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Daily Archives: February 5, 2019

Thinking or Acting Like A Lawyer? What We Don’t Know About Legal Education and are Afraid to Ask

Menkel-Meadow, Carrie J., Thinking or Acting Like A Lawyer? What We Don’t Know About Legal Education and are Afraid to Ask (January 23, 2019). Book chapter in The State of Legal Education Research: Then and Now and Tomorrow (Ben Golder, Marina Nehme, Alex Steel and Prue Vines, eds. TaylorFrancis/Routledge, Forthcoming 2019; UC Irvine School of Law Research Paper No. 2019-07. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3321352

“This essay (the keynote address at International Conference on Research on Legal Education at the University of New South Wales, December 3-5 2017) reviews the “Big Bangs” in American legal education from “thinking like a lawyer” (classical Socratic education), developing legal theory, critical thinking, jurisprudence, critical legal studies, critical race and feminist theory, “acting like a lawyer” (clinical and experiential educaton), “being a lawyer,” (legal ethics and professional responsibility education, socio-legal and law economics study (“law and…….”), and comparative, internationalization and globalization studies. The essay then queries whether “law and technology or artificial intelligence” suggests a new era of legal education or “the end of lawyers and legal education” as we know it. (Answer: No). The essay identifies some things we know about these different contributions to legal education, but also suggests important questions that require further empirical study to test the various claims made about the best ways to structure legal education. Should one size fit all? How might the modern world finally come to grips with models of education developed in the nineteenth century that are often still in use. How is legal education variable in different legal systems—are we converging or diverging in legal pedagogy?”

The Law Firm Chief Innovation Officer: Goals, Roles, and Holes

DeStefano, Michele, The Law Firm Chief Innovation Officer: Goals, Roles, and Holes (November 11, 2018). University of Miami Legal Studies Research Paper No. 18-39. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3282729 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3282729: “So many lawyers are sick of hearing that they must “innovate or die,” yet their clients call for innovation continues to be loud; and, although… Continue Reading

Building habit not pageview matters most for keeping subscribers

Poynter: “As online advertising lags, many local news organizations are shifting their strategy to focus on reader-based revenue models, especially digital subscriptions, as a path to financial sustainability and greater community service. That pivot is redefining the goals for many news outlets. Rather than chasing viral “clicks” to boost ad revenue, they are trying to… Continue Reading

DAP: Digital Analytics Program

“The Digital Analytics Program (DAP) offers advanced, easy Web analytics to federal agencies. The program is a hosted shared service provided by GSA’s Technology Transformation Service. On November 8, 2016, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a memorandum on Policies for Federal Agency Public Websites and Digital Services, which requires federal agencies to… Continue Reading

Pulse – How federal government domains are meeting best practices on the web

“Pulse is a project of the General Services Administration that measures how U.S. government domains are following best practices for federal websites. Pulse is also an experiment built on automated tools, and is probably not perfect. Pulse measures domains over the public internet using open source tools, and its results can be reviewed by anyone.… Continue Reading

Majority of government data analytics site traffic now from mobile devices

analytics.usa.gov: “This data provides a window into how people are interacting with the government online. The data comes from a unified Google Analytics account for U.S. federal government agencies known as the Digital Analytics Program. This program helps government agencies understand how people find, access, and use government services online. The program does not track… Continue Reading

Smartphone Ownership Is Growing Rapidly Around the World, but Not Always Equally

Pew – In emerging economies, technology use still much more common among young people and the well-educated: “Mobile technology has spread rapidly around the globe. Today, it is estimated that more than 5 billion people have mobile devices, and over half of these connections are smartphones. But the growth in mobile technology to date has… Continue Reading

“Do Not Track” Setting Doesn’t Stop You from Being Tracked

DuckDuckGo Report: “Most browsers have a “Do Not Track” (DNT) setting that sends “a special signal to websites, analytics companies, ad networks, plug in providers, and other web services you encounter while browsing, to stop tracking your activity.” Sounds good, right? Sadly, it’s not effective. That’s because this Do Not Track setting is only a… Continue Reading