JJUA55288U Legal Tech Laboratory

The legal profession in Denmark and across the world is changing at a pace never experienced before, and in ways, most lawyers would have found hard to predict just a couple of years back. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated even more rapidly every industry’s path to digitize, and the notoriously conservative legal industry is no exception. Legal firms and their clients are demanding more innovation; many of them have introduced new legal tech strategies or innovation departments in a bid to improve efficiency and lower their costs. Many start-ups are seeing the opportunity to participate in these trends to help law firms, corporate legal departments, as well as consumers to take advantage of technology.

The course offers and array of experiences that will better prepare students for both traditional and non-traditional legal employment. Traditional employers increasingly need lawyers who not only have the traditional legal knowledge and skills, but who are also familiar with innovative processes and technologies. Undersanding the significance of technology and business acumen to successful delivery of legal services is vital. Due to the needs of the new global and complex marketplace, successful legal professionals must be creative problem solvers, leaders with a high risk tolerance and business mindset that can use technology, collaboration, leadership, and communication skills.

Legal Tech Laboratory is a course for law students who wish to create innovative solutions to problems at the intersection of law, business and technology, while developing the skills essential to all professionals today. This course first provides students with hands-on learning with variety of technology tools,  ranging from basic Microsoft Office, through Community Lawyer or electronic discovery to blockchain tool. Subsequently, students are to design and develop their own business case, a solutions or even a prototype to a real problem sponsored by a corporate legal department, law firm, an NGO or a public agency. The aim of the course is for the students to not only understand the technology and become familiar with it, but also to utilize it in order to solve legal problems. Additionally, the course will offer a series of guest lectures by computer scientists, who will showcase use of specific tools and provide students with the understanding to further utilization of these tools in their future practice.