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 postings such as: “I’m in law school. I live off 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 faster and less expensively by advanced tech tools versus 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 required to keep up with technological advances, Teninbaum said. In 2012, the American Bar Association (ABA) 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 also dramatically changed communication practices. Face-to-face meetings were replaced with Zoom and other such platforms. 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, puts 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 University, 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 University Dean William Treanor 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 have 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?
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 Students 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 adaptation 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 hairy,” he said. “But, it’s a very, very efficient search engine. That’s the basic tool.”
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. An overload of information can be problematic as well. 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.
