Koo on Technology and the Skills Gap for Lawyers: Berkman Center Findings

Posted by Alan Childress
Gene Koo (Fellow, Harvard Law’s Berkman Center) has posted to SSRN, “New Skills, New Learning: Legal Education and the Promise of New Technology.” Already it has many downloads.  Here is his abstract:

A large majority of lawyers perceivecritical gaps between what they are taught in law schools and theskills they need in the workplace, and appropriate technologies are notbeing used to help close this gap. This was the core conclusion of anew study by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at HarvardLaw School, in partnership with LexisNexis, which found:
•More than 75 percent of lawyers surveyed said they lacked criticalpractice skills after completing their law school education.
• Today’s workplace demands skills that the traditional law school curriculum does not cover.
◦Many attorneys work in complex teams distributed across multipleoffices: nearly 80 percent of lawyers surveyed belong to one or morework teams, with 19 percent participating in more than five teams. Yetonly 12 percent of law students report working in groups on classprojects.
◦ Smaller firms can stay competitive with larger firmsthrough more nimble deployment of technology tools and by exploitingthe exploding amount of data openly available on the Web. Attorneys atthese firms need tech-related skills to realize these opportunities.
•Legal educators seriously under-utilize new technologies, even in thosesettings, such as clinical legal education, that are the mostpractice-oriented.
Research also suggests a breakdown inpost-school workplace training, with smaller firms particularly unableto afford formal professional development.
• Neither law schoolsnor most workplaces provide new attorneys with a structured transitionbetween school and practice. Only 36 percent of lawyers surveyed reporta dedicated training experience during their first year of employment.
•Clients are increasingly unwilling to pay for training of associates,e.g. prohibiting firms from billing for young attorneys’ attendance atclient-facing meetings. New lawyers’ involvement in such meetings haslong been an important apprenticeship activity.
Finally, advances in computing and networking offer potential solutions to shortcomings in skills training at law schools.
•Utilizing authentic practice technologies to support law schoolclinical programs exposes law students to the practical tools they needto succeed in future practice.
• Learning through computersimulation mirrors the technology-based foundation of most legalpractice settings today and enables participants to experiencenon-linear decision making closest to real-world casework.