Fall 2023 Term I:
LAW/MA 519 - Project Management (3 units)
August 28th, 2023 - October 22nd, 2023
This course will provide an overview of the principles of project management, addressing principle topics of PMI’s Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). The extensive use of case studies will allow students to apply PMI theory in practical simulated legal projects. Students will develop the skills and knowledge necessary for effective decision-making and project management, including techniques for evaluating profitability, outsourcing opportunities, and law firm considerations like alternative fee arrangements, and the role of technology and innovation in legal project management.
Fall 2023 Term II:
LAW/MA 508 - eLawyering (3 units)
October 23rd, 2023 - December 17th, 2023
This course focuses on the overlap between business, technology, and the legal industry. Topics are segmented into three discrete areas of study: Legal Innovation; Automation and AI; and Data. The legal innovation section will offer students a glimpse into the future of legal practice as well as alternative legal services. Both the ethical considerations and career implications will be covered while exposing students to online legal marketing and online practice management. The section covering automation and artificial intelligence will show the efficiency of these technical legal services and lawyer augmentations with careful attention to automation governance and embedded bias. The data portion of the course will touch on data used for legal prediction, eDiscovery and ESI, and privacy and security in the legal sector. Each section of the course will focus on what modern legal service and how insights from other disciplines have disrupted the status quo. The course also considers the secondary effects on law, the legal profession, and legal services likely to arise from the addition of technology to many legal tasks.
LLL 508 - eLawyering, MCLE Skills Component ONLY (1 unit)
October 23rd, 2023 - December 17th, 2023
The skills portion of this course will focus on writing and publishing blogs as an advertising tool for lawyers and legal professionals and the use of ChatGPT by legal professional. The ethical considerations of legal professional blogging and the technical aspects of setting up and publishing a blog will be examined. The ChatGPT section will offer guidance on prompt engineering and how to use ChatGPT for legal tasks ethically.
LAW/MA 524 - Blockchain, Smart Contracts, and Computational Law (3 units)
October 23rd, 2023 - December 17th, 2023
The public debate about smart contracts, blockchain, and computational law is filled with alarms and elevated expectations. Blockchain technology gives us the framework to create a shared ledger system where various parties can report their compliance data/documentation, property records may be store, personal identities can be managed, corporate governance may be automated, and decentralized currency may be exchanged. Smart contracts make use of the blockchain to execute, control or document legally relevant events and actions according to the terms of a contract or an agreement. Computational law addresses the automation of legal reasoning to support transactions and compliance. The topics examined in this course will include formalism versus contextualism, form versus context, distributed ledgers, smart contract enforceability, blockchain regulation, and automated compliance.