Digital Lawyering

In today’s rapidly changing legal landscape, becoming a digital lawyer is vital to success within the legal profession. This textbook provides an accessible and thorough introduction to digital lawyering, present and future, and a toolkit for gaining the key attributes and skills required to utilise technology within legal practice effectively. Digital technologies have already begun a radical transformation of the legal profession and the justice system. Digital Lawyering introduces students to all key topics, from the role of blockchain to the use of digital evidence in courtrooms, supported by contemporary case studies and integrated, interactive activities. The book considers specific forms of technology, such as Big Data, analytics and artificial intelligence, but also broader issues including regulation, privacy and ethics. It encourages students to explore the impact of digital lawyering upon professional identity, and to consider the emerging skills and competencies employers now require. Using this textbook will allow students to identify, discuss and reflect on emerging issues and trends within digital lawyering in a critical and informed manner, drawing on both its theoretical basis and accounts of its use in legal practice. Digital Lawyering is ideal for use as a main textbook on modules focused on technology and law, and as a supplementary textbook on modules covering lawyering and legal skills more generally.

With increasing digitalization and the evolution of artificial intelligence, the legal profession is on the verge of being transformed by technology (legal tech). This handbook examines these developments and the changing legal landscape by providing perspectives from multiple interested parties, including practitioners, academics, and legal tech companies from different legal systems. Scrutinizing the real implications posed by legal tech, the book advocates for an unbiased, cautious approach for the engagement of technology in legal practice. It also carefully addresses the core question of how to balance fears of industry takeover by technology with the potential for using legal tech to expand services and create value for clients. Together, the chapters develop a framework for analyzing the costs and benefits of new technologies before they are implemented in legal practice. This interdisciplinary collection features contributions from lawyers, social scientists, institutional officials, technologists, and current developers of e-law platforms and services.

Teaching Legal Education in the Digital Age explores how legal pedagogy and curriculum design should be modernised to ensure that law students have a realistic view of the future of the legal profession. Using future readiness and digital empowerment as central themes, chapters discuss the use of technology to enhance the design and delivery of the curriculum and argue the need for the curriculum to be developed to prepare students for the use of technology in the workplace. The volume draws together a range of contributions to consider the impact of digital pedagogies in legal education and propose how technology can be used in the law curriculum to enhance student learning in law schools and lead excellence in teaching. Throughout, the authors consider what it means to be future-ready and what we can do as law academics to facilitate the knowledge, skills and dispositions needed by future-ready graduates. Part of Routledge’s series on Legal Pedagogy, this book will be of great interest to academics, post-graduate students, teachers and researchers of law, as well as those with a wider interest in legal pedagogy or legal practice.

Open, distance, and blended learning environments have increased globally in recent years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Stakeholders in the educational sector are facing new challenges on how to take advantage of the knowledge, skills, and experiences gained during the pandemic and, more importantly, how to move forward towards digitally transforming education. Emerging Trends and Historical Perspectives Surrounding Digital Transformation in Education: Achieving Open and Blended Learning Environments identifies cases, best practices, and experiences that highlight digital transformation via online, blended, and open learning environments at all levels and discusses how digital transformation can be achieved. The book also examines the influence of leadership, human resources, knowledge, skills, processes, and technologies in promoting digital transformation. Covering topics such as open learning, digital learning, online teaching, and learner support, this reference work is ideal for teachers, instructional designers, curriculum developers, IT consultants, educational software developers, policymakers, industry professionals, researchers, academicians, practitioners, and students.

The world of law is a world of information. Rules, judgments, decisions, interpretations, and agreements all involve using and communicating information. Today, we are experiencing a significant transition, from letters fixed on paper to information stored electronically. The digital era, where information is created, stored, and communicated electronically, is quickly approaching, if not already here. The future of law will no longer be found in impressive buildings and leather-bound books, but in small pieces of silicon, in streams of light, and in millions of miles of wires and cable. It will be a world of new relationships and greater possibilities for individual and group communication, an environment where the value of information increases as it is shared. In Law in a Digital world, M. Ethan Katsh explores how these new technologies will alter one of our most central institutions. He considers the different ways in which people will not only electronically read and write, but also interact with our vast storehouses of legal knowledge and information. He envisions how sounds and pictures will play into the largely imageless print world of law, and looks at the future importance of graphic and nontextual communication. He explores how the flexible, personalized organization of data will transform the way we gather information, and whether information can or cannot be contained, raising questions of copyright and privacy. What happens to the law when information is more plentiful and accessible? What happens to those people who suddenly have access to information never before available? Does the use of information in a new form change the institution, the user, and those who come in contact with the user? And, what role does the lawyer play in all of this? For citizens, for lawyers, for all those who will be part of the digital world rushing toward us, Katsh answers these questions while considering the implications of this new era.

In twenty-two chapters, divided into six parts for convenience, the authors not only lay bare the art of lawyering but also provide invaluable nuggets of perfecting and excelling as a solicitor and advocate. There is little doubt that the contents of this book dramatically make a lawyer, especially the lawyer in Africa, to be more effective, more skilful and a proper lawyer useful to the client and society.

"This book comprises the collected, revised and expanded papers on the impact of the digital age (as captured by the term LegalTech) on lawyering presented at a conference held in Amsterdam in October 2019. It should be noted that the editors are listed alphabetically and that all of us equally contributed to this book project. The topics selected seek to balance the rise of LegalTech between the perspectives of it being highly disruptive and diminishing of the legal profession with the view of LegalTech as enhancing the tasks of lawyers. As it has long been the case, the effectiveness of legal practice, in terms of cost efficiency and competency continue to be influenced by technology. This has already proven to be true and currently we are witnessing the acceleration of legal technology. What the future holds for the practice of law can only be speculated upon. But, that speculation is worth theorizing about in order to plan for that future. This planning is needed in areas of legal education, investment in technological infrastructure, determining law firm staffing needs-both legal and non-legal- and envisioning the mix of services that the lawyer of the future will provide. This book begins the process by providing a review of the core issues that lawyers and law firms will be forced to face"--