noted, it's what students and their educators want too—as a reflection of modern career prep.

"I think the emerging legal jobs are tied to technology, and all law schools are concerned about their graduates being gainfully employed."

Indeed, this shift towards more practical education is seen as a matter of necessity. As Catherine "Cat" Casey, chief growth officer at legal software company Reveal and former global director of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher's e-discovery team, noted in a Law.com editorial, embracing this new type of education can give young attorneys a leg up on their peers.

"Lawyers fear being replaced by a 'robo lawyer' a la Skynet, but the real fear is being outpaced by your legal peers who embrace technology to become better lawyers. Law firms, likewise, are increasingly looking to stack the deck with tech-savvy lawyers to secure a competitive advantage with increasingly sophisticated clients," she explains. "While law school may not deliver on all a young lawyer needs to become the future lawyers, these steps can start them on the right path."

The Significance

According to a July survey from American LegalNet and Ari Kaplan Advisors, 79% of Big Law partners reported changing the way they use technology to adapt to a remote environment and 48% of them cited video, both for professional engagement with peers and clients, as well as for litigation purposes, as the most significant shift. The reason for this shift is obvious: It's what the market and clients demand, and in the race to gain an edge, it's simply what needs to be done.

With this in mind, it's not a surprise that these skills are what firms are looking for in their own hiring. Daniel Maland, partner at Mark Migdal & Hayden, notes that the ability to put together "a complete court presentation on PowerPoint [is] a tremendous asset and is something that we look for, especially with Zoom hearings and the digitization of the courtroom process [during] COVID-19."

Corporate legal departments are even saying the same. "The [ABA] model rule on tech competence is taken very seriously in our department… It is something we do consider with any candidate," said Robert Taylor, then Liberty Mutual's vice president and senior corporate counsel, to Law.com last year.

Because of recent shifts in legal education, today's law students might actually be better prepared to enter the legal working world than they even were just two years ago—there is increasingly a match between what firms and legal departments demand, and what law schools are providing. And there's every reason to believe this match is going to continue.

"The trend prior to the pandemic and law schools having to move to remote learning was to increase legal tech education anyway," says North Carolina Central University School of Law professor and associate dean of technology and innovation April Dawson. "But [during] the pandemic, not only law schools but law firms, courts and all of us in the legal profession had to adapt and embrace technology. I think that has accelerated legal educators' awareness of the significance of tech, legal tech and law school students' exposure to it."

The Information

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The Forecast

How far will this focus on practical technologies go? Most in the industry see a limit: For instance, there's reason to be skeptical of a fully online J.D. curriculum coming any time soon, according to law school deans.

"The kind of online learning that all of the law schools did because of the pandemic was different," says Syracuse University College of Law Dean Craig Boise. "It amounted to a lot of classes being held via Zoom. Some of it was good, but it's not a fully designed [online] program."

Still, expect to see continued explorations into how pandemic-influenced tech processes can provide tomorrow's lawyers with more practical skills. Nothing in the legal space is, or should be, set in stone. UC-Hastings' Armitage notes that already law school courses are adapting, and will likely change into the future to better align with both student preferences and evolving practical legal skills.

"First, there were courses on how to build legal tech companies," Armitage explained. "They envisioned working at a law firm and building a startup. Then over time, I still get a lot of students in that [course], but it's not the only thing I teach. It's legal ops, legal informatics and access to justice and the impact of legal tech. And there's more interest in legal ops and access to justice rather than law firm practice."