An experience gap has opened up in the development of legal professionals. The workplace-based experiences (traineeships and articles of clerkship) that were once pivotal to the progress of law graduates from student to practitioner are either no longer available or are much diminished in scope and scale. Graduates are expected to have accessed such experiences through other avenues. This is a particular challenge for those law graduates who lack the family and social connections to help them start their engagement with the profession. In response to these changing circumstances Monash University has instituted a Clinical Guarantee assuring every law student a place in its Clinical Legal Education (CLE) programme if they so choose. In this chapter, we describe the Clinical Guarantee initiative, our progress to date, the way in which we have used technology to support provision and the challenges we have faced during implementation. We conclude by emphasising the value of CLE as preparation for modern legal practice, and outlining our intention to measure that value through future evaluation work. This chapter tells an Australian story, but one which resonates with experiences in other jurisdictions.

Once characterised as a relatively stable profession, unfettered by the influence of modernity and strongly resistant to external forces, the legal services sector has in recent years exhibited marked change. Efforts to preserve profit margins increasingly eroded by the introduction of new fee models, the demand for increased billing transparency, rising client expectations, the adoption of technology and heightened market competition from high volume legal process outsourcers, have all contributed to the sector’s evolution. In what has been viewed as a clear shift towards corporatisation and commercialisation, the legal profession in a number of jurisdictions has moved away from the broader social mission on which it was founded and in which it existed as ‘a branch of the administration of justice and not a mere money-getting trade’. Free market ideologies have undermined ‘justice and rights in the discourse of law’, and in its place, the generation of profit has become the primary indicator of success.

This chapter documents how the Legal Design Lab at Stanford University has integrated design thinking into law school technology curriculum. In this chapter we profile the objectives of the lab and explore the work the lab has undertaken to introduce new opportunities for skill acquisition through design thinking courses, innovation sprints, and workshops. We explore the purpose, process, and outcomes of these new experiments in legal education, and overview the interdisciplinary methods we have developed, brought from design schools and human-computer interaction programmes. We detail examples of the specific types of classes, sprints, and workshops run, how we define learning outcomes, and how we evaluate student performance. Further, we explore the way in which we leverage technology to provide students with opportunities to acquire user research, mapping, rapid prototyping, and improved communication skills. Drawing on lessons observed over the life of the Design Lab, we conclude by reflecting on our experience of integrating design thinking into a law school programme and argue for the importance of design thinking as an aspect of technology training within and outside of law.

Over the last decade Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the form of data-driven tools designed to support legal task completion, have occupied a growing position within the delivery of private legal services and the exercise of administrative functions by the public sector. As a result, whilst technological literacy was once understood as the capacity to use particular forms of word processing software, navigate the Internet or send electronic correspondence, modern forms of literacy demand a user exhibits a broader range of skills, including the ability to understand, apply, visualise and infer patterns from data. This chapter considers the range of current initiatives developed to address the technology skills and awareness gap amongst law students, and identifies the subject areas that ought to take priority in future curriculum development. It argues that exposure to data analysis and data-driven technologies represents a necessary component of students’ preparation for entry into the professions on the basis that this knowledge: (i) enhances student employability in an increasingly competitive graduate job market; and (ii) equips graduates to meet their wider civic responsibilities to uphold the rule of law and promote access to justice.

In the field of educational technology there are classic oppositions that shape what we do in our use of technology in higher education (HE) – behaviourism versus constructivism, open versus for-profit, conventional versus innovative curriculum design, technocracy versus democracy. Both sides of the binaries are critical components of what we might determine as the ‘social’ in HE, and the extent to which their oppositions govern our approach to curriculum design also determines the type of learning that our students undertake in their programmes. In this chapter we explore the effect of the antinomies on the development of simulation software designed and built last decade and still in use at Strathclyde Law School, and adapted elsewhere. The chapter will analyse the assumptions and the history – legal educational, technological and social – that are part of the software build and outline future use and expectations for the software as it develops beyond what might, to date, be characterised as its early beta or incunabula stages of development in HE. Above all we shall begin to trace what we hope is one resolution of the classic opposition of technocracy and democracy, a theme that will be developed in future publications.

The lawyer of the future will exist as a ‘polytechnic’ or ‘many-skilled’ professional, applying their legal expertise to a client’s changing world in an increasingly agile way and within a range of organisational settings. For legal educators, there is a need to consider how education can best prepare future lawyers for this reality. The long view suggests that we should be looking to build core skills in legal, design and logic principles rather than learning specific technologies that may be rapidly superseded. But how can we develop these skills, and how we can balance the need to understand core academic principles of law against the need for applied, workplace experience? This chapter looks at the balancing process, focusing on the impact of changing roles in law firms and the demands of the in-house legal and law-advisory-organisation dynamic. It examines how legal education can instil within lawyers, both an understanding of the principles of law alongside an appreciation of the application of those principles in the workplace. It presents a vision of the roles and specialisations that are likely to emerge within the profession, and considers how the future work of lawyers will sit alongside alternative paths into the legal industry.

Game-based legal learning has emerged as a topic of intense interest over the last decade as a means of ‘modernising’ legal education, with game-based learning eliciting a wide range of responses from the legal academy. Somewhat unsurprisingly, resistance in the name of tradition has persisted. Yet, the view of game playing as a distinctly modern pedagogical development, and opposition on the basis of tradition is sheer folly. Ludic education has been the dominant teaching method for millennia, with legal game playing traced at least to the time of Cicero. Revealing the rich history of game playing in law, this chapter details ludic legal education from the declamation of Ancient Rome to Nintendo’s Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. It observes the way in which games can operate as a compelling delivery device for instruction, allow for experimentation, and encourage students to voice their opinions in a field where the sheer breadth of precedent and the relative impenetrability of legal texts may prove intimidating. In demonstrating the potential of game playing to overcome barriers to learning, this chapter considers the modern design principles that have enabled games to emerge as robust and enjoyable content delivery devices in legal education.

In this chapter, the author discusses blockchain's energy problem. Beginning with an account of Boden, Sweden's emergence as the "Node Pole," the chapter explores how much energy the blockchain is consuming, why it is consuming as much as it is, and what can be done about it.

In this chapter, the author dicusses alternative approaches that governments have available to deal with new technologies. Beginning with an account of Malta's efforts to attract blockchain business to the country, the chapter then goes on to explore three regulatory paradigms for technology: (1) the "do nothing" approach; (2) the permissive approach; and (3) the restrictive approach. The chapter explores the pros and cons of each.

In this chapter, the author discusses how blockchain falls between the cracks in legal systems. Beginning with an account of the prosecution of one cryptocurrency founder for securities fraud, the chapter then goes on to show how blockchain's unique structure makes it particularly difficult to regulate, and how regulators have struggled to catch up.

In this chapter, the author discusses the world of crypto-crime. Beginning with an account of the arrest of Alexander Vinnik, the Russian accused of running a money-laundering cryptocurrency exchange, the chapter goes on to describe the ways in which blockchain has allowed dramatic levels of criminality to spread throughout the industry.

In this chapter, the author discusses similarities and differences between blockchain and democracy. Beginning with an account of Jerry Brito's efforts to promote bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in policy circles, the chapter then goes on to explore the ways in which blockchain attempts to emulate democratic government, but also the ways in which it falls short.

In this chapter, the author explores how the blockchain is being used in the world. Beginning with an account of a famous hack involving the virtual currency Ethereum, the chapter goes on to explore the rise and fall of bitcoin, the spread of initial coin offerings, and the development of business-oriented blockchains.