Spotlight on Law School Innovation: Technology, Experiential Education and the Law School Firm

Yesterday, the National Law Journal featured a special report on law school innovators, including these.

Georgetown University Law Center: There's an App for That

Georgetown University Law Center, a new Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers Consortium school, was singled out for a new class it introduced this year: Technology, Innovation and Law Practice – An Experiential Seminar. Students were taught to use technology to make the practice of law more efficient, and they ended the class by creating applications that solved a problem. The winning application helps people living abroad determine if they are U.S. citizens. This class was also covered by Greg Lambert at 3 Geeks and a Law Blog last month and you can learn more in the video below.

New ETL Advisory Committee Member Champions Experiential Legal Education

Luke Bierman, Associate Dean for Experiential Education and Distinguished Professor of Practice of Law at Northeastern University School of Law (another Consortium school), is one of our newest advisory committee members. Here, he discusses legal education's past and future, and the role of experiential education.

Arizona State Creates “Residency Program” for Recent Law Grads

Last year, we featured a post by Robert J. Rhee, a professor who co-authored “The Law School Firm,” which garnered significant attention from legal educators, practitioners and students.

Professor Borden and I have proposed that the law school firm should provide the necessary training. As we discuss in the article, the law school firm has several attributes: (1) economic sustainability, meaning the law school firm must make revenue that at least meets expenses, (2) senior attorneys who generate business for the firm; (3) practice areas that earn fees sufficient to cover expenses; (4) strict “in and out” fixed duration positions for trainees who are paid low salaries commensurate with their low level of knowledge and skill.

Less than a year later, Arizona State University Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law has announced that it is creating “the first large-scale, nonprofit training law firm affiliated with a law school.” The school plans to launch the firm in 2013.