Abstracts

Presenters: Simon Gardiner and Jenni Taylor The legal profession, like any other, is having to change and adapting to the digital age. Traditional law firms are not immune from competition – boutique suppliers and online services already disrupt the business model. Survival depends not just on being good at law but on being a cost-efficient …

Presenter: Faye Wang Online dispute resolution (ODR) broadly includes many forms of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and court proceedings (known as “e-Courts”). It is a mechanism for resolving disputes via the use of electronic communications such as emails, telecommunications application software product (i.e. Skype instant messaging), streaming media and other communication technology. In theory, ODR …

Presenter: Jeremy Ellman This paper addresses the research question is whether, and how a machine can identify people’s intention and justify a purpose of that intention from natural language text alone. We describes an innovative computer model, ELVIE (Extended Legal Violence Inference Engine), that can analyse people’s intention from legal case report texts in court …

Presenter: Victoria Roper This presentation will explore the use of blogs and other types of social media in legal education, analysing the potential opportunities and challenges. Insights from an ongoing blog project within a clinical setting will be offered and the conclusions of a recently published journal article will be presented. In 2014 the presenter …

Presenter: Rónán Kennedy Like many others, the School of Law at the National University of Ireland Galway does not make innovation and technology a central feature of its teaching. However, the Faculty of Law (as it then was) began to offer a module in “Computers and Law” in the early 1990s, and when it offered …

Presenter: Eimer McCann F-LEX is an online platform which uses technology to match up paralegals to law firms and in-house counsel. The aim of F-LEX is to help law students to gain as much paid experience as they can, whilst simultaneously offering a pool of talented paralegals to law firms and GCs for projects and …

Presenter: Kim Silver What does it mean to be a legal academic in the digital age? If there is, as the conference seems to assume, profound technological change, this will present the academy with challenges on more than one front.

Presenters: Val Bremner and Colin Jamieson Mooting is generally accepted as providing a valuable opportunity for law students to acquire practical legal skills whilst engaging in experiential learning which meets the requirements of learning outcomes, accrediting bodies and further equips students with essential practical skills including oral advocacy, legal analysis and problem solving all of which …

Presenter: Craig Laverick For a number of years, there has been a growing expectation that technology will be incorporated into the teaching of law at university level.  This is partly due to a growing need for graduates to leave law school as ‘digital lawyers’; with ‘specialist, technical and transferrable skills’.  Significantly, it is also expected …

Presenters: Olga M. Piaskowska and Piotr F. Piesiewicz Access to justice is a core fundamental right of each individual. Access to justice typically means having a case heard in a court of law. However more broadly, it can be achieved through mechanisms such as legal aid, human rights institutions e.c. Obtaining legal assistance (legal advice) …

Presenter: Aidan Flynn My presentation would showcase the following digital teaching resource.  As the module leader for European Union Law, I have recently worked with two LLB (Hons) Law students to create a video resource.  It is an example of a digital co-creation resource, one ‘co-created’ by an academic and students. This resource will serve …

Presenters: Emma Jones and Francine Ryan This presentation will explore the opportunities and challenges involved in incorporating virtual reality (“VR”) into the law school environment.  It will do this using empirical data from The Open University’s recent pilot of a VR app, designed to enhance its law students’ presentation skills by placing them into “real …

Presenter: Ryan Murray Do students know why firms are using legal tech? If students do not understand the ‘why’ – teaching and assessing digital skills simply becomes one more example of a hoop through which a student must jump to gain their qualification.  To truly create the ‘sustainable adaptable’ student then they need to be …

Presenters: Andy Unger and Kim Silver In this session we will explain how we developed our approach to preparing students for the likely impact of emerging LawTech on future careers in Law and evaluate the first iteration of our new Law &  Technology Module where law students work with computing science students to design and …

Presenter: Fiona Boyle A variety of forms of clinical legal education are widely recognised as providing both community and educational benefits.  Under the UK’s current legal system there is a clear role for a variety of pro-bono activities to go some way to address unmet legal need. Potential solutions to this legal need have been …

Presenter: Dan Hunter Tech as an important driving force in legal education. It’s not hard to see that, if we’re to make law school more relevant to our students and if we are serious about making our graduates capable of operating in a fast-changing legal services marketplace, we need to do something about the technology …