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This article is offered to enrich the dialog about preparing
law students for the technical realities of law practice. Some
law teachers contend that we have been sluggish about responding
to technological needs: "Law schools have been much slower
than other professional and graduate schools to adopt computer-augmented
teaching methods, perhaps because little evidence has ever been
presented to law teachers that the necessary expense and effort
can be justified by an improvement in student learning."1 Until recently I assumed
that the technical aspects of the teaching profession were someone
else's responsibility. I was sheltered by the hallowed halls
of academia, although the students I served were about to enter
a world of client e-mail, law firm websites, and electronic filings.2
But my assumptions were challenged. I now believe that integrating
teaching and technology is my responsibility and may be yours
as well. If we can teach students to think like lawyers, we can
help students to perform like lawyers. That means helping them
make the transition into today's professional world, which already
depends on tomorrow's technology.3
Why Me?
At an AALS Annual Meeting, Bob Berring of Boalt Hall advised
his audience that "this" would one day be a relic of
the past. "This" was the casebook he clutched in his
hand, waving it to make his point.4
I noted that the book he was waving was the very casebook that
I have used for nearly two decades. My reaction was predictable:
what he was saying had no application to a seasoned legal educator
like me. After all, you can be a good teacher whether or not
you employ technology in (or out) of the classroom—right?
I was not ready to accept the prospect that the attractive volumes
we carry to class each day might become tomorrow's dust collectors.
I experienced a remarkable attitude adjustment. I began to
question whether I had spent my professional time wisely. I had
published articles and books; earned my share of teaching awards;
done my share of service to my school (lucky me—tenure chair
for these last three years); crusaded for practice-oriented curriculum
changes in the aftermath of the MacCrate Report.5 I could smugly pat myself on the back at
midcareer. But I had a nagging sense that I was overlooking something,
and that I had much more to do if I intended to prepare my students
for contemporary law practice. Seven days after the AALS conference,
I established my first electronic classroom extension—an
e-mail discussion group. Seven months later, I constructed my
own academic website to launch a paperless law class. Only then
did I appreciate the role that technology could play in augmenting
the traditional classroom experience.
Another beam of insight radiated from that AALS Techie Day:
I might one day transcend the limitations of the print world
if I seriously explored the seemingly boundless possibilities
of electronic education and publication. I thought about how
I might incorporate the World Wide Web into my classroom teaching
(as well as future publications), so that my classroom materials
might be as current as the date.
Several innovators have lauded the virtues of integrating
technology and teaching, a conspiracy which I am obviously on
record as supporting.6
But others have cautioned that technology has its limits and
even its dangers. The computer may fail where the book succeeds.7 Peril accompanies promise
when training legal writers in the new electronic era.8 And the e-age has to some degree alienated
attorney and client—a "disease . . . contracted in
law school."9 Perhaps
most important, one should make careful choices about how to
allocate one's time. Being on the cutting edge takes time and
effort. A reasonable alternative is to wait until the technology
is nicely packaged for the less adept. As Northwestern's Dean
David Van Zandt has noted,
A great deal of time can be spent on technological presentations
that is probably better spent by our tenure-track faculty on
scholarship. This is not to say that technology is not important.
It is very important in the modern world. It is just that we
have limited resources and must use them most effectively.10
Despite those words of caution, it is my hope that you will
at least peruse the following summary of what others are doing
to incorporate electronics into their law school teaching.
The Academy in Cyberspace
Other than attending conferences, the most informative sources
for quickly surveying the terrain of educational cyberspace are—first—Bernard
Hibbitts's JURIST website, which collates the worldwide teaching
resources that were previously adrift on the Internet, and—second—the
sparse but proliferating law review literature on computers and
legal education.
..The Website Network
In 1996 Bernard Hibbitts of the University of Pittsburgh made
two significant contributions to the legal academy. One was a
provocative article questioning the continued vitality of print
and electronic law reviews.11
The second was his website, JURIST: Law Professors on the Web
(now JURIST: The Law Professors' Network).12 Jurist provides instantaneous access to
the educational web pages of law teachers all over the world.
We can now compare notes internationally on using the web for
classroom teaching.
There are a number of useful pages on the Jurist website.
Those most relevant to this article are Course Pages, Resource
Pages, and Home Pages. Course Pages has HTML links to various
websites, alphabetized by general academic topic and course.
Although many of these course websites are exhaustive, others
are less ambitious. Most open with introductory remarks about
course content, then direct you to other pages within the particular
website containing material for that teacher's course. Resource
Pages is a useful research tool; it collates websites containing
online resources from other sites that the teacher wishes to
associate with his or her course. Home Pages is an alphabetical
listing of everyone who has a web page on Jurist.
Law Review Literature
During the first generation of law school computing, we generally
sat before our machines to produce scholarship or to retype our
scribbled class notes. In this second generation, a growing number
of teachers are using the computer for classes that are no longer
isolated by physical boundaries or even confined to a classroom.
Some are augmenting the traditional classroom experience with
an e-mail discussion group. Some schools have laptop sections
(or entire entering classes) that integrate the physical classroom
with the virtual reality of the Internet.13 And some classes are available in different
law school locations via the distance learning made possible
by video technology.14
There is an emerging body of literature about who is doing
what to promote e-lawyering; it can help us learn more about
using technology in the educational environment.15 We can better serve our clients (students
and the public at large) through teaching and library development.16
Finally, one does not have to be a computer guru to incorporate
the World Wide Web into legal education. An informative article
by Michael A. Geist traces the evolution of electronic legal
education from computer-assisted legal education to the Internet.
Geist confirms that "the Internet enables legal educators
with little or no computer training to experiment with innovative
teaching methodologies and, in the process, to combine the best
of CALR [computer-assisted legal research], CAI [computer-aided
instruction], and electronic casebooks and to excite law students
uninspired by traditional law teaching techniques."17 The dubious wager of another
era—would the result be worth the effort?—is no longer
a long shot. You can enrich your courses with technology if you
are willing to invest some R&D time.
The New Frontier
My students prepare motions in state civil procedure. This
began as an optional third unit in my California Civil Procedure
class. Ultimately it may increase in unit value and be offered
as a completely unattached course. For the moment, I am somewhat
fearful that the lack of any on-campus attendance requirement
might raise accreditation concerns. While no one that I know
of has posed the issue, it seems prudent to require students
to take the on-campus (two-unit) course along with the optional
(one-unit) cyber-space course.
Students access the essentials from my website. It contains
a client interview and some pleadings. They then submit three
distinct motions during the semester, which I grade. No paper
copy is permitted. All communications are by e-mail (submissions
preferably by attachment). Students may ask no questions in person,
because I characterize such potential inquiries as ex parte communications
with the judge. They may post to the group, to each other, or
to me if they feel that a clarification is needed—which
I make and then post to the entire e-class. Put another way,
they have to do their own work—as in practice. I am available,
however, to help with the technical or procedural problems that
may arise.
My students, especially those who travel some distance to
get to school, are ecstatic for two reasons: I am available at
all hours of every day, and they can do virtually everything
they have to do—including submitting their e-bluebooks—in
their bathrobes. As this new frontier evolves, you may need to
explain patiently to your dean that you can provide valuable
service while you are not on campus. If access to the instructor
is of value to students, electronic availability sometimes makes
more sense than being in your office (perhaps with a horde of
students at your door competing for attention). Many a student/teacher
conference can be conducted by e-mail, without disrupting either
participant's schedule.
E-Mail Component
Among the first questions to consider—regardless of your
subject area—is whether to establish an e-mail discussion
group for your course. You might at least conduct a bulletin-board-style
question-and-answer forum. That is a minimal investment with
a big return: all students benefit, both active participants
and parasitic lurkers. You don't need technological support to
do this; anyone who has sent only one e-message can set up an
e-mail discussion group for every section of every class without
any assistance from a commercial vendor. A more ambitious step,
like incorporating the Internet into your class(es), may necessitate
a weighing process. Will your institution look kindly on your
venture into the e-world, or will you be frowned upon for turning
your attention away from scholarship, service, and the other
traditional time commitments? Obviously any nontenured teacher
must consider such questions, and even a senior tenured professor
should probably not ignore them. But adding an e-mail component
to your course is no radical venture. It would be a useful starting
point for the faint-hearted.
An e-mail discussion group can advance pedagogical objectives
before, during, and after class.18
Before class, you can post questions to provide some basic guidance
about the key issues that you will cover. During class, you and
your students will be on the same page from the outset. After
class, you can be available via e-mail for electronic conferences.
Thanks to e-mail, you can continue interesting discussions for
which there was insufficient time in class, post hypos for student
discussion or review, and answer the typically short questions
that students may raise after you have left the classroom.
This method of extending the confines of the physical classroom
received a great deal of attention because of West's fall 1997
release of its TWEN project, which allows a teacher to conduct
e-mail discussions and place web content on a page provided for
$20 per student. (TWEN stands for The West Educational Network.)
Message threading in your school's e-mail system may not be as
slick as it is in TWEN.19
So if you feel technologically challenged, you should consult
your school's TWEN representative—or whoever is tasked with
providing TWEN training at your school.
The Lexis alternative to TWEN is WCB (Web Course in a Box).
Unlike TWEN, this system has no costs, and no contracts requiring
the law school to indemnify the vendor for actionable student
messages. In creating WCB, Lexis drew from a preexisting university
web template, modifying it to provide similar e-mail and web
posting services for law teachers.20
There may be downsides to TWEN or WCB.21 Some of us may be concerned about inducing
student reliance on a particular commercial vendor. One can accomplish
roughly the same objective without TWEN or WCB, with little technical
expertise beyond what it takes to send an e-mail message. The
Address Book function of the garden-variety e-mail system conveniently
permits a teacher (and students) to create and participate in
many different e-lists, not just the one established by the teacher.
You can dispatch messages to all list members with only one address
in the Mail To line of the e-mail message. The teacher who wishes
to generate a message to even the largest of classes can send
bcc copies to all list members. My students and I address discussion
group e-mails to LIST, with the name of the particular class
(e.g., FEDCIVPRO, CALCIVPRO, or INTLAW) at the beginning of the
Subject line. Students who see from the Subject line that this
message is of no interest to them need only hit the delete key.
Careful instructions about the Subject line can accomplish a
degree of threading which is less glitzy than TWEN's or WCB's
but perfectly useful.
Regardless of which e-mail system you and your students have
already selected, you should personally survey the extraordinary
e-mail programs, easy to use and install, that simultaneously
operate with any e-mail system from an Internet Service Provider
(much as the Windows enhancement operates with DOS). If you would
not return to DOS-based computing, after operating in a Windows
environment, you should evaluate one of these e-mail enhancement
programs. They are more attractive and more functional than the
generic low-grade e-mail system. You can access multiple windows
at once, automate routine tasks, and improve the likelihood of
successfully sending and receiving attachments.
Website Construction Options
There are four choices for those who wish to construct an
academic website:
the .edu option—the simplest alternative, because you merely
add course content to your individual faculty page on your school's
existing website:
the
TWEN/WCB option described above—to add textual content to
your individualized
.....West.TWEN
or Lexis WCB page
the
.com option—large ISPs offer free websites as a strategy
for encouraging more costly ....upgrades22
the
do-it-yourself option—arguably the most complex website
construction option, with the ....compensating
advantages of not having to rely on someone else's priorities
to get new material ....posted promptly
(.edu option) or inducing student reliance on a commercial vendor ....(TWEN/WCB options).
These options are more fully analyzed in the initial Lessons
from the Web feature on JURIST: The Law Professors' Network.23
Course Content
Planning a web component for your course requires the early
resolution of some pedagogical issues. In this section I raise
what I consider critical questions, with suggested answers and
alternatives.
Should you get into e-teaching, just to add a technological
component to your course? Although my own attitude toward
teaching technology is bubbly and effervescent, I cannot naively
anticipate that all readers of this article will be equally enthusiastic
or will wax technological for the same reasons. A sense of balance
compels me to offer the following advice: First, Do No Harm!
One must be exceedingly cautious about jumping onto a technological
bandwagon with no clear sense of direction. The teacher should
carefully weigh the course content to be sure that any infusion
of technology will really serve a useful purpose.24
What is your primary pedagogical objective in bringing
technology into your course? There are many alternatives
and no clear favorite. You may wish to do one or more of the
following: augment your classroom experience (with an e-mail
discussion group), webify the in-class experience (with web presentations
or laptop-based course material), or avoid the physical confines
of the traditional law school class (with distance learning or
a paperless e-class).
For example, the main objective in my e-class is to make the
students more proficient in state motion practice via technology
they will use as lawyers.25
I want to improve their general technical knowhow so that they
can send me an e-mail attachment containing the bread-and-butter
motions they will encounter early in practice. It is only a matter
of time before all pleadings and motions will be submitted to
the courts and exchanged between the parties via e-mail attachment.
What are your related objectives for incorporating technology
into your course? My complementary objectives evolved on
two levels. On the surface, I wanted students to take another
skills course while in law school, and leave with unique writing
samples for their résumés. At a deeper level, however,
I envisioned practical exercises in solving problems—both
problems of substance and problems of technological mechanics.
I wanted students to apply reasoning in a skills course context;
and I hoped for more interaction with my students than is possible
in the classroom. Regardless of your subject, you can formulate
a variety of supporting objectives to fit any course or pedagogical
approach.
What course content should you put on your website?
This option separates an e-mail discussion group from an e-class.
The e-class page on my website contains a short factual scenario
in which law students contract food poisoning from eating Edible
Widgets at a deli near the university. This web page links to
a separate web page containing the hypothetical which spawns
all semester assignments. Students then click on Problem One,
Two, or Three, which whisks them to the various problems/motions
that they will prepare. The students submit their graded motions
to me via e-mail in the fifth, tenth, and fourteenth weeks of
a fifteen-week semester.26
A word of advice about what you ask your students to do electronically:
never require them to do anything that you have not already done
yourself. For example, I made the submission of motions on 28-line
pleading paper a requirement for my first e-class. I quickly
learned that this should have been optional. I knew that it could
be done, but I didn't know how. When I was asked, I had to confess
ignorance. At that point a technologically gifted student figured
out how to do it and e-mailed detailed instructions to me and
to the rest of the class. Should you prefer to save your confessions
for your place of worship, then privately seek advice from students
or staffers before you require task X to be performed. You can
then put how-to-do-it advice on your website (e.g., by creating
a separate FAQ web page for frequently asked questions).
What administrative information should you include on your
website? This option is limited only by one's experience
and imagination. For my e-class, I set forth the honor code requirements,
the grading system, withdrawal options, a description of the
instructor's role, various e-mail addresses for submitting questions
about the course, and my netiquette requirements. For my other
courses, I constructed a course page where students can find
an array of information. From each course page, they can link
to current reading assignments, prior exams, assigned problems
not in the casebook, and other websites providing useful resources
in that field. From my International Law course page, for example,
they can link to my A-to-Z listing of international websites
for students and lawyers. From my Fed Civ Pro course page, they
can link to the web page where I post new cases previously posted
to interested graduates.
Should you grade on a nonanonymous basis and/or employ
a staff assistant? Anonymity is best, of course, but it can
present a host of problems in an electronic environment. Because
my course is paperless, it will remain "experimental"
for some time. There will be a batch of new recruits in every
e-class for the next few years, with varying levels of technological
sophistication. I will have to be flexible in my expectations.
Undergraduate experience provides ample computer knowledge for
general purposes, but it doesn't give students the specific tools
they need for legal education.
More specifically, students must have an Internet Service
Provider to register for my course. Then they must get a second
e-mail account (student identity unknown to the instructor).
They use the second account for submitting their assigned problems.27 This system allows anonymous
grading, but it's not foolproof. Murphy's Law also applies to
ISPs.28 The second e-mail
account may not be available to the student at the last moment
before the deadline for submission. Students then have the option
of submitting the assignments via their known e-mail addresses,
which we use for class administration and communication during
the semester.
You might wonder whether students could submit their assignments
to a third party (a staff assistant), who would strip their e-mail
addresses before sending the assignments to the instructor. That
might seem simpler than requiring a second e-mail account, but
submitting assignments to someone other than the instructor totes
several risks. One is that you can't really know whether the
paper was submitted on time. I require (what appear to be) inflexible
deadlines to maintain an aura of reality approximating actual
law practice. But many e-mail systems do not give you real-time
posts based on your time zone. For my very first e-class motion,
which was due at midnight on the fifth Saturday of the semester,
I checked mail at that precise moment. I had received one submission
that showed a sending time of 5 a.m. the following day. Because
there are few countries with five time zones, I suddenly recognized
the dangers of asking another person to monitor the mailbox.
One could always choose a submission date and time which coincides
with the supposed presence of the staff assistant, but what are
the odds that the assistant will monitor submissions as closely
as the instructor (particularly if that staff person must juggle
many priorities, not just yours)?
A staff member does assist me in a more limited way. She links
the students' anonymous e-mail addresses with their real identities
after they have submitted a motion and I have graded it. Thus
she has the pleasure of dealing with those students who fail
to follow requirements like using the same e-mail address to
submit all of their course problems. That recurring nightmare
produces more e-mail bluebook addresses than the number of students
registered.
Should you archive your e-messages and/or e-class submissions?
Your first thought may be that retaining an archive will dampen
students' willingness to post to the list: the only thing worse
than posting e-mail for all to see is knowing that all will see
it for time immemorial—or however long the instructor chooses
to archive messages. One response to this concern is that archiving
makes a student think twice about sending rude or vulgar messages.
Archiving also allows the Johnny-come-lately to catch up; he
can access all the e-mails posted during the first few weeks
while he was course-shopping.
At this stage in the evolution of my paperless e-class, I
have not posted student answers on the course web page. There
are two reasons. First, my students appear to be a bit nervous
about worldwide access to their ungraded motions or to the version
that includes my sometimes unflattering commentaries. Second,
I prefer to operate my experiment a little while longer before
I consider compromising the work product that I generate. Put
another way, when I have no more revisions to make to my e-class
problems, then that might be the time to place student answers
on the web.
Another reason for archiving is to create a safety net. I
administer my e-class from home. My students submit their messages
and motions to both my home address and my office address. On
the day that the students' first motion was due in my first e-class,
my home system suddenly crashed (the cyberspace version of Murphy's
Law). I had received only about a third of the electronic bluebooks
when this occurred, but I was able to go to school and retrieve
the archived copy of the remaining e-bluebooks. Without an archived
copy, I could not have determined whether those other students
had filed their motions by the deadline. And I would have had
to delay grading until they resubmitted their motions—not
exactly state-of-the-art procedure.
The final advantage to archiving is that I can conveniently
forward my archived e-bluebooks for institutional storage to
the staff member who retains copies of all print—and now,
electronic—bluebooks. Perhaps one day all bluebooks will
be electronic and we will no longer have the hassle of storing
and retrieving reams of paper.
Can students take the class if they aren't wired? You
should consider having a computer available in the library, or
elsewhere in your building, for sending and receiving e-mail
messages and class assignments. In effect, I have two on-campus
archives: one in my office, and one in the library. Students
may use the library's computers to send and receive messages
(and anonymous e-bluebooks). That serves two purposes. One, it
allows access to my course for those vanishing diehards who don't
own a computer. Two, students can use the library computers when
they are facing a deadline and their e-mail system suddenly fails.29
What web pages might you create, even if you don't launch
an e-mail discussion group or a paperless e-class? When I
began to consider using the web for teaching, I constantly thought
of new uses for my website. For example, I created a page listing
my publications. This has saved me a lot of paper and time when
I'm asked to provide that list.
Essentially, I began by constructing teaching-related pages:
Purpose, TechInfo, FAQ, Courses, Reading, Exams, Problems, and
NewCase. These pages serve assorted teaching objectives. The
Purpose page gives a short explanation of each page on my website;
it is a convenient navigational tool that helps readers decide
which pages are relevant for their needs. The TechInfo and FAQ
pages help the students in my e-class overcome common technological
hurdles. The Courses, Reading, Exams, and Problems pages all
help me avoid the drudgery of providing the same information
to students over, and over, and over again. NewCase is where
I place new cases of value to my various civil procedure courses.
It is also a convenient place to gather candidates for subsequent
editions of my classroom texts in California civil procedure
and international law.
Should you install a security system that requires a password
from anyone seeking to access your website? If you have chosen
either your school's .edu website or the do-it-yourself website
that I recommend, you might consider whether you need a so-called
firewall to keep out students, or others, who might inject flames
or viruses. I don't intend to do this until delusions of grandeur
suggest that my technological universe is a smidgeon larger than
its current magnitude.
Can you use your website for publication purposes too?
There are at least three arguments against e-casebooks and e-articles.
One is the obsession with leather-bound work products to display
on the mantle, not to mention the stunning university seal on
law review reprints. Another is the institutional resistance
to self-publication, which lacks the imprimatur of a recognized
commercial vendor or law review. Finally, there is that ego-driven
insistence on keeping track of citations to one's work. Of course
having a web counter on your website, or asking your research
assistant to look up web citations to your work, will yield results
similar to those you routinely get through traditional channels.
As we continue to explore this new technology, however, more
of us will discover the value of an e-book or online article,
as opposed to traditional print material.30 Obsolescence will itself become obsolete.
You will make changes instantaneously, rather than waiting for
the next edition or the annual supplement. You will also be able
to link to legal resources elsewhere on the Internet. This can
bring your course book to life, in ways never dreamed of in the
traditional world of print publishing.
...* * * * *
A web-based class will be, initially, more work for the teacher
than a traditional class with comparable unit value. This conclusion
may be verified when you suddenly find yourself treading water
with those students who are less apt to take to the technological
waters than the others. The offsetting advantage is that you
can benefit both the student and your career development. You
can first augment a traditional law school class with an e-mail
discussion group; later devise a paperless e-class to integrate
e-mail, the web, or other computer technology; and ultimately
explore the advantages of publishing the first (or next) edition
of your own textbook on CD-ROM or your website.
If you believe that we have a professional obligation to prepare
our graduates for the practice of law, then the innovative opportunities
offered by technology are irresistible. Having been schooled
in a generation of passive learning, I had previously experimented
with the usual ways of altering that classroom dynamic: I had
tried in-class moots, for example, and I had incorporated the
problem method into my courses. But nothing has presented more
satisfying results than my web-based teaching experiment.
I will conclude by identifying two core values which are my
rationale for taking this stimulating plunge. First, a class
with an electronic component offers a new beginning. It presents
exciting interactive opportunities for supplementing the traditional
classroom experience. It can provide a refreshing perspective
on the virtually unlimited resources available on the Internet.
I am not sure that I agree with my distance-learning colleagues
who predict the demise of the classroom as we know it; I still
see technology as playing a supporting role, not signaling a
casebook/classroom apocalypse. But time will tell whether Bob
Berring's predictions will come true.
Second, my students and I have found that our web course experience
is very nearly the real thing. My students work from their home
or office computers, just like real lawyers, without having to
go to court/class every day. They engage in collaborative learning
via private and group e-mail messages about their pending assignments,
just like real lawyers in real practice. They have unyielding
deadlines, just as they will have in what they so fondly refer
to as "the real world." One may of course accomplish
similar objectives in a more traditional classroom environment.
But all my students emphatically assert that this is as real
as it gets in law school without actually going to court.
At this point I could provide self-serving excerpts from students'
course evaluations. Instead I have asked some of my students
to serve as resources if you have specific questions about their
reaction to whatever scheme you might devise. They too are pioneers,
and I thank them for contributing to the success of my paperless
e-class experiment.31 |