Technology is becoming more important in the practice of law, and law students who embrace the basics now can get a leg up in the job search and will be better prepared to practice.
Technology has been great for law students. With your iPhone, you can find the closest Starbucks when in dire need of a Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino. Remember the LSAT? You took it on a tablet. You applied to law schools online. You likely went to Reddit to check out law school life and saw such postings as: “I’m in law school. I live off of Pizza Rolls and coffee.”
Right! Go tech!
It’s a blessing, but it’s also one of the most vexing things in the universe, given how quickly it evolves and demands updated knowledge and skills. That’s particularly true of legal technology. It’s a growing — and quite powerful — part of law.
Legal tech experts say students in general — not just the ones who are wowed by tech wizardry and want to embrace it — would be wise to have a baseline understanding of tools such as eDiscovery, encryption, legal research analytics and artificial intelligence. In other words, your expertise should not be limited to searching TikTok — even in law school.
“All students should learn the basics,” said Gabriel Teninbaum, assistant dean of Innovation, Strategic Initiatives, & Distance Education at Suffolk University Law School in Boston.
There are a host of reasons why students should be familiar with legal tech regardless of their practice area, he said. For one, legal tech tools can help lawyers serve clients better. For instance, document searches can be done much faster and less expensively by advanced tech tools than traditional methods, he said.
Secondly, protecting client confidentiality is more important, given the growth in virtual lawyering, which accelerated dramatically during the pandemic. Not knowing how to adequately protect key client information can be crippling.
And thirdly, lawyers are actually required to keep up with technological advances, Teninbaum noted. In 2012, the American Bar Association updated its Model Rules of Professional Development to include tech:
“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.”
Most state bars have since adopted the change.
That means a lawyer could possibly face disciplinary action if he or she doesn’t have knowledge of tech tools. Tech is changing the legal landscape.
The pandemic dramatically changed communication practices. Face-to-face meetings were replaced with Zoom and other such platforms. So lawyers need to know how to run such meetings properly and securely — per ABA’s amendment on tech competence.
The legal-focused informational website JD Supra put it this way:
“Without competence in situations like these or holding onto the unwillingness to adopt emerging technologies, lawyers can put client data at risk and even inadvertently provide disadvantaged representation. This can result in serious ethical violations and all lawyers should review their current policies, procedures, and workflows to ensure they are meeting the duty of competence — especially when carrying out work functions virtually.”
Teninbaum doubts most law students are aware of the ABA’s position on tech competence. That may be because many schools remain focused on teaching law in a more traditional fashion. That’s not to say that all law schools have not aggressively pursued tech advances.
Some, like Suffolk, have.
Georgetown University Law Center, for instance, boasts the Institute for Technology Law & Policy and offers courses such as Computer Crime Law, Information Privacy Law and Biotechnology and the Law.
Georgetown Dean William Treanor has said tech’s scope is not to be underestimated. It is not a boutique field.
Other schools have started innovation labs to give students hands-on experience in tech tool advances. Indeed, in some cases, they’ve helped create them.
But what happens if you go to a school that doesn’t have such a focus or you’re a student who has limited interest in this field?
We’ve identified the most important technologies that law students should be using now. Some are basic, and there is a reason for that.
New tools are coming out routinely, so it’s impossible to keep up with such a wave of innovation. However, learning to sharpen basic tech skills can be invaluable.
“The more comfortable you are, the better you will be,” said Jared Arcari, who authored a blog post called “A Law Student’s Guide to Legal Tech.” A 2019 graduate of Fordham University School of Law, he currently works as an associate in the New York office of Paul Hastings.
He said most law students are curious by nature, and they should use that attribute when it comes to legal tech.
“A lot of it is just tinkering,” he said.
Law students can start by looking to improve their search skills.
It was at Fordham Law where he caught the tech bug. Arcari took part in the school’s Entrepreneurial Law Clinic and wondered why more tech advances weren’t being applied to law.
“Some of it was really cool,” he said. “I wondered why we weren’t using it.”
One problem is that law firms are run by older lawyers for the most part. They are not like Silicon Valley start-ups, where major players can be in their 20s.
“No law firm has a 25-year-old CEO,” he said.
However, the adoption of tech is changing, he said. Big Law firms are looking at how legal tech can get work done faster and more efficiently. Primarily, advances in legal tech can cut down on the number of hours it takes to do legal research and find commonalities in the results, he said.
“It’s easy to find a needle in the haystack,” Arcari said. “It’s hard to find a pattern in the needles in the haystacks.”
Tech can be overwhelming, so it’s not surprising some people have a basic fear of it, but the tools have simplistic missions.
“Artificial intelligence sounds very hairy,” he said. “But it’s a very, very efficient search engine. That’s the basic tool.”
And these tools can be applied to any practice area, including public interest, a people-oriented specialty.
Arcari has done pro bono work for the United Nations, including a project on how death penalty practices differ among Caribbean nations.
There was not a lot of accessible information available. He had to do sophisticated searches. And an overload of information can be just as problematic. Suppose you’re looking into U.S. Census data, which has reams of available information. It’s challenging to narrow it down.
He suggests that graduates get comfortable with whatever system their firms are using and rock it.
“You’re going to be a standout,” he said.
Tools, tools and more tech tools
The Information Age is changing legal practice everywhere, from client expectations to court protocols. And there are some bottom-line tools that students should be aware of and have some familiarity of use, said Elizabeth Edwards, a reference librarian at UCLA School of Law.
“There are tools that nearly every attorney uses, but there’s also a wide range of tools that are specific to the type of law you are practicing and the type of office or firm in which you’re practicing,” Edwards said. Before coming to UCLA Law, Edwards worked at Santa Clara University School of Law as the emerging technologies research librarian and taught the class, Technology and Innovation in the Practice of Law.
The good news, she said, is that law students are already using at least one version of these tech tools as part of their legal education.
“The big issue is whether their skills in using these tools are up to a professional level when they start working as attorneys,” Edwards said. “By professional level, I mean whether a law student knows how to complete a task with the tool at hand, and can they do it efficiently — not taking hours to do something that should take minutes.”
Firms are increasingly looking for well-rounded candidates with a combination of business acumen, innovative ideas and adaptability, Arcari wrote in his blog post “A Law Student’s Guide to Legal Tech.”
“Big Law firms are taking innovative approaches to deliver legal and compliance advice to their clients by developing their own proprietary legal tech. For example, many firms recently launched interactive platforms within their practice groups to provide clients with more efficient channels for receiving legal advice. Platforms such as Goodwin Procter’s Founder’s Workbench and Proptech, WilmerHale’s Launch, and Cooley’s CooleyGo exemplify client-focused legal platforms and initiatives,” he wrote.
Teninbaum said it’s not daunting to educate oneself on the subject. A great source is a book called “Tomorrow’s Lawyer,” by Richard Susskind, he noted. Websites offer insight too. LawSites is one example. The Artificial Lawyer is another. Teninbaum produces a newsletter called Lawtomatic.
So, what are some bottom-line tools that students should be aware of and have some familiarity of use?
1. Cybersecurity and timekeeping management
This includes password managers and multi-factor authentication tools, such as 1Password, LastPass, Google Authenticator and Duo.
Edwards said there are two types of software that students may have little to no exposure to before a legal job and both are used heavily in law firms: document management systems and timekeeping software.
“Neither are exceptionally complicated for users, but a lot of attorneys can find them frustrating to use,” she said.
Document management systems have been integrating some of the same features as document collaboration tools (cloud storage, real-time syncing, file sharing), but awkward interfaces and slow speeds are traditional pain points.
As for time-keeping software, Edwards said it’s not always easy to use, but the hardest thing is actually the attitude of the user.
“Dividing your work-time into six-minute increments and keeping track of shifts between one task and another, from one client to another, are not things that come naturally to many people,” she said. “It takes some practice to get in the habit of capturing most of your time correctly.”
Students who end up working for firms during their summers will definitely use these tools, she added. But it’s also possible to get training if school clinics use practice management software. These are platforms that include time-keeping, document management, task allocation and more.
2. Document production and presentation tools
This includes Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint; Google Docs, Sheets and Slides; AirTable and Prezi.
Most large law firms and government agencies use Microsoft Office, Edwards said. However, as a Mac user, you might use Pages.
“The best software is the app that allows you to complete a task effectively and efficiently, and is secure/keeps your data secure,” she said. “Something to keep in mind is that as students go from school to a legal job, or change employers, the technology they must use is likely to change.”
Grammarly is a great editing tool for professional writing. As is PerfectIt, WordRake, BriefCatch and Pro Writing Aid, Edwards said. Several of these tools (WordRake, BriefCatch and PerfectIt) either have modules for legal writing or are designed to be used exclusively with legal writing.
Teninbaum said he’s assigned Core Grammar for Lawyers in the past, and students have shared they felt like it helped give them a good refresher on those important grammar rules we all theoretically learned in high school, but so often have forgotten.
3. Legal research platforms
This includes Lexis, Westlaw, Bloomberg Law and Fastcase.
Most law firms, Edwards said, use either Lexis or Westlaw, not both.
Your law library should have subscriptions to all three. As the largest and most powerful legal research databases, platforms have a prominent place among the law library’s online research resources. Lexis and Westlaw both offer online tutorials for law students who want to practice their searching skills.
4. Document and team collaboration tools
This includes Slack, OneDrive, Sharepoint, Teams, Google Drive and Dropbox.
“A lot of law firm IT departments frown on or actually prohibit use of certain cloud services, like Google Drive and DropBox, for work,” Edwards said. “Being flexible and figuring out how to transfer your skills from familiar software to new will make you more effective, faster, and will help make a good impression on your colleagues.”
Teninbaum said OneNote, a note-taking and sharing app, and its competitor, Evernote, are both excellent tools. They also allow for doing things like taking a photo and incorporating that into notes.
“For those on a budget, the built-in notes apps that come loaded on both Macs and PCs are really solid and allow for easily sharing and archiving notes,” he said.
Edwards agrees that OneNote and Evernote are good options, as they are cloud-based, allowing some form of sharing and syncing.
“The virtue of this type of software is this: every law student I ever met is incredibly busy with classes, clubs, clinics, intern- or externships, volunteering, job seeking and personal lives,” she said. “Having a dedicated space to capture ideas and facts and dates is incredibly useful and takes some of the pressure off of having to remember everything.”
Software like Todoist or 3 Things are great for making lists of tasks and checking them off when you complete them. For more complicated projects, there is Trello, which can help you manage individual projects and also allows teams to create and assign tasks on a project, Edwards said.
Whether for documents, presentations, team collaboration and legal research, various types of law practice may have highly-specific types of software attorneys will use in that practice.
In-house attorneys may need to use contract analysis and management software, something a litigator may not ever touch, Edwards said. A litigator may find tablet software that helps them label annotate and display exhibits during a trial extremely helpful, but not other attorney would have much of a use for it. Some attorneys may need to learn how to use e-discovery software, but not all attorneys do or will.
“Be curious,” she said. “If there is a particular area of law you’re interested in, find out the types of software commonly used, what it does, who uses it and in what circumstances. When you are networking and holding informational interviews with attorneys, include questions about the tools they use day to day.”