Bloomberg Law's Law School Innovation Program: A Look at the Finalists' Innovations

Exploring the Innovations of the Finalists in Bloomberg Law's Law School Innovation Program
 
As the legal and business worlds evolve, law schools must adapt to provide students with a more comprehensive education that prepares them for their post-graduation careers. To recognize and support these efforts, Bloomberg Law created the Law School Innovation Program, which received nearly 90 applications from more than 60 schools in 27 states. A team of evaluators selected ten finalists based on criteria such as innovation, impact on students, ability to advance the legal industry, and replicability. The finalists' innovations include a wide range of topics such as business, technology, well-being, and privacy. They are listed in alphabetical order with additional information about each one.
 

 

Brooklyn Law School

 
Brooklyn Law School offers students the chance to assist socially-minded start-ups and entrepreneurs through its Brooklyn Law Incubator and Policy Clinic (BLIP Clinic), which provides full-service legal services for transactional law, technology law, intellectual property, and other relevant areas. The BLIP Clinic enables students to gain insight into the legal needs of start-ups and to help clients navigate the legal and regulatory frameworks that apply to their organizations. Established in 2007, the BLIP Clinic is one of the largest of its kind, with an average of 30 students participating each semester. The founder and director of the BLIP Clinic, Jonathan Askin, believes the clinic is an opportunity for students to be equipped to serve the legal needs of the next generation of clients. He says, “BLIP is an effort to train this new generation of an attorney who understands all the issues that might confront the tech entrepreneur in the digital world.”
 

Drake University Law School

 
Drake University Law School offers 1L students a unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience with the legal system through its First Year Trial Practicum. The program is a graduation requirement for the school and includes observing an entire jury trial from start to finish, as well as interactions with the judge, attorneys, and jury after the verdict. In addition to observing the trial, students also participate in small group discussions about the proceedings and hear expert panel discussions about the case and its major legal aspects. The program is designed to give students a deeper understanding of the legal system and the role of proof, facts, evidence, and juries in the judicial process. Steven Foritano, the director of the program, says, "It brings to life the substantive and procedural law taught in the first year, diversifies the learning theory by which our students are taught, and provides professional role models in action.”
 

Georgia State University College of Law

The Legal Analytics & Innovation Initiative (LAII) at Georgia State University College of Law provides students with the opportunity to delve into the intersection of law, technology, and innovation. The program offers a certificate in LAII that allows students to choose between two tracks, Legal Analytics or Technology & Innovation, giving them specialized skills in data science, analytics, technology, operations, and process improvement. The goal of the program is to prepare students for the future of the legal field, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to understand how technology is impacting the practice of law, and enabling them to create technology solutions that enhance their efficiency, effectiveness, and ethical practices. LAII Executive Director Patrick Parsons says, "We are really proud that our courses, including Introduction to Legal Tech and Innovation, Legal Innovation, Legal Process Engineering, and the Legal Analytics Lab, give students experience in performing real-world legal technology evaluation, process, and analytics tasks."
 

The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School has implemented an Integrated Education on Well-Being and Thriving in the Law program, which teaches students that self-care and well-being are essential not only for maintaining mental health but also for being effective legal practitioners. To support this mission, students are provided with resources to promote well-being, and the importance of well-being is integrated throughout the curriculum. Additionally, all students are required to take a well-being module in their Professional Responsibility course, which is the only required upper-level course. According to Jennifer Leonard, chief innovation officer at the law school, "when the 2016 National Task Force Report suggested new ways to integrate these topics into the formal curriculum, our dean greenlit a proposal that John Hollway, a senior fellow at Penn’s Positive Psychology Center, and I created to teach the direct connection between well-being and a lawyer’s ethical obligation to clients."
 

University of Richmond School of Law

The University of Richmond School of Law's Legal Business Design Hub aims to prepare its students to lead the effort to modernize the legal profession by building new types of organizations, businesses, and teams that better meet the functional, emotional, and social needs of their clients, peers, and themselves. The hub serves as a center for applied research and exploration of emerging challenges and opportunities within the business of law and is dedicated to advancing design-driven innovation and entrepreneurship capabilities in students, lawyers, faculty, and researchers. Its goal is to accelerate the development of new business ventures and forward-thinking solutions that address critical challenges facing the future of legal systems, services, and businesses. According to Josh Kubicki, the Director of the Legal Business Design Hub, "our students gain hands-on experience with the fundamental building blocks for lawyers to create, build, and improve new legal services and products such as business acumen, financial literacy, strategy, and operations design, entrepreneurship, and workforce culture."
 

Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law

The Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law's Leveraging Technology to Promote Access to Justice Course equips students with the tools to assist underserved communities through technology and the law. The course allows students to work with legal aid organizations, identify their specific challenges, and develop technological solutions to address them. The unique aspect of the course is its incorporation of self-directed learning and integration of technology and technical skills into legal education. As per the Assistant Dean for Library and Information Services and Associate Professor of Law, Amy Emerson, this course is designed to cultivate the next generation of legal professionals who possess technical expertise and new perspectives, which will help them to shape the future of the legal profession.