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John Flood chairs a debate on the impact of the Cloud on law and legal education #LawTechCampLondon 2012
[This blogpost gives accounts as if the own words of the speakers involved. The author does not take responsibility for the accuracy of information contained therein.]
Track One: Law + Tech: Advances Online, in the Cloud and with the Crowd (Methven Room)
Moderator: Prof. John Flood, University of Westminster
Extra talk
Computers will cut down the head count by 15%. The legal market may require new services from distress goods to consumer goods, from only when they need lawyers when things are bad, to providing law services otherwise. We ideally want to change from a Martini glass to a beaker glass.
First step: connect with law firms.
You then have to provide new services which are not currently been offered. For example, lawyers can provide services for them to plan their lives. You can also brand ‘family legal check-ups’, i.e. seeing a lawyer even if you’re not sick. One of the services could be, for example, a credit check. A way forward would be to pay into untapped markets, and perhaps create a Google or Apple system where lawyers can continually think about new products and services, and to deliver them in a new way. Not all clients are currently online, but future clients will be online. You need an accessible website.
Tom McGinn, Director of Business Development, VirtualCourthouse
Virtual Courthouse is a startup in Washington. Low income individuals are being priced out of the law. Online dispute resolution and self-litigation are important new areas. There is no right to civil legal aid in the US. How is the Legal Services Corporation faring? Currently, the ratio of legal aid lawyers to low income individuals is 1:6,415. More people are entitled to legal aid, but also the legal aid services budget is being cut. More and more people are going thirsty, and there is less water available. In 2011, 72,900 represented themselves in the federal courts (20% of all cases filed). 1:5 in Americans therefore represent themselves in court, as they cannot afford one. Litigants put themselves at a huge disadvantage, as they do not understand the nature of the legal system; it is analogous to an emergency room, and the emergency room cannot cope. What is the solution to this? Alternative dispute resolution is far from a new idea, for example Plato ‘The Laws’ and Abraham Lincoln has provided a description thus: “discourage litigation: the nominal winner is often the loser in fees, expense and cost of time”. Technology can help us drive the most efficient way of doing something: disputes settled with live litigators but with the help of technology, and disputes settled entirely through technology. This was touched upon in Prof. Susskind’s keynote speech. ‘Cybersettle’ (online dispute resolution) has saved $11.3mn http://www.cybersettle.com/pub/ ?#LawTechCamp?
Josh Blackman, Asst. Professor, South Texas Law, Creator of FantasySCOTUS.net, Harlan Institute
Disruptive technology is changing how we do law. ‘Law’s Information Revolution’ involves disruptive technology. People can make predictions – this crowd-sources the prediction market, based on ‘The wisdom of the crowds’ by James Surowiecki. Most people involved with the judicial system interact with the lower courts. There are inherent problems therefore in crowd-sourcing, therefore. Assisted decision-making can instead help make decisions, with the help of ‘Super Crunchers’ (Ian Ayres). Individuals have capabilities which are limited. In the US, we use ‘PACER‘ which is not free, and close sourced. It’s a very good money-maker, but the information is there. Law is like data, and there are facts and trends lying there, like “The Matrix”. Another example is Harland which has used the PACER data which can track the timeline which we have developed, and events can be linked easily. For example, one could ask what cases are Google currently involved in? It would be very difficult to track this without such a platform. Take another example: imagine if you have an app where you could ask to ask, “I want to draft to draft a contract which…” or “My landlord won’t fix my problem” – regarding the latter, the app could produce various options.
Dr. Adam Wyner, University of Liverpool
“We want to lead law students astray, because we’re bad” Lots of open, unstructured legal data, so how do you find the information you need? Law students highlight information by highlighting different text, however this is time-consuming. We wish to create an open-source resource which can allow information-extraction, used by law students interested in case analysis, but it would be a nice tool to incorporate into law school classes. We are targeting the same type of annotations which law schools already use – there will be a tool to analyse conflicts. A blog explaining this is here. There is additional semantic meaning which is mapped onto the annotation, for example information about the appellant, jurisdiction or defendant. The legal case factors are also interesting, and very important for legal case-based reasoning. Research from intellectual property can find the textual basis in deducing the legal basis of intellectual property cases, in working out whether cases are sufficiently similar. A gold-standard can be found on the basis of inter-annotator agreement; they then curate the disagreements to create a Gold Standard corpus. You can also search the annotations using a tool such as ANNIC. We’re academics, and we’re making these data helpful to the public.
Richard Cohen, Executive Chairman & Group Counsel, Epoq
This topic is on online automatic automation. Epoq is the largest provider of online legal services which provided 390,000 drafting services. We have 300 different legal document/form drafting services. We use an online automation platform, and currently the ‘brand behind the brand’ allowing others to ‘dig for the gold’. We provide the platform for about 350 banks and a relatively small number of law firms (“early adopter firms”). The client’s journey begins with a phone call – there may then be an online interview, the client buy service, lawyer review, and the document is prepared. The phone call is an example of ‘quick registration’ – e.g. a client needs a will, e-mail goes to the client, the client gets sent an e-mail to request specific information. The client has access to helpful notes in the Q&A process, and these are the same questions which a real lawyer would ask. In most cases, the lawyer is in fact more interested in the answers than the actual document itself, but the document is nonetheless reviewed in detail. At the end of the process, the document can be exported into Word or as a pdf – the system will notify the client that the document is ready for execution, or it is necessary for the client to come into the office. How does this compare to traditional delivery of documents today? The current system is very inefficient: a will with power-of-attorney would normally cost £750, and take about 3 hours (private client work). 969 were wills and lasting powers-of-attorney for husband and wives – it is uncertain how many people will engage with the business as these legal services will normally be bundled with other services like life insurance. Lawyers are changing – it is cultural, like working with pens. Law firms in England and Wales are managed by partnership, just a collection of sole practitioners working in a big building, and even if there is management it is very poor on change.
Raj Abhyanker, CEO @ Trademarkia.com
This is a search engine for logos, trademarks and brands. They can find Apple’s latest product, or J-Lo’s latest perfume. We attract 1.7 million unique people/month allowing us to monetise, such that we are now the largest trademark in the firm. I created ‘Google Offers’, which is the Google alternative to Groupon. How can law firms move forward? Quality Lawyers, Legal Zoom and Rocket Lawyer are the competitors. The real market is international, the power of the internet, and a global structure. Lawyers and law firms will adapt to a new reality, and attorneys will be accessible to people in a new way (no amount of automation can replace face-to-face law). The belief is to create ‘retail spaces’, which are not law firms, but are the bookstores or coffee shops of law. You can access your law through an #ipad – this is a ‘coal hub and spoke’ opening at University Avenue, Legal Force Trademarks. The key to creating legal space – and we are measuring ROI for everything we do. If I have an online presence in London, I can be at an advantage, and producing a pool of lawyers through collaboration is much stronger. The ROIs have to be shown to the actual law firms. The distance between one solicitor and another, in one of the competitors, is quite large, and we are trying to create a hub and specific ‘brand experience’. My tips are:
1. When you dream, dream big
2. Plant trees today, harvest in 500 years (Oxford trees)
3. Best lawyers and web entrepreneurs are psychiatrists.
4.Appreciate lawyers who like law, but find the rare breed who challenge it.
In discussing the 'market' of education, people are ignoring the elephant in the room
I accept that a basic issue is that the law schools and law providers are perhaps overproducing lawyers. The Bar Council and Bar Standards Board, potentially, should not fundamentally be concerned with this abundance of law graduates as their position always has been that the legal profession does not owe students a living. This is obviously hard to reconcile with any claims that the legal profession is making genuine progress in tackling social mobility and inclusivity.
Many students may be feel that they were led up-the-garden-path, in feeling that they would not have done the LPC or BPTC had they known that the odds were stacked against them in getting a pupillage or training contract – but would they do the course again? Some would say that – in this economic climate – there exists many people in many other careers are not guaranteed any job at the end of an education which they pay for. Even the Department of Health is beginning to talk about how there might not be enough preclinical posts for people who have completed a six-year degree in medicine (which is longer than 4 years, quite clearly.) After all, there is nothing to stop potential students doing due diligence about their potential job prospects after they qualify – but, then again, this should ideally be given before commencement of a legal education, and the problem is that due to the changing political, economic and social circumstances these data are likely to be updated on a frequent basis.
Law schools and law providers, under the auspices of the Bar Standards Board and Solicitors Regulation Authority, are able to choose their precise teaching methods against the background of an agreed curriculum. The discussion always has been latterly how entities such as BPP, Kaplan, the City Law School, and College of Law (and a handful of other providers) can, as businesses, ‘overproduce’ students. But this is to do the economic analysis of the markets a great disservice.
The starting point of any discussion of their business models, I personally feel, must be that they are oligopolies. The starting point should not be that they act as part of larger entities, and thus can price things competitively to increase market share. That is precisely not what is happening. They are not price-skimming, offering lower prices to increase market share. They are in fact increasing their fees, and this is having little effect on demand – i.e. their courses are relatively price inelastic. The starting point is not even then they can offer cheaper courses as a result of economies of scale – the criticism levied by students who can’t get jobs is in fact the courses are overpriced for what they are. The strategic positioning of private universities is in fact not to equate low price with cheap – but to equate a reasonable value with high value – in fact there is an argument for these businesses/legal education providers to be able to provide a ‘premium’ legal education, appropriately priced, in the same way that some people prefer FairTrade Coffee to Morrisons Own Brand. You don’t have to go very far in the analysis of markets in the UK to see how such market failures can get exacerbated through oligopolistic situations – take for example the utilities, where it can be successfully argued that high shareholder dividend has not always been matched by a high-quality, low-price offering. This is what we wish to avoid in education (and in the provision of professional legal services) too, surely?
The critical starting point of any discussion of business models, as for example in excellent, informed and interesting analysis by @charonqc, in my personal view only must instead be to acknowledge honestly that BPP, the City Law School, Kaplan and the College of Law, and a small number of “noteable others”, are oligopolies. In other words, in an entirely legal way, a low number of suppliers have enormous bargaining strength, discouraging market entry, and can mutually collude to keep their prices high as they can get away with it. That is what the precise economic argument is. That is what the Bar Council and Bar Standards Board have to get their head around in the pupillage debate – but unfortunately they do not owe qualified students a job. The problem is that these high prices are preventing diversification of a customer base, so that only people who can afford it now wish to risk finances on a legal education. The way to get round this in traditional management theory is to increase the number of suppliers so that market goes from being an oligopoly to one that goes 60% the way towards perfect competition. In the oligopolistic market thus far, there is not much of a relationship between supply and demand which is related to cost, but this relationship would be much stronger if there were simply more legal education providers on the market. And that means logically that we simply need more education providers for more students being trained at a lower price.
The problem is that you can’t have your cake and eat it. By not addressing the oligopoly point, you are not addressing the issue that more lawyers could be trained for cheaper – this is the basis of utilitarian justice. However, the problem would then be an explosion of potential market entrants applying for pupillages or training contracts. If there are more potential lawyers on the market, that surely ideally is good – as in the same way as people will always need medics, people will always need lawyers? Is there genuinely a shortage of legal work internationally? If you are not claiming that there is a shortage of legal work internationally, then perhaps you are getting closer to the root of the problem. And that is that the traditional business model of the law firms themselves is faulty. This might also help to explain why many newly-qualifieds don’t get jobs either – are the facts of this laid bare by the profession either?
Our new podcast on legal education
Thank you to Katie (head of the BPP Legal Awareness Society podcast team, and current BPP student on the GDL) and Quennezy (BPP Legal Awareness Society, and current BPP student on the BPTC) for recording this podcast on behalf of the Society on legal education.
In this short podcast of about 8 minutes (there is silence for the first 12 seconds or so of this podcast), Katie and Quennezy consider whether the current curriculum is ‘fit for purpose’ based on their own experiences, and whether legal recruiters are justified in selecting people from a II.1 (or above) pool, or a pool of Oxbridge graduates. We hope very much you enjoy your podcast. Many thanks to Matthew Clarke aka @kernowpods for recording our new jingles just before Christmas last year!
Have we got an objects-focused curriculum?
Roll over “outcomes-focused regulation” being implemented by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The current core syllabus for the Legal Practice Course, the stage of legal training prior to the training contract, provides for a “objects-focused curriculum’.
Inevitably, the bread-and-butter of law will be the documents. Indeed, the Business Law Practice glides effortlessly through the documentation required to ensure shareholder dividend for an English company, and even completes the story by describing the document required for a company to end. People aren’t involved in business and solicitors accounts obviously; numbers are.
People are an occupational hazard in civil and criminal litigation, civil litigation taking pride-of-place of course in the context of what happens when individuals sue companies or companies sue companies. “Objects-focused curriculum” is in a world of own of course when land is considered for an entire subject.
It is no wonder that the English company and inanimate objects figure prominently in the Legal Practice Course. However, law indeed has to respond to some of the problems of society in general, which includes – but does not include exclusively – companies. There is absolutely no doubt that professional ethics, practical legal research, and other skills should be part of the new-look Legal Practice Course, but it would be nice if the Legal Practice Course did not take an agenda which is entirely shareholder-focused.
It is pitiful that a law student can get to the training contract, if he is lucky enough to be offered a training contract at all from a large corporate, without knowing a basic minimum of information about immigration, asylum, welfare benefits or employment? But these involve stakeholders don’t they? They’d be rather out-of-place in an ‘objects-focused curriculum’.
Here are some other nice objects, anyway…
Book review: "Affect and legal education", edited by Paul Maharg and Caroline Maughan
“Affect and legal education: emotion in learning and teaching the law” edited by Paul Maharg and Caroline Maughan, Ashgate Publishing Limited
A link to the book is here; it is available on Amazon UK here.
It is a very major mistake to divorce cognition and emotion. Cognition and emotion are necessarily linked – that is how the human brain works, it is thought. It is impossible for the brain to formulate complicated higher order differential equations from scratch, and then solve them quickly, in response to the right questions. That’s why the million billion neurones of the human brain uses shortcuts to make decisions, often on incomplete information. Even more significantly, human-beings need to be behave with another with a socially competent manner, and to understand each other reasonably accurately. As a practical issue, it is dangerous to believe that you can predict future performance solely on the basis of complex higher cognition. In addition to emotion, the individual needs to be highly motivated. This sophisticated book on affect and legal eduction is the first to provide a comprehensive account of the importance of emotion and legal education, and makes important steps into understanding that the outcome of a successful education in terms of the aspirations of both the teacher and the student.
This book is well written. Even though the book is multi-authored, the style is consistent and coherent, and I found this book of enormous value across a diverse range of subjects. It is also immaculately evidenced, making it a robust and forceful argument for an agenda for a change in legal education. Maharg and Maughan demonstrate considerable leadership in considering the right topics. I feel also that the book is inherently innovative, in that it is likely that many individuals responding to this book, including student, teacher and lawyer, will do so in remarkably different ways, but much of the future strength of this book is the content generated by the users’ responses to the complex issues raised.
The book has a very clear structure. Part 1 considers affect, legal education and neuroscience, Part 2 considers affect and legal educators, and Part 3 considers affect and learning. The book collectively forces the reader to consider how the efficacy of education depends upon an individual’s reaction and interaction with it, and obliges the reader to consider what exactly the outcomes of education are (and whether they should matter). There are so many microstories told within this book which I adore. One for example is the account of FR Leavis, who was not appointed to a full lectureship at Cambridge until the age of 52, and was not even elevated to Reader until 64; in fact, he only obtained his Chair after he retired from Cambridge, going to the University of York. There are too many strands for me to cover them in a single book review, but I should like to mention two chapters in particular.
Chapter 9 is entitled, “What students care about, and why we should care” by Graham Ferris and Rebecca Huxley-Binns. My reaction to this chapter was one of enormous excitement, in fact. Ferris and Huxley-Binns advance a hypothesis that a curriculum design which ignores the motivation of students (perhaps in joining a caring profession), and notion of self-worth, will run into trouble. This simple idea is extremely elegant, and in fact in my view fully evidenced from neuropsychology. One’s perception of contentment will suffer if there is a mismatch between expectation and outcome, and so therefore it is essential to consider what motivates the student. The authors make reference to the seminal work of Frankfurt, and for me this hypothesis has at its roots Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. As a lawyer becomes more senior, compared to his or her stage as a fee-earner in a corporate firm, it may be that a lawyer becomes less concerned about paying off his mortgage, although that presumably will remain important. It may become more about whether he or she feels a difference is being made. The authors avoid the issue about what money is as a reinforcing factor, and in fact it was the view of my doctoral supervisor at Cambridge, the Head of Department there, that money is at best considered a “higher order motivating factor”.
Furthermore, I do not know whether Ferris and Huxley-Binns stumbled on distress as a relevant topic simply by seeing what goes wrong in legal education. However, the debate which they have introduced is directly relevant and important to modern cognitive neuroscience. The rejection of a mind-body separation is inherent to Damasio’s ‘somatic marker hypothesis’, and some cognitive neuroscientists now consider anxiety states as being where the human brain is not able to process body states adequately. Damasio’s work is directly relevant here as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is considered to be crucial in producing an emotional state, using information about bodily states gained elsewhere in the cerebral cortex, and outputs through the autonomic nervous system in the spinal cord.
Therefore, in many ways, Ferris and Huxley-Binns’ argument is ahead of its time, and merits further consideration. The mind itself can produce a perception of abnormal physiological states, as demonstrated in the hugely complicated somatisation disorders. It matters to people that they care about things, and the authors argue that this must be taken account of legal education. This goes to the heart of all communication – actually asking what the other party wants. This error in legal training can be seen at all levels of legal education, and it is extremely useful that Ferris and Huxley-Binns requests that this should be confronted, not least because it maybe an affront to autonomy otherwise, a central tenet of ethics. I particularly liked the very clever argument, based on the historical work by Lepper and Greene (1975) and others, that rewards could in fact be demotivating (‘self-determination theory’), and the authors made their observations extremely relevant to the high motivational value of optional courses such as mooting. Therefore, in summary, the chapter is not only a sophisticated synthesis of neuroscience, philosophy, ethics and education from an academic perspective, it is also highly useful in the practitioner setting for the design of better course. The notion of ‘primum non nocere’ (at first do no harm) in assessment procedures is not lost on me. This, I feel, is a cautionary tale for those designing exit exams in the BPTC, or entrance exams such as the Bar Course Appraisal Test, proposed recently by the Bar Standards Board.
Chapter 13 is entitled, “Space, absence and silence: the intimate dimensions of legal learning” by Paul Maharg. I found this chapter challenging, extremely intelligent and delightful. In this chapter, Paul describes how spaces are formed, the meanings of space and what uses space can be put to, potentially, amongst other subplots. I feel the beauty of this chapter is in fact in the neuroscience which is not discussed. Firstly, it is now known that object and space perception happens in two distinct streams in the human brain, and it is thought that part of the reason why humans have so many neurones is that their brains participate in what is commonly known as ‘the binding problem‘. In other words, the brain, somewhere and somehow, produces a combined perception of the outside world, and this is somehow linked to the emotional and motivational state of the individual. Hence the discussion of how you listen to John Cage’s 4′ 33″ sensibly arises.
Secondly, but more importantly, it is the acknowledgement that group decision-making is intrinsically different from the sum of the parts of individual decision-making that is potentially extremely fruitful; another gestalt phenomenon. This helps one to understand the critical importance of working in teams, often cited as important in the corporate legal culture, as to how decisions are arrived at in terms of the logic as well as the social interaction between the participants. The second case study on communication, space and emotion is therefore extremely rich. Its relevance to students in law schools, for example in doing the GDL or LPC, is immediately obvious; it is also easy to see how corporate teams may function or malfunction in the context of high-end transactions; or it can be used to understand why the social brains of jury members collectively return one verdict rather than another.
To conclude, I strongly recommend this book, if you are a law student, teacher, lawyer or other member of society. The complex concepts are sufficiently well explained that any reasonable person should be able to understand them, and the book is important for three huge reasons. It is carefully researched, and is an articulate picture of various interdiscipinary strands connecting affect, emotion and legal education. Secondly, if the right questions are asked, it will take the quality of legal education (and its assessment) much further, as well as the work of those in academic or practitioner circles. Thirdly, it is way ahead of its time.
References
Lepper, M, Greene, D. (1975) Turning play into work: effects of adult surveillance and extrinsic rewards on children’s intrinsic motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Research 31: 479-86.
BPP student societies podcast: legal aid and access to justice
It was with massive pleasure that, after a morning looking at the corporate strategy of Tesco as part of my MBA, I managed to make it to go to the BPP Law School at Holborn. There, I managed to bump into, by accident, Ray Stewart who has made a massive, beneficial impact on me personally as Learning Support Officer for BPP. His role at our University College is enormous, and it never fails to amaze me how much he gets done on behalf of all of us.
Our team of six podcasters (aside from me) was meticulously prepared, and knew their subjects backwards. We appeared to enjoy recording them, so much so we’ll be doing some more shortly, we hope. The podcasters are all students at BPP, and happen to be doing either the Graduate Diploma in Law or the Legal Practice Course prior to their training contracts.
In this final podcast, for the time-being, we discuss whether the legal aid cuts are a big deal or not, but in a wide-ranging discussion we go onto discuss whether it’s possible to be a self-litigant these days and what the point of a solicitor is. We hope you enjoy listening to the podcast as much as we enjoyed making them.
The podcasts are a joint initiative between the BPP student societies, the BPP Commercial Awareness Society and the Legal Awareness Society. The views expressed in this podcast are personal views of the student contributors, and cannot be taken to be legal advice of any description. They do not represent any official views of BPP.
Have a nice weekend. Please follow @legalaware on Twitter, the official Twitter thread of the Legal Awareness Society, one of the student societies at BPP. You can find details about the Legal Awareness Society and the Commercial Awareness Society on the official BPP students website here.
Law schools need to manage great expectations
Now, I return to this young fellow. And the communication I have got to make is, that he has great expectations.
Great Expectations
Mr Jaggers about Pip, Chapter 18.
The reason that I am writing this blog post is because of a recent podcast entitled, “Lawcast 181: Baroness Deech, Chair of The Bar Standards Board on legal education and the regulation of the profession”
I really enjoyed this thought-provoking and interesting podcast, which I think is highly relevant to my arm of the profession too: the solicitors. I am one of hundreds of thousands bombarding the corporate law firms with my training contract application. Without a training contract, I can’t actually be admitted to the Roll of Solicitors. This obviously concerns me. The bottom line: there are thousands of students who won’t get Pupillages either, as the market is so intensively competitive.
That is why I applaud Baroness Deech so much for raising awareness of issues which are extremely important to me as a student. I am yet to do my LPC, which I will do at BPP (Waterloo) between January and September 2012, although I have completed my LLM at the College of Law (2008-2010) and GDL at BPP (2006-2008). My first five degrees were in medicine and biological natural sciences at Cambridge; as I obtained the second highest First there and my PhD following AAAA11 at A level, I can put myself firmly into the ‘academic’ camp. The further aspect to my application, which I tend not to reveal, is my strong research output in frontotemporal dementia, for reasons I’ll explain later. I decided to study law late in my life, as I became strongly interested in aspects of the law by accident (e.g. constitutional issues, regulation of financial services, access to justice) and I wished to pursue a formal qualification in it. I have no reservations about pursuing corporate law either.
I only passed my GDL, but I spent 50% of it in a wheelchair doing it by distance learning because of a two month coma due to meningitis which left me disabled. I am aware of the arguments that law course providers “mass-produce graduates” akin to a sausage factory, but in my case BPP were extraordinarily flexible and compassionate about completion of my GDL. I have loved my time there, not only because of the actual course, but because of the people that I’ve met. Many of the well-known corporate firms have told me that, whilst their official criterion is AAB at A level and a II.1, the vast majority of their good candidates have considerably better qualifications, but they can only invite a small proportion to interview. Some law firms have an intake of even 5-10 per session. My GDL pass is ‘tolerated’, only given my extenuating circumstances, I feel. I happen to believe that 20 problem questions across 7 topics in the GDL, compared to 12 difficult essays in my Finals, does not reveal much about how one can analyse different sides of an argument critically, in the first place, but my views on this are utterly irrelevant. They must surely be testing different things, and I hope that the Joint Academic Stage Board are able to make sense of this. My LLM commendation “looks better”, but one firm indeed wanted a Distinction.
There are other questions on the application form for training contracts which raise eyebrows with me. One is the “Why law?” question, but there are people who have genuinely questioned my commitment to being a legal practitioner given my academic publications record. I run myself a student society to raise awareness of how commercial and legal worlds interact (http://legal-aware.org), but I often find students reluctant to take part unless there’s something in it for them (like, for example, a training contract application mention). I feel strongly now that law schools now need to offer quality careers advice in careers other than law, such as teaching, the financial services or charity work (e.g. in human rights). Notwithstanding that, I feel sorry for the fact that law firms have to ask this question at the point before offering a training contract, when one feels that this should have been addressed prior to assumption of a GDL/LPC/BPTC place.
The next obvious way to tackle the “Why law?” question might be therefore to cite legal experience. Whilst firms have told me officially that it doesn’t matter whether this work experience is legal or not, invariably at interview partners have asked me about my relative lack of work experience. The “social mobility” component to this is that I am now prepared to take out a loan for this – as it happens, I believe that chambers should not have to pay their interns to offer them at all. I am far too old for most solicitor vac schemes. I am now thankfully doing pro bono work at a London law centre in employment and discrimination law, and it’s great as I really want to do it as I am myself disabled, but some firms apparently wish to see ‘corporate work-experience’. This is particularly pertinent in the “Why does the culture of our firm suit you?” question. Perhaps, it’s hard to justify applying to Gordon Ramsay when all you have worked for is Burger King.
I happen to think that any education is worthwhile, as you never know when you’ll need to use it. A Professor in Law at the University of London once told me this. I am currently doing a MBA, and when I told a Legal Graduate Recruitment Advisor that I am not trying really hard to get a distinction in it but that I was doing it because I really loved how businesses operate, she sounded much less than pleased. So should it matter if you come from a ‘non-legal route’ or ‘legal route’? I argue that it shouldn’t, in the face of all those law firms who have ignored my undergraduate and doctoral studies. Should it matter I’m not a great linguist? I am learning five languages, albeit at basic level. And so we could go on.
This all is leading to my conclusion that Law Schools need to take ‘expectation management’ more seriously than they ever used to. BPP Law School prides itself as being one of the leading providers of vocational education. The School is now able to award degrees following approval from the Privy Council. The Bar Standards Board has required BPP to appoint an independent statistician to review all available admissions data for the previous 5 years and clarify that in his/her professional opinion the number of offers that BPP wishes to make should not lead to over-recruitment.
However, critically, I do not believe that BPP is unilaterally responsible for this overload in the job market.
So, finally, I should like to thank Baroness Deech enormously for making me think about such issues.
"Second Life" – the results of the BPP Legal Incite survey 2011
A common strand underlies much of what we do: the law, legal education and legal services. That is in real life. These days, technological developments are also driving fundamental changes in customer behaviour and expectations. This creates exciting opportunities for businesses that use such communications. It especially throws up the challenge of finding better ways of engaging with customers. Law schools and professional legal services firms are themselves businesses, are keen to position themselves in the market using such innovative advantages. This article is about the world of “SL” (SL), one very important contemporary example.
The LegalIncite “SL” Survey 2011
To get an overview of current attitudes to SL, a survey was advertised on the BPP VLE Blackboard (“the Survey”), Twitter and Facebook. There were 20 respondents in total; this article will refer to main findings from this small study where relevant. There was an even spread of ages from 16 to 63. 95% of these said they enjoy using computers, and 85% said they are good at using computers. However, only 26% said they would wish to join SL currently.
History
SL is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab, which was launched on June 23, 2003. SL users, called Residents, interact with each other through avatars. Residents can explore the world (known as “the grid”), meet other residents, socialise, participate in individual and group activities, and even create and trade virtual property and services with one another. Since opening in 2003, “SL” has experienced strong growth. Now some 1.3 million people around the world log on to live out their second lives.
The economy
SL has an internal economy and internal currency, the Linden dollar (L$). L$ can be used to buy, sell, rent or trade land or goods and services with other users. Virtual goods include buildings, vehicles, devices of all kinds, animations, clothing, skin, hair, jewelry, flora and fauna, and works of art. Services include “camping”, wage labour, and business management. L$ can be purchased using US Dollars and other currencies on the LindeX exchange provided by Linden Lab, independent brokers or other resident users. Profits are derived from selling virtual goods, renting land, and a broad range of services. 84% in our survey said that they did not like this notion of real-life money being exchanged for L$.
Many argue that it is impossible to divorce SL from regulation. On July 26, 2007, Linden Lab announced a ban on “in-world gambling”, in fear that new regulations on Internet gambling could affect Linden Lab if it was permitted to continue. The ban was immediately met with in-world protests. 74% of respondents in our Survey felt there should be laws on gambling.
Law School
At Harvard, Charles Nesson, the Weld professor of law, is offering “CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion,” not only to Harvard Law School (HLS) students, but also to Extension School students as well as Internet users across the globe. Nesson drummed up interest in his ‘filled-to-capacity’ course through a YouTube promotional tape in which he describes its content after a dramatic entrance on a scooter. The tape is mostly narrated by his avatar, a significantly younger-looking SL persona. His daughter, Rebecca N. Nesson , a Harvard Law School graduate and Harvard computer science doctoral candidate who is co-teaching the course, also makes an appearance in the promo, saying, “in SL, the possibilities of what we can do are endless” as she, in fact, transforms into a butterfly.
Legal services
Across the pond, Field Fisher Waterhouse (FFW), which has a substantial media, technology and intellectual property service, has become the first major, international law firm in England to open an office in a virtual world. David Naylor is the FFW partner behind the initiative, and apparently found much support from FFW in investing in this project given its existing client-base; his avatar is “Solomon Cortes”.
The two-storey virtual office boasts the same meeting rooms, corporate art collection and giant presentation screens that can be found at any self-respecting City firm. It even includes a roof terrace with a water feature. Multi-national businesses such as Dell, Nike, Mercedes and Calvin Klein have sought to establish their brands in SL and David hopes that having a virtual presence will help attract them as clients in the “real world”.
Various corporates have already expanded their branding to virtual environments too. Nike has a virtual clothing store, and car manufacturers such as Nissan, Pontiac and Toyota have entered SL. There are even businesses that specialize in launching and integrating real-world brands into the virtual world
SL is not yet sufficiently developed for a debate to have taken place over which, if any, legal jurisdiction applies. However, David insists that, with real business being carried out and real money changing hands albeit in SL’s own virtual currency, companies operating there need legal advice. So far the list of businesses operating in the virtual world is not limited to standard retailers with a tangible product to sell. Professional advisers such as ABN Amro, Accenture and PA Consulting have already established a presence and rumours are circulating that several accountancy firms are planning similar moves.
In addition to attracting new clients and winning publicity for the firm, David believes his new office can be used to help existing clients and staff by hosting virtual seminars, conferences and training days. It will also be a useful recruitment tool in the increasingly competitive market for young legal talent. Like real life, there is a close relationship emerging between legal education and professional legal services.
The Law
An impressive 79% in our Survey felt that SL needed some sort of regulation, but a smaller proportion (63%) believed there should be a ‘comprehensive set of laws’.
It is estimated that each day in excess of $1 million USD worth of transactions take place in SL. Therefore, it is no surprise that the virtual economy of SL has resulted in trademark and copyright infringement lawsuits being brought in U.S. courts. In a lawsuit filed on October 24, 2007 in the Eastern District of New York, a group of virtual merchants selling virtual products in SL sued Thomas Simon. The virtual merchant appellants claimed that Simon willfully made unauthorised copies of their copyright and trademark protected products, and Simon misrepresented that the products he sells are authentic ones. The appellants sold adult-themed virtual items, including furniture, shoes, and skins to cover the avatars. The complaint included claims of unfair competition under Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act, copyright infringement under the U.S. Copyright Act, and counterfeiting of a registered trademark. This case settled in December 2007.
Bragg v Linden Labs (2007)
Indeed, real life can meet the virtual world of SL. In 2006, Pennsylvania lawyer Marc Bragg (“Marc Woebegone” in SL) brought a lawsuit against Linden Lab, when his account was unilaterally disabled by SL administrators. Linden Lab claimed that Marc Bragg had violated their Terns of Service by URL-hacking the SL virtual land auction website in order to gain access to otherwise unavailable auctions. As a result, Bragg was able to purchase virtual land within SL valued at $1,000 for approximately $300. Bragg’s account was suspended while Linden Lab conducted an investigation, and later closed completely. Bragg argued that by closing his account, Linden Lab also dissolved his virtual assets, which he valued at between US$4,000 and US$6,000.
This case was particularly interesting as the Court held an arbitration clause within Linden Lab’s Terms of Service – a web-based ‘clickwrap’ agreement – to be invalid. The clause was held to be unconscionable as there was no room for negotiation, the clause was inconspicuously printed, and since no other virtual world offered ownership rights, Bragg was deemed to have no alternative market choice. Additionally, the arbitration procedure was deemed too expensive to offer Bragg any realistic recourse for disputing Linden Lab’s actions. However, overall, ss proceedings continued to advance, perhaps the most interesting aspect of this case to date has been the Court’s willingness to engage with the concept of virtual property rights.
Conclusion
In less than a decade, a virtual world has evolved at a staggeringly fast rate. In this time, businesses for products and services have evolved, but so also has the scope for problems. Like real life, the law has developed to try to solve these problems, and it may be getting to the stage now where it can begin to anticipate new problems. It remains to be seen whether a set of comprehensive laws will develops, and what jurisdiction these laws will have, or whether the law will progress on a case-by-case basis as a judge-made law. Whatever the exact mode of evolution, innovative and talented lawyers will be especially keen to follow the progress of SL, in its effect on the law, legal education and legal services.
