Law is an extremely challenging career for the very fact that it revolves around diversified fields of life. It becomes utmost important for students seeking law as a career to be well-equipped with the current trends of globalization and technology. This creates a necessity for the law schools to offer advanced curriculum and nourish the skills of students along with providing a strong foundation. The fast and continuous changes happening in the society and technology have a great influence on the way Law is taught at the institutions.
With advancement in every field, and the digital world encompassing every nook and corner, the demand and expectations of the clients have found a rise in the legal industry as well. To keep up with the competence, today's law practitioners are expected to be tech savvy, prompt and also be able to represent the client in all jurisdictions and forums.
To match with the emerging trends, law schools these days emphasize on incorporating technology blended learning and multidisciplinary courses including practical methods in their curriculum.
Here's an insight into the emerging trends in the field of Legal Studies -
1. Switching to E- Discoveries: -
As more and more people are clinging to electronic devices to share, chat and communicate via digital medias, social medias, voicemails, emails and e-calendars, it is necessary for the law practitioners to get on par with this digi world practices and upgrade themselves to rely on the new means of communication.
Electronically stored information (ESI) is the new process referred to as e-discovery or electronic discovery that the law practitioners need to consider. This helps to organize the relevant materials for specific cases and hence make it less stressful.
2. Social networking and Social media: -
Needless to say, social media forms the salient part of everyone's life today and a lot of data is exchanged on social forums. From personal data to bank details, job hunt to career management, social networking and social media plays a very effective role.
Law firms are no exception here. Social media helps the law firms in finding deserving clients and hence interaction and further investigation too when required is done with the help of social media.
Social media also helps the law firms or independent law practitioners to reach a larger audience by advertising and personal branding. New law graduates find it easier to pick jobs of their interest via such social networking mediums.
3. Technology in Law curriculum: -
Law schools globally are reviewing the curriculum to encourage the budding lawyers to learn certain technologies like -
Introduction to such courses which have created a trend in the modern world will help the young professionals to be more competent in their future practice. The focus of legal education worldwide is shifting towards the integration of technology in the practice of law, to provide automated legal services for routine requirements, answer legal queries, provide routine documentation remotely and etc. The coming years will also see blockchain making a bigger foray into the legal industry. Smart contracts & agreements will certainly be one of the prime areas to watch, along with the development of new cryptocurrencies by companies & government.
4. Cyber security and law
Legal industry needs the knowledge of cyber security as the fast paced-digitization is expanding the business horizons, making it more vulnerable to security threats and hackers. Legal firms if not secured well, will have a major downfall, risk of losing confidential client information easily with any kind of security breach.
5. Innovative approach:
Engaging the law students in a more creative way by using flipped classroom technique, role plays, Think-pair-Share help the future legal practitioners to not only provide the best legal services but also become entrepreneurs.
In order to equip the students with these skills, law schools are focusing on clinical legal education where students practically experience providing legal services to clients.
6. Virtual law firms and outsourcing
Welcome to 2020 where everything is turning virtual and why not law firms?!
Easy client connections, customer- focused service, major time saving factor, flexibility and cost-effective set up - virtual law firm is a major trend in the current legal practice!
Virtualization is making it convenient to allow cross-country legal-teams come together, making outsourcing easier.
To summarise it all, law schools and legal studies will have to shift from the traditional methodologies, incorporate practical learning and introduce technology integrated law courses to stay abreast with the advances in technology, thus helping improve the knowledge and entrepreneurial capabilities of the budding law aspirants. Collaboration of multidisciplinary courses will enhance the quality of client-services.
Considering these emerging trends which are re-shaping the legal world, whether you are a law aspirant or a practitioner, it is highly effective to be in sync with these trends to have a competitive edge.
The School of Legal Studies at REVA offers graduate programmes with an objective of preparing Law graduates with a sound understanding of the fundamentals of legal knowledge.
The School offers B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) and B.B.A.., LL.B. (Hons.) of five-year (10 semesters) duration and undertakes consultancy projects. Equipped with excellent infrastructure including Moot Court, Counseling Cell, late hours library with a variety of print and online resources aims to advancement and dissemination of knowledge of law and legal processes in the context of national development.
The school in addition to its well experienced qualified law faculty members, invites regularly practicing lawyers and legal luminaries as adjunct faculty and guest faculty members to facilitate practical exposures on latest judgements. The School has an active participation with:
