Bricks Plus Bytes: How "Click-and-Brick" Will Define Legal Education Space

Abstract

Herein, I present a number of technological, commercial and profes- sional scenarios that cumulatively suggest that the law school of the near future must be re-engineered and become what is known in e-commerce as "click-and-brick" or "click-and-mortar.' In a click-and-brick law school, distributive learning techniques will fill much of the space, supplementing traditional class experiences and substituting for many others. But a true click-and-brick will also integrate distance learning methodologies, reach- ing out to remote students, enabling collaboration with off-campus faculty and consuming remote content. I draw this not entirely happy conclu- sion from analyzing the commercial and technological forces that are si- multaneously energizing and threatening traditional legal education, and from my belief that, properly re-engineered, the traditional law schools can retain their relevance and continue in their role as the guardians of the intellect of the law. In the sections that follow, I first address the qualitative and institu- tional arguments frequently raised against such non-traditional legal edu- cation (Part II). I then suggest that the law school of the future will be quite a different place from the one we are familiar with, both because of the implications of the new enabling technologies (Part III) and because law school space is no longer a self-contained, autonomous and insulated environment (Part IV). I argue that, before we can aspire to a sustainable click-and-brick model, we will be forced to make some significant changes to how we fill our virtual and physical law school space (Part V). Finally, I suggest that, in designing our click-and-brick model, we pay particular at- tention to the ways in which law practice is being reshaped, and suggest other areas where the law school curriculum will require major re-tooling to be relevant to the Information Age (Part VI).