Sessions

The Future of Legal Technology Education

Doug Lusk — Wed, 24 Jan 2018 16:28:40 +0000

Legal Technology is a hot topic that doesn't get enough coverage at conferences.

look into the future of legal technology education: What exactly is it and how do we teach it? Legal Technology isn’t a topic, it is a skill! Technology skills are essential to every graduate. Without that skill, your graduates will soon be obsolete in the market. This session will explore the resources available to properly teach your students how to not only survive in the current market, but thrive in the future market.

Session Outline

How Rule 1.1 Comment 8 of the Ethics Code applies to Lawyers?
1. What does the “duty to be technologically competent” really mean?
2. How do you define “Legal Technology”
Will I be replaced by AI technology?
1. Intro to CARA
2. Intro to Beagle
3. Intro to Document Automation
The future of Legal Technology education
1. The short shelf-life of technology skills

i.Is it obsolete or just old?

ii.Is it still a relevant skill?

Are you teaching a topic, or a skill?

i.By learning to apply one technology, students are learning a skill transferable to other technologies as well.

How do we find a balance and a standard for what legal education should look like?

i.We need to get students to use their law school careers to position themselves for work in various areas.

ii.We need to talk to the employers that hire our students and our alumni, and find out what their needs are and introduce them to the students we produce.

Adding Legal Technology to Your Current Curriculum
1. Resources for adding technology skills to every class
2. Class vs. Independent Study

i.One class vs. multiple classes

Is online the new normal?

Benefits of adding a certificate to your resume
1. NSLT Legal Technology Certificate
2. LTC4
As an instructor, you are not the “How” you are the “Why” something is being done.
1. Good use of classroom time
2. Assignments
3. Technology exploration

i.Alternative programs

ii.Regional requirements

Teaching eDiscovery
1. eDiscovery class vs. Law Office Technology class
2. Where do I get the curriculum?

i.Catalyst eDiscovery program

ii.Relativity

Free Technology Resources

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Doug Lusk

Session Track:

Technology

Topics:

Legal Technology; Legal Software; Practical Skills; Experiential Learning

Can 10,000 Law Students Solve the Access to Justice Gap?

John Mayer — Wed, 24 Jan 2018 17:56:24 +0000

The Access to Justice Gap is a thoroughly documented phenomenon. So is the lack of experiential learning in legal education. The theme of this conference is "Engaging Law Students With Tech". This session brings together all three themes.

CALI has developed A2J Author to be used by legal aid attorneys and courts to automate court forms and legal processes like triage and legal health checkups. The number of actual processes automated, however, represented only 20% of the "easy" part of the problem.

We are at the beginning of the beginning.

We have a proven tool in A2J Author and soon we will have a hosted space for law schools where students projects can be created, shared and disseminated worldwide.

This talk will discuss A2J Author and other projects where law students get experiential learning by automating legal processes and how ANY law school course could incorporate this technology - even non-clinical, doctrine-heavy courses. Yes, we will demonstrate the impossible.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

John Mayer

Session Track:

Experiential Learning

Topics:

law faculty

25 Free Technologies for Law Libraries

Eliza Fink — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 19:37:50 +0000

Presented by Eliza Fink and Avery Le, this program will introduce 25 free technologies for law libraries, highlighting new features of the most popular technologies such as Kahoot! and Socrative, as well as a list of brand new web-based tools, softwares and apps that have surfaced in the past three years. The technologies cover a wide arrange of categories to facilitate 'library' functions as teaching, reference, research, circulation, marketing and outreach, social media, organization, bookkeeping, and more.

Attendees will engage interactively in short demos of computer tools and mobile apps that ease the librarian workday through their smart devices. Attendees will receive expert advice about how to implement these tools to fit their specific library environment, and will be given the chance to evaluate new features and updates for technologies they may already be familiar with.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Eliza Fink

Session Track:

Technology

Topics:

Legal Technology; Legal Software; Practical Skills; Experiential Learning

Bridging the Gap on Legal Tech Proficiency at Law Schools

Tobias Franklin — Mon, 05 Feb 2018 15:19:06 +0000

More and more law students are pursuing interests in legal technology, but many are witnessing a gap at their respective schools. This gap is usually not primarily about budgets, or procuring the latest and greatest software, but instead revolves around issues such as institutional buy-in, communication to the student body and the wider community, and cooperation between departments. All these competencies are required to foster the growth of legal technology courses and work experience at an institution. This session is a panel discussion in which the panelists will discuss their unique experiences engaging with legal technology at their law schools, the gaps they encountered, and how they reconciled those gaps with their professional development goals. Panelists are all recent graduates and NextGen Fellows at the ABA Center for Innovation.

Attendees do not need to have any technical knowledge, only a desire to learn more about recent law graduates’ experiences with legal technology in the classroom. Through the experiences of the panelists, this session will introduce concrete steps that law schools can take to build out new or improve existing legal technology programs. Therefore, attendees who are interested in developing legal technology programs at their law schools are highly encouraged.

Moderator:

Michael Robak, Director of the Schoenecker Law Library, Associate Dean and Clinical Professor of Law, University of St. Thomas

Panelists:

Amanda Brown, ’16 Loyola University New Orleans College of Law

Athena Fan, ’17 American University Washington College of Law

Tobias Franklin, ’17 University of Maine School of Law

Irene Mo, ’17 Michigan State University College of Law

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Tobias Franklin

Session Track:

Technology

Topics:

Technology and Education

Real World Budgeting for Distance Learning Courses

John Mayer — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 16:52:59 +0000

Distance learning was hyped to be a way to deliver quality education at a lower cost. After all, you don't need classrooms and everyone can attend in their pajamas - even the instructor! The reality is different however.

In this session, three presenters will talk about their real world experience with costs and budgets for distance learning courses and programs. No personally identifying information will be revealed, but serious reality checks will be written!

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

John Mayer

Session Track:

Case Studies

Topics:

distance learning

Distance Learning in Non-Distance Learning Courses

John Mayer — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 16:58:47 +0000

The ABA allows law schools to use distance learning in any course as long as it doesn't replace more than 1/3 of in-class time. This should make it easy for faculty to explore the use of distance learning technologies in their existing courses. Also, some distance learning tech overlaps nicely with in-class interactions. Asynchronous formative assessment, online office hours, CALI lessons, online peer-review projects are all examples of using DL tech in non-DL courses.

Three presenters will discuss experiences of teaching or working with faculty who have used DL tech in non-DL courses. Even if you are not attending this session, the speakers encourage you to send a short blurb about your experience.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

John Mayer

William Byrnes

Christopher Bevard

Session Track:

Case Studies

Topics:

distance learning

The Problem of Engaging Students at a Distance

John Mayer — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 17:02:15 +0000

Now that everyone is sitting at their computers in the wee hours, bathed in the warm glow of their screens, how do you get to really engage with the instructor, the material or other members of the class? Discussion boards can look like ghost towns, responses can be copy/paste, monosyllabic or forced.

Three presenters will talk about motivating students to engage in a distance learning course or situation.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

John Mayer

Minara Mordecai

Glenn Greenberg

Jack Graves

Topics:

distance learning

The Monster under the Bed – The data you didn’t know you had

Chad Covey — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 18:10:15 +0000

In 2016, Health and Human Services begin to attach a cost to organizations not knowing what data they had, and while information technology is a large component of data security regulation, it is by no means the only one, as general data-handling, process, and documentation are the most important components of an organization’s information assurance program.

In an academic setting where students, faculty, and staff wear multiple hats, I’ll provide an overview of how our legal clinic differentiated those roles, identified ongoing practices, processed that identification through decision-makers, and then captured in policies and procedures.

I’ll review HIPAA regulations as they likely affect Law schools and their clinics, delve into the Confidential Unclassified Information initiative as it relates to HIPAA, related NIST standards, and discuss our Clinic’s assessment by an outside vendor.

With FERPA, HIPAA, GDPR, open records laws, and other regulatory domains that many of us live under, it’s my hope we can use this session to discuss concerns and offer each other solutions.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Chad Covey

Topics:

Clinics

Teaching Tech to Law Students

Grace Simms — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 20:48:11 +0000

For the last three years - I have taught Technology and the Practice of Law. My class covers hardware/software, security, social media/marketing, apps, and more.

This session is for anyone that wants to do this, has done it, or wants to try something different.

I will go over what all I cover in my class, what I have learned, what I have changed, and what I would like to do in the future with this class and/or other possible classes.

I have found that students may know some tech - but they may are not as prepared as they need to be when it comes to tech for clerking, interviews, and working.

It would be great to hear from others that have legal tech classes - their successes and frustrations.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Grace Simms

Session Track:

Technology

Law Library Websites and Third Party Trackers: A Privacy Study

Tom Boone — Tue, 13 Feb 2018 14:48:26 +0000

Librarians are known for protecting the privacy of their patrons, but with the shift to online resources, third parties regularly collect data on library patrons' use of library materials, using this data to target patrons for advertising around the web.

This program will present original research about third party tracking on law school library websites. We'll identify who is surveilling patrons and how, discuss the practical and ethical effects of this loss of patron anonymity, and present strategies (where possible) for curbing third-party tracking of library patrons.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Tom Boone

Session Track:

Technology

Using Drupal for a Better Orientation Experience

Corinne St. Claire — Tue, 13 Feb 2018 16:50:01 +0000

For several years, Loyola Law School Los Angeles utilized a home-grown “Orientation Task Scheduler” to help incoming students complete necessary tasks prior to arriving on campus for Orientation Week. In 2015, the scheduler morphed into an “admissions portal”, harnessing both the older Orientation Task Scheduler and utilizing Drupal to make an incoming student’s experience even easier. The portal has been tailored to work with various systems, such as Banner, to provide a customized experience to students in various programs (JD, MLS, LLM).

This presentation will cover two perspectives – 1) the development/planning/deploying phase, presented by Gabe Estrada, Senior Web Developer at Loyola Law School Los Angeles, and 2) the end user experience, presented by Corinne St. Claire.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Corinne St. Claire

Gabe Estrada

Session Track:

Technology

Digital Preservation: More than just backing stuff up

Jason Eiseman — Wed, 14 Feb 2018 17:00:17 +0000

Digital preservation is an important topic for libraries, but many librarians and IT staff don't have a full view of what digital preservation looks like in practice. Jason Eiseman (Yale Law LIbrary) and Leah Prescott (Georgetown Law Library) will look at how their libraries have implemented digital preservation practices including considerations such as deciding what to preserve, packaging various types of digital objects, storage, permissions, et al.

They will also discuss how Yale has implemented Preservica as a digital preservation tool, and how LIPA will transition the Chesapeake Project into Preservica and administer it going forward.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Jason Eiseman

Session Track:

Case Studies

Topics:

Digital Preservation

Revisiting the Rich Syllabus

Patrick Wiseman — Thu, 15 Feb 2018 15:44:14 +0000

This session revisits a topic on which Prof. Wiseman presented many years ago. It should be of interest to any faculty member who wants to provide students with substantial online content.

A "rich syllabus" is a deeply hyperlinked syllabus, taking full advantage of the fact that, being online, it is a website, not just a piece of paper uploaded to the web. Prof. Wiseman will demonstrate his rich syllabi in Constitutional Law I and II, which provide the students with all of the course materials, including edited cases. In these courses, the Rich Syllabus is a complete replacement for the casebook. He will also demonstrate a more modest rich syllabus, in his First Amendment course, where he continues to use a casebook.

Most faculty members should find this session of interest. Not all faculty members have or want to learn the necessary skills to create a rich syllabus (which is, after all, a website, using HTML, CSS, and JS) and so they may want to invite a tech support person to join them at this session. Prof. Wiseman delivers these materials using a content management system he developed, but the principles should translate to any decent content management system.

Experience level:

Intermediate

Speaker(s):

Patrick Wiseman

Session Track:

Course Management

How to Convert a Website to a Web App

Patrick Wiseman — Thu, 15 Feb 2018 18:13:36 +0000

At CALIcon12, Prof. Wiseman demonstrated how to convert a course website to a Chrome app. As of about the date of CALIcon18, Google is no longer supporting Chrome apps, having replaced them with Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). This session will explain why converting course websites (in particular, a Rich Syllabus, which Prof. Wiseman will demonstrate in another, earlier CALIcon18 session) to PWAs makes sense, and how to do it.

While this session should have some appeal to faculty who want to know why and how to convert their course websites into PWAs, it should also be of interest to IT folks wanting to help their faculty to do so. Unlike Chrome apps, which were rather simple to create, PWAs, at least at their most sophisticated, are not. [The rest of this is tentative - I intend to figure out how to create the simplest PWA possible, just converting a pre-existing website to a web app, capable of working offline without requiring any online material. I'll update this description when I've educated myself more about how to accomplish that.]

Experience level:

Intermediate

Speaker(s):

Patrick Wiseman

Session Track:

Technology

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bot

Jesse Bowman — Fri, 16 Feb 2018 19:11:00 +0000

As a law librarian, I find emerging technologies to be a source of both inspiration and concern. While I love learning about new technologies and considering how I can incorporate them into my instruction and reference work, I also can’t help but consider how they might subsume some of my traditional functions and require me to adapt. In response to this concern, while simultaneously experiencing some burnout toward teaching, I set out to learn a new skill: building a chatbot. In this session, I will discuss my experience building a chatbot, as well as my thoughts on its potential usefulness in reaching library patrons. Attendees will leave with an awareness of resources available for creating a chatbot, an understanding of how they work, and, hopefully, the inspiration to build one for their own libraries.

Slides:

Jesse Bowman-How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bot.pdf

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Jesse Bowman

Session Track:

Technology

Topics:

Law Library Technology

Scrape it off: Using or making web scraping tools to gather structured data from webpages

Ben Carlson — Mon, 19 Feb 2018 16:45:01 +0000

Link to Slides:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/10oH1XCCF8pDXwNDXgLLJNJUTaRqVxFheCsPOlb76GNA/edit?usp=sharing

Often, in the course of research, librarians and faculty need to gather data that is presented on websites in tables or lists. Although copy and paste can do the trick when the amount of data is small, at some point we need tools that can automate the job for us. This is especially useful when gathering metadata for catalogs or online repositories, when much of the required metadata is already available through other sources, but needs to be collected and edited.

First, I will discuss the primary ways in which we can collect data via the internet

Then, I will focus on the use of pre-made web scraping utilities, covering what they are, how they work, and comparing some of the available free or low-cost options.

Finally, I will talk generally about how you could create your own web scraper, customized for what you need. As an example, I will go through the development of a program I created to pull a monthly report of case opinion metadata from a court website using Python, and I will discuss the skills and tools you would need to go about developing a similar program.

Although I will be talking about programming a bit in this session, I will not be focusing on the specifics of coding. This will be a beginner-friendly introduction to how web scrapers work, and what you may need to know if you find yourself needing to use one.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Ben Carlson

Session Track:

Technology

BLOCKCHAIN IS SO 2017 - LEGAL CRYPTOTECH FOR THE MODERN LAW SCHOOL

Deborah Ginsberg — Tue, 20 Feb 2018 17:39:25 +0000

Takeaway #1: Identify current trends in the law involving blockchain and related technologies
Takeaway #2: Explain the pros and cons of these new technologies on the practice of law
Takeaway #3: Assess the technologies behind these tools and their implications for efficiency and security
Content and goals: We heard a lot about blockchain in 2017, but that's just one of several cryptotechologies that will have a profound impact on the practice of law in the near future. In this session, we will define the basics of distributed ledger technologies and show how they work. We will discuss trends in technology and the law resulting from implementing new services using blockchain and related technologies, including smart transactions, smart wills, and more. Finally, we will showcase the technology behind these tools. Debbie will present a version of this at AALL 2018.

Experience level:

Intermediate

Speaker(s):

Deborah Ginsberg

Session Track:

Technology

Topics:

blockchain

60 TIPS IN 60 MINUTES FOR LAW SCHOOL TECHIES - THE CALI EDITION

Deborah Ginsberg — Tue, 20 Feb 2018 17:41:14 +0000

Takeaway #1: Identify 60 useful tech tools and tips for law school technologists of all kinds
Takeaway #2: Explore the pros and cons of these tips
Content and goals: Back by popular demand from the 2017 MAALL conference in Milwaukee. We’ll showcase 60 of our favorite tech tools, tips, apps, websites, cheats, and more. These tips will benefit anyone looking for new ways to teach research, teach tech concepts, use technology, and improve efficiency (with a couple thrown in just for fun).

Slides are here.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Deborah Ginsberg

Emily Barney

Session Track:

Technology

Topics:

efficieny

The Malpractice of Hunches: Professional Responsibility, AI, and Data Analytics

Ed Walters — Tue, 20 Feb 2018 20:46:19 +0000

Clients ask lawyers the most important questions facing their families and trust lawyers with bet-the-company questions. But lawyers answer these questions, for the most part, based on limited experience (at best) or hunches (at worst). Businesses analyze data for every part of their business, from marketing and supply chain to personnel and sales – every part except law. As clients seek to make more data-driven decisions, what obligation do law firms have to collect and refine data about opposing parties, judges, outcomes, and costs? Are we preparing another generation of law students to duck these questions, or answer them with hunches? Fastcase CEO Ed Walters will examine the frontiers of AI and data analytics, as well as the obligations of lawyers under the Model Rules of Professional Responsibility to employ and supervise artificial intelligence and data analytics tools at the frontiers of legal tech.

Experience level:

Intermediate

Speaker(s):

Ed Walters

Session Track:

Technology

Topics:

Professional Responsibility

Asymmetries in Information Literacy Between Law Students and Faculty: A Research Agenda

Lora Johns — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 18:30:26 +0000

Requirements and Objectives:

Level of knowledge required: zero to expert
What you'll learn: Insight into the different ways law students and law professors process legal technology.
What you'll get: Food for thought on how to best acclimate different user groups to legal technology.

Anecdotally at least, law students and law faculty approach the interaction of law and technology in uniquely different ways. For example, law professors are more likely than students to think that tech-enabled library systems can make any archival material anywhere available in pristine PDF form at the touch of a button. Yet some struggle to grasp how to use an online catalog, navigate IP-authenticated content, or download documents from JSTOR.

On the other hand, law students tend to better understand the limitations of technology, and they're quicker to learn and more at ease using new research products (like Bloomberg Law, Ravel, and any number of other databases). However, they aren't always the best at judging whether or not the information they find is "good". They lend much too much credence to Google (they don’t know what they don’t know) and are generally oblivious to, or uncritical of, the algorithms underlying search engines, Westlaw, Lexis, and other legal databases.

My plan is to survey the literature on this subject and to conduct some manner of interviews or surveys of students, faculty, and/or other librarians to ascertain their views. will then present the results of these endeavors and an agenda for further research explaining why it is valuable and necessary that we investigate these phenomena.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Lora Johns

IT Operations: Lessons Learned from the Field

Corinne St. Claire — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 21:26:39 +0000

This panel will focus on the most recent challenges facing law school IT professionals. Discussions will include lessons learned and support strategies in the following areas:

Helpdesks/Field Services

Exam Period Support

Cloud Service Evaluations

Relationship Management and Communication

Panelists include:

Tony Forseythe, CEO, Appointlink

Corey Meingarten, System Administrator, Western Law, Ontario

Jonathan Sibray , IT Director, University of Colorado Law School

Moderator: Corinne St. Claire, Director of Law School Technology Services, Loyola Law School Los Angeles

Experience level:

Intermediate

Speaker(s):

Corinne St. Claire

Corey Meingarten

Jonathan Sibray

Tony Forsythe

Session Track:

Technology

Word Styles and Document Automation: Making documents more efficient in the practice of law

Stacey Rowland — Mon, 26 Feb 2018 19:56:58 +0000

Technology has changed the practice of law and, increasingly, is creating new job opportunities for enterprising lawyers. Many practitioners and law students, though, do not unlock the true power of Microsoft Word. Instead, we treat it as a text-based word processor. This talk will expose attorneys, law students and those teaching law students to working with Word styles and taking advantage of document automation, navigation and assembly. Law students can use Word styles in their resumes to give their job searches flexibility. The North Carolina Supreme Court recently released new rules for styling briefs and other court documents. Learn how using templates already built into Word can ease these types of transitions and help automate document output.

After this session you will:
• Understand the importance of Styles
• Understand the difference between Paragraph, Character and Linked Styles
• Create, Modify and Locate your Own Styles
• Understand Where Styles Are Stored
• Understand how to use Styles with court rules and resumes
• Understand how to automatically create a Table of Authorities

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Stacey Rowland

Session Track:

Experiential Learning

Topics:

law faculty

Overabundance in Instructional Design and Educational Technology -- Assessing the Best Approaches to Lesson Construction in Order to Fully Engage Your Students

Ashley Ahlbrand — Mon, 26 Feb 2018 21:00:07 +0000

When it comes to educational technology, we're living in an age of abundance. We have any number of competing slideware products, video creation and editing software, animation software, and more with which we can create course content. These technologies range from high tech to low tech, high cost to low cost, highly specialized to easy-to-learn. In an age of so many options, making the 'right' selection is often our greatest challenge -- what configuration of information will make my lesson most attainable to the most students?

Using the spearker's asynchronous, online Advanced Legal Research course as an example, this session will provide a brief overview of competing approaches to instructional design, with a focus on designing individual modules, as opposed to an entire course. The session will discuss an array of affordable technologies that pair well with different instructional choices, with examples of how each was used in the sample course. Finally, based on anonymous student feedback as well as an examination of student performance in each module, the session will report on how successful or unsuccessful each approach/technology was in conveying the information presented and facilitating mastery of the subject.

Level of knowledge: This session would be appropriate for anyone just beginning as an instructor, or someone interested in modifying or experimenting with their own teaching methodologies.

Attendees will leave this session with knowledge of (a) a variety of different ways to present information to learners, (b) complementary technologies for organizing and presenting that information, and (c) best practices for putting these instructional design and technology choices to use.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Ashley Ahlbrand

Session Track:

Case Studies

Topics:

instructional design

Battling Fake News and Developing Digital Literacy Skills within the Legal Profession

Carol Watson — Tue, 27 Feb 2018 14:27:35 +0000

Alternative facts? Truthiness? Post Truth? Hardly a day passes without someone making a reference to fake news. But why should lawyers care and what can information technology professionals and the legal academy do about it?

In order to fulfil a lawyer’s duty of technology competency, digital information literacy is essential. Legal professionals must be able to locate, evaluate and use online information effectively. Evaluation of the reliability of digital information is a complex skill that must be mastered for the successful practice of law.

This program will discuss digital information literacy in the context of fake news. The session will provide an overview of fake news including tracing the history of its origin. We’ll discuss why it matters and the consequences of failing to detect fake news. Tips and tools for evaluating the credibility of news sources will be provided as well as strategies for creating successful information literacy programming.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Carol Watson

Caroline Osborne

Kris Niedringhaus

Session Track:

Technology

Topics:

Information literacy

Tips for Including CALI's Materials in Your Courses

Deb Quentel — Tue, 27 Feb 2018 18:24:44 +0000

Assessment and more
Experiential learning
CALI helps students

An experiential session to get you thinking about when and how to use CALI materials.

Experience level:

Intermediate

Speaker(s):

Deb Quentel

Session Track:

Experiential Learning

Get Smart: Are Smartphones in the Law School Classroom a Recipe for KAOS?

Shannon Roddy — Wed, 28 Feb 2018 18:47:45 +0000

Should laptops and smartphones be allowed in the law school classroom? This session will provide a brief overview of the research on laptops and smartphones in the classroom. We’ll discuss the pros and cons of their use and devote the bulk of the session to exploring ways to leverage laptop and smartphone use in the law school classroom. We will conclude by brainstorming with attendees about additional uses. By the end of the session, attendees should be able to identify specific uses for laptops and smartphones, including apps and activities, that will enhance students’ learning in the classroom.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Shannon Roddy

Khelani Clay

Session Track:

Technology

Using Guided Interviews to Serve Non-Profits

Raymond Brescia — Wed, 28 Feb 2018 19:56:31 +0000

This session will describe a class project, incorporated in a course entitled "The Law of Social Entrepreneurship and Exempt Organizations," in which students utilized A2J Author to prepare two guided interviews. Thse guided interviews will allow end-users who may want to create a non-profit under New York Law to prepare a certificate of incorporation and by-laws for the organization in accordance with NY state law. While the students learned the substantive law of non-profits through the course, they also learned business process analysis and A2J Author programming to develop these two guided interviews. We are in the beta-testing phase through which students are presenting the interviews to community members and practicing lawyers to get their guidance and feedback before we formally launch the two interviews and make them public, which we expect to happen by the end of June 2018. This work was done with the guidance and assistance of Jessica Frank and John Mayer from CALI. Presenters will include Ray Brescia, professor of law, Albany Law School, who led the course; Alexandria Decatur and Julia Kosinski, two students who participated in the project and class; and Jessica Frank and John Mayer of CALI.

The goal of the presentation will be to show the methodology by which we developed and tested the A2J Author for use in this context, but also how using A2J Author dovetails nicely with substantive/doctrinal law courses.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Raymond Brescia

Session Track:

Case Studies

Topics:

Using A2J Author in Doctrinal Courses and Engaging the Community in Beta Testing

Sources of American Law - An Introduction to Legal Research: Adopting an eLangdell Book as a Coursebook

Edward Hart — Wed, 28 Feb 2018 21:34:24 +0000

Law librarians from UNT Dallas College of Law and Georgia State University College of Law will discuss their experience developing the first-year research curriculum and a similar class for an LLM in American law program using Beau Steenken and Tina Brooks’ textbook, along with its generous creative commons license, Sources of American Law - An Introduction to Legal Research. The book is a CALI eLangdell Press publication now in its third edition. It is freely available in several downloadable formats for various platforms as well as an affordable print-and-bind-on-demand service. They will discuss factors that led to the book’s adoption and their takeaways transitioning away from a more traditional legal research text. For example, one benefit is the ability to take advantage of the creative commons license to rewrite exercises for their jurisdiction. Also important is the interplay between the contents of the book and the promotion of related CALI Lessons. In addition to their feedback, presenters will share commentary from current and former students.

This program is for law librarians and professors who are interested in teaching using eLangdell publications and how these materials can be adapted to different teaching methods.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Edward Hart

Meg Butler

Session Track:

Case Studies

Topics:

Teaching with open access book

Lessons in Engagement from Game Designers

Joshua Pluta — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 16:46:04 +0000

A few years ago, “gamification” was the Next Big Thing in everything, borrowing the incentive systems from games – scores, achievements, and levels – to engage students, customers, and employees. However, those incentive systems are not the only ways that games engage their players: Games rely on countless techniques to appeal to their players and engage them in play. Just like the obvious incentive systems that gamification taps into, we can use these methods to engage students, faculty, and administrators, and encourage them to take a more active role in their education, use of technology, and implementation of policy. This program will tap into some specific lessons game designers have learned from their experiences in how to engage with their players, and how to apply those lessons to legal education.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Joshua Pluta

Session Track:

Course Management

Dealing with established systems, legacy systems, and technical debt in law school IT shops

Elmer Masters — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 16:59:58 +0000

This is an issue that I don't think has ever been fully discussed at CALIcon: how do small development operations like law schools deal with things like the endless upgrade cycle, technical debt, end of life situations and more. This is certainly something we struggle with all the time at CALI where we have a constant tension between building new things and maintaining an increasing number of stable projects.

I'll be assembling a panel to help out with this.

Experience level:

Intermediate

Speaker(s):

Elmer Masters

john Joergensen

Session Track:

Technology

Syncing CRM at Colorado Law

Jonathan Sibray — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 17:34:11 +0000

Like most Law Schools, Colorado Law has a number of systems in use to manage specific points in the student lifecycle. These systems are disparate: third-party, main campus, or Law School-specific. What we lacked was an aggregator of these systems to allow us to work with data across systems and share changes efficiently. Administrators and staff were stuck in a morass of spreadsheets and inefficient processes to gather and transfer data. Process owners were spending more time trying to access their data instead of interacting with their specific processes (prospect, student, or alumni-driven).

This session will consider Colorado Law's ongoing journey to data nirvana. We will discuss how we designed and developed our processes, what worked well, and what we would recommend for others undertaking a similar project within a Law School environment. We will look at resources, constraints, and an overall project plan that would be applicable for other institutions attempting a similar endeavor.

Topics: CRM, Project Management, Integrations, API, Database Development, Deployment, Release Management, User Adoption

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Jonathan Sibray

Mike Burr

Session Track:

Technology

Faculty Scholarship Collection and Reporting Improved Process

David McGeehan — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 19:29:47 +0000

Abstract

A team of deans, faculty, librarians, and staff collaborated to re-engineer a law school’s faculty scholarship collection and reporting process. The team assessed and documented the existing process and benchmarked externally as well as within the university. Data and systems were thoroughly inventoried. Using the gathered information and aligning efforts with pre-defined success criteria stakeholders were engaged to design a solution. The final process leveraged web-based technologies, clearly defined roles and responsibilities, added a new role, and refined the communication plan. The result is a more efficient and effective process to capture and re-distribute faculty scholarship which is important to advancing the university’s goals.

Keywords

Faculty scholarship, process, project management, marketing, higher education

Session

This session details an initiative to overhaul an existing, fragmented faculty scholarship reporting process. The intended goals of the initiative were to create an enhance process that was more accurate and efficient in presenting faculty scholarship in the school’s varied output and reporting channels.

The Duquesne University School of Law faculty scholarship reporting process was previously a widely distributed and complex situation involving many faculty and staff. This hampered scholarship reporting and the associated benefits. Scholarship reporting is important because it impacts the school’s stature and enrollment as positive peer assessments may help with the school’s ranking and prospective students often select schools to attend based on faculty’s scholarship and other achievements.

The team was challenged with developing a process that would; simplify reporting for faculty, be more efficient, present scholarship to the public more quickly, and display scholarship content elements in a consistent manner. The team gathered background information from four other Duquesne University colleges, i.e., School of Business, School of Education, School of Health Sciences, School of Liberal Arts, and the Gumberg Library via an email questionnaire. This survey information was referenced while designing the enhanced process. The team also considered the various outputs for the scholarship, including the public website and social media, Sedona, SSRN, Selected Works, etc., and compiled all of the data points required for each system, totaling thirty-five unique data types in all.

A new process was developed that considered and included the many variables so the information could be gathered and manipulated more efficiently. Ultimately, the team was able to design an inclusive electronic form that faculty can use to input scholarship once and have the information manually populated through several parallel systems and workflows. The data from the sophisticated, conditional electronic input form is distributed automatically to the appropriate team members. The team members involved in the process were realigned to better utilize existing skills and workloads and a faculty scholarship editor was designated.

Additionally, the School of Law website was modified to better present the scholarship information, guidelines were developed for the consistent presentation of data, and a thorough review of all faculty scholarship information in all of the relevant systems is now underway.

The new process rollout was supported with a presentation to faculty and staff, a diagram of the process design, and a revised communication plan to facilitate adoption. The team provided information and materials on the new process to the schools that participated in the survey and the library so that they too may benefit from the team’s efforts.

Attendees of my session with come away with the following competencies;

An understanding of the critical milestones required to effectively manage the advancement of a project of this nature,
An understanding of the work flow key personal necessary to support a faculty scholarship promotion process,
An ability to state the necessary technologies required for such a project,
And an ability to describe the probable challenges and key considerations that should be taken into account.

The session will provide value to attendees of all experience levels and technological competencies. A session attendee will walk away with a better understanding of how to best build or improve on a faculty scholarship promotion structure.

Experience level:

Intermediate

Speaker(s):

David McGeehan

Session Track:

Case Studies

Topics:

Faculty Scholarship Support

H2O 2.0: A New Way to Create and Share Legal Ed Texts

Brett Johnson — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 19:49:18 +0000

Casebooks are expensive, inflexible, proprietary and mostly unavailable in digital form. This is bad for law faculty and their students. Given the capabilities of the web and the public domain nature of most of the materials in casebooks, faculty and students should have a way to create, adapt, view and print on-demand digital caseboks in their browsers.

H2O offers a platform for making and sharing open-licensed casebooks and other course materials online, by allowing professors to freely develop, remix, and share online textbooks under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. H2O is based on the open-source model: instead of locking down materials in formalized textbooks, we believe that course books can be free (as in “free speech”) for everyone to access and, just as important, build upon. Currently, H2O is geared primarily toward law professors, though the platform can be used across intellectual domains.

In this, presenter Brett Johnson from the Harvard Law School's Library Innovation Lab will discuss the newest, just-released iteration of H2O and how it reflects things learned from the first iteration, the lab's real-life experiences with sharing/remixing in the legal education arena, and producing texts that are direct-to-student + print-on-demand, as well as how the lab has navigated questions of copyright on an open-course platform along with discussing future directions for H2O.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Brett Johnson

Session Track:

Technology

Wikipedia in the Legal Research Classroom

Nicole Downing — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 20:36:22 +0000

No matter how many reliable research strategies they are taught, the new generation of law students (and attorneys) often use Wikipedia as a starting point for their legal research. Detailed Wikipedia pages for primary law are being edited every day; they can’t be ignored even as we attempt to teach students advanced research skills. Instead, we can examine the information and sources of information on these Wikipedia pages. This session will breakdown the type of legal pages that currently appear on Wikipedia and the type of information available on these pages. The “legislative history” infobox on statutory Wikipedia pages will be evaluated for the scope of information available and the range of hyperlinked sources of information. The session will conclude with strategies for dealing with Wikipedia’s presence in the legal research classroom. Participants will leave the session with a clear understanding of what students are seeing on legal Wikipedia pages and ideas for facing the unique challenge of Wikipedia as a research tool. Attendees don’t need any prior knowledge before attending this session, just a desire to hear more about an online source that is disliked by educators everywhere!

Takeaways:

Participants will be able to understand how a new generation of law students interacts with Wikipedia.
Participants will be able to identify the different types of legal Wikipedia entries and the information covered by these entries.
Participants will gain insight into the sources of information being used by legal Wikipedia entries.
Participants will be presented with strategies for incorporating Wikipedia into the legal research classroom.

Slides:

Wikipedia in the Legal Research Classroom.pdf

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Nicole Downing

Session Track:

Course Management

How Library Workshops Can Evolve to Prepare Students for 21st Century Practice

Nicole Downing — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 20:39:26 +0000

Librarians have a wealth of knowledge that we attempt to impart on students during their three years in law school. However, we are constantly competing for their attention. Many schools offer some form of voluntary library workshop series for law students taught by librarians. The UNC Law Library has offered a practice-focused workshop series in a variety of formats over the years, but the topics have always focused on traditional research skills. Attendance at the workshops had significantly dropped off in recent years. However, we still saw the importance of these series both in the knowledge and skills librarians can share with the students and as a vehicle for showcasing how librarians can function as a valuable resource for students and attorneys. This workshop will discuss how we transformed our traditional workshop series into a workshop series with a focus on legal technology. The session will begin with an overview of the various formats the series has taken over the years and a discussion of the suspected causes of decline in attendance. I will then discuss how legal technology was identified to revive the program, how the new topics were developed, how we marketed the series, and how students responded to the new topics. The program will end with a look at some of the workshop PowerPoints used over the last year and the overall benefits of the series for the library.

Takeaways:

Participants will be able to consider the changing views law students have of their information needs and research skills.
Participants will be able to walk away with ideas for transforming and marketing their own workshop series.
Participants will be able to reflect on the benefits of continuing to offer voluntary workshops to law students as research instruction within the law school curriculum becomes more robust.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Nicole Downing

Session Track:

Case Studies

Notes & Comments: Unique Resources for the Law School Institutional Repository

Aaron Kirschenfeld — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 20:46:15 +0000

Institutional repositories provide law schools the opportunity to make unique resources available to their patrons and to the public. The University of North Carolina School of Law's Kathrine R. Everett Law Library is in the process of adding a digitized backfile of notes and comments from the school's flagship law journal, the North Carolina Law Review, that were otherwise quite difficult to access online. More than 1,700 individual notes or editorial comments were described and are in the process of being posted to the Carolina Law Scholarship Repository law journals collection. Many of the notes chart the development of substantive legal doctrine in this state and offer insights to practitioners as well as to academic researchers. Some notes, especially early ones, are authored by prominent professors and jurists. Other notes are authored by students who would become leaders in the state's legal community.

In this session, after learning whether your school has similiar unique and useful resources sitting just below the surface, you will get a sense of the specific workflows the repository manager at UNC developed (warts and all). You will also learn a bit about how the project was organized and how institutional stakeholders, including the editors of the law review, were consulted. Specific technology used included Acrobat Pro and Excel, as well as very simplistic Python scripts for cleaning data from Hein's CSV files. This session is ideal for any librarian who works with or manages an IR -- specifically a BePress Digital Commons instance -- or for librarians in a public-facing role who may wish to advocate for similar collections at their institutions. Be prepared to leave the presentation ready to take on a new project that has distinct starting and ending points and that can be accomplished without undue effort.

Presenter: Aaron Kirschenfeld, Digital Initiatives Law Librarian and Clinical Assistant Professor of Law, Kathrine R. Everett Law Library, University of North Carolina School of Law

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Aaron Kirschenfeld

Session Track:

Case Studies

Topics:

institutional repositories

All the Cool Things CALI is ... and Could Be Doing

John Mayer — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 21:28:18 +0000

CALI has a LOT of projects. I will talk about these cursorily, but the bulk of this session will be talking about CALI and the future of edlegaltech. What *should* CALI be doing to deliver the most benefit to our law school members? How can we be better leaders?

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

John Mayer

Session Track:

Technology

Teaching a Synchronous Online Class using WebEx.

Charles Perkins — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 21:50:16 +0000

This program will discuss using WebEx to teach synchronous online courses.

This program will examine:

Complying with ABA Standards
Discussion of best practices for course and classroom management
Discussion of the technology used to create, host, and share the course materials.

The following potential presenters have hands on experience with teaching online synchronous course projects and include:

Jeff Chilcott, Instructional Technologist and AV Coordinator at Elon University School of Law, assists in media management and creation. He holds a B.A. in Film Production from the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
Abigail Deese, Evening and Weekend Reference Librarian at Elon University School of Law, teaches basic and advanced legal research at Elon. She holds a B.A. in Classics from the College of Charleston, a J.D. from the Charleston School of Law and a M.L.I.S. from the University of Arizona.
Kathleen McLeod, Associate Dean for Library and Information Systems at Elon University School of Law, teaches basic and advanced legal reserch courses at Elon. She holds an A.B. from Syracuse University, a J.D. from Washington University in St. Louis and a M.L.S. from Southern Connecticut State University.
Charles Perkins, Reference/Access Services Librarian at Elon University School of Law, teaches basic legal research at Elon. He holds a B.S. from the United States Naval Academy, a M.S.L.I.S. from the Catholic University of America, and a J.D. from Seton Hall University School of Law.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Charles Perkins

Kathleen McLeod

Abigail Deese

The Redoing Project: How to use Assessment Results to Drive Change and Overcome Resistance

Joshua Pluta — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 22:33:33 +0000

As new accreditation standards, both from the ABA and the regional accreditors, drive schools to conduct more and more assessment at all levels of the organization, we find ourselves bathed in data, but not knowing what to do with it, and even when we do, often finding stakeholders resistant to change. This program will address what to do when the assessment is done, and there are needs to be addressed. Discussion will include interpreting assessment results, identifying opportunities, and engaging stakeholders in the process, with special attention paid to how data can be misinterpreted, why people resist change, and how to overcome that resistance.

Experience level:

Intermediate

Speaker(s):

Joshua Pluta

Gordon Russell

Session Track:

Technology

Digital Badges in Legal Research Instruction

Margaret Kiel-Morse — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 01:01:53 +0000

A digital badge is an online visual representation of an achievement or association that contains metadata that provides context or explains an activity completed by the badge-holder. Digital badges are a type of credential that can be accumulated across courses and displayed across online platforms and portfolios. They can be used to recognize achievements in subsets of skills that were not traditionally credentialed on their own, or to recognize student achievement in non-graded seminars.

This talk will introduce digital badges as a tool for motivating law students and tracking their progress in legal research instruction. I will define what the badges are, and discuss why and how to use them. Then I will demonstrate a few tools to use for creating badges. Finally, I will discuss the digital badge created for use with the C|M|Law Library’s Legal Research Seminars.

Takeaways:

Attendees will be able to define the term “digital badge” and list a few reasons for using them in an academic setting.

Attendees will know of a few tools to use for creating badges.

Please note: I am able to do this talk alone, but I would also be happy to transform this into a panel if others are interested in this topic.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Margaret Kiel-Morse

Session Track:

Course Management

Deliver Results and Demonstrate Value with Agile Project Management

Morgan Stoddard — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 01:02:04 +0000

Agile project management is a set of methods and methodologies that helps teams to think more effectively, work more efficiently, and make better decisions. Agile originated in the software development industry, but it is now used by a variety of organizations, including libraries and law firms, to deliver better services and resources to clients/users and demonstrate value to stakeholders. At this session, the speakers will explain agile project management and some of the well-known frameworks (e.g., Scrum) and describe the benefits of adopting an agile approach as well as some of the potential challenges. They will also provide guidance and examples of how to introduce agile project management to an organization so that attendees will leave with the information and tools they need to start becoming agile. The session will focus on agile project management in the context of libraries and legal information, but agile principles and frameworks can be utilized in a variety of ways in legal education (e.g., collaborative teaching, experiential learning), so this session will offer something of value for all attendees.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Morgan Stoddard

Session Track:

Case Studies

Develop Yourself: Roll Your Own Software Solutions with LiveCode

Andrew Bell — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 01:31:15 +0000

Modern students are digital natives who thrive on round the clock electronic information access. While most of this interaction can take place through your school's website or LMS, this generation increasingly seeks individualized access and instruction. There are a variety of 3rd-party software solutions for every task imaginable. Evaluating these tools to find which has exactly all the features you need, let alone allocating the budget for or getting the vendor approved, can be a painstaking task. Sometimes it’s just easier to do it yourself.

LiveCode is a powerful and intuitive multi-platform open source development tool that makes this a reality. Write and compile 1 codebase to deploy natively to Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, and HTML5 formats. An evolution of HyperCard from the 1990’s, the LiveCode language is designed to be readable and as close as possible to the way you speak and think. This means you write up to 90% less code compared to traditional languages, making it extremely approachable for non-developers and tech heads alike.

This session will include a brief introduction to the LiveCode programming language and environment, a look at usage case studies, and a look at the underlying code of some example frontend and backend apps.

Presenter: Andrew Bell; Web Application Programmer, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Andrew Bell

Session Track:

Technology

Topics:

In-house app development

LII: Under the Hood

Sara Frug — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 17:32:59 +0000

LII publishes original content and enhanced primary legal materials for an ever-growing audience that ranges from lawyers to middle school students. With examples from recent projects, this session will address what we're publishing and maintaining, how we're choosing and undertaking new projects, and what challenges we face as we look ahead to the future. We think that these examples will be of use to anyone engaging in iterative development processes, innovating while maintaining existing operations, and seeking out new audiences for the work they are already doing.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Sara Frug

Session Track:

Case Studies

Real World Video Accessibility

Bryan Rapp — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 18:09:49 +0000

Video accessibility is a hot topic in higher education these days with several universities facing lawsuits related to their practices in this area. This session will discuss what's required under the law, what some universities have chosen to do in response to lawsuits, and provide practical tips on best practices and methods for making videos accessible at differening budget levels.

Attendees should have a basic understanding of what accessibility is, and an interest in video accessibility topics like closed captioning.
This session will cover the different types of video captioning available, include live vs. on-demand, and human vs. computer generated captions.
Some of the technology platforms to be discussed will include YouTube, Facebook Live, GoToWebinar, Skype and Mediasite.
We'll include a live demo of live captioning of the session room permitting.

Experience level:

Intermediate

Speaker(s):

Bryan Rapp

Session Track:

Technology

Topics:

accessibility

Law student technology competency - how do we pay for it?

Kris Niedringhaus — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 19:10:26 +0000

Most of us agree that the majority of law students need some level of technology education in order to in order to be competent to practice law under Rule 1.1 of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. As of February 2018, 28 states have adopted an explicit duty of technology competency and other states have indicated that their broader competency rule would encompass technology competency.

We can debate whose responsibility it is to provide technology education but, for purposes of this discussion, we'll talk about those situations that the law school takes on some responsibility for it and how that is funded. If these are teaching and learning resources are they purchased by the library? What about the IT or law school budget? In this time of shrinking or flat budgets, where do we find the money and what are we giving up instead? Hear from a panel of of your colleagues how different models are working at their institutions and join a discussion about possible ways to prioritize and fund legal technology education and the pros and cons of each.

Level of knowledge: This session is suitable for all attendees, novice to expert.

Takeaways: Attendees will leave the session with (a) an understanding of different options for where legal technology education may find a home in the law school, (b) the pros and cons of each model, and (c) budgetary impacts of the various models.

Interested in joining the panel? Looking for IT, library, faculty, and law school administration perspectives to share.

Experience level:

Intermediate

Speaker(s):

Kris Niedringhaus

Carol Watson

Roger Skalbeck

Darin Fox

Michael Robak

Session Track:

Case Studies

Topics:

technology education; budgets; funding; legal technology

Online Learning: Synchronous or Asynchronous?

Duane Strojny — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 19:44:22 +0000

Learn about sucesses and misses when it comes to online learning formats. Should class be live with actual interaction between the faculty and students or should class be canned so students can work through the content on a more individual basis? What are successful ways to engage students in an online environment? Hear about graduate law (LL.M.) programs that are online and decide for yourself. Attendees should have some very basic knowledge about possible online platforms. The session will help those working with J.D. programs plan for growth in online classes that may occur when the ABA considers expanding distance education for J.D. students to 30 credits next fall. Pros and cons of each type of format will be discussed. Brief demostrations of each type of format will occur as well (although all may be canned for convenience).

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Duane Strojny

Session Track:

Technology

Topics:

Online learning: Synchronous or Asynchronous?

Developing Legal Tech Education within the Law School

Jackson Snellings — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 19:55:01 +0000

This session will be offered as a panel, followed by interactive small-group work. Panelists will be faculty, IT administrators, and librarians from schools that have existing legal technology instruction that is either credit-bearing or non-credit bearing. Following an initial panel discussion, participants will work in small groups to develop roadmaps for creating opportunities for legal technology instruction in their own institutions.

This panel/workshop will explore existing efforts at multiple law schools to offer legal technology instruction with the goal of engaging and enabling our students to:

Identify the potential disruptions on the horizon within the legal field.
Recognize the opportunities emerging technologies will provide within the profession.
Understand the increasing importance of technology to the practice of law.
Possess an appreciation for the inherent ethical and social implications of these new technologies.
Speak confidently to prospective employers about technology.

We will focus on the process and challenges of creating technology instruction within the law school environment, specifically with respect to:

Organizing topics that are both relevant pedagogically and engaging topically.
Attaining faculty buy-in and partnership.
Marketing events to overworked students.
Finding resources and partners from the community, including law school alumni.
Identifying the specific technologies appropriate for exploration.
Overcoming the challenges of badging and micro-credentials and employing creative incentives for participation.
Providing hands-on experience with technology to teach concepts rather than mechanics.

What will your session accomplish and what will attendees walk away having learned?

Participants will learn:

Models for developing both credit-bearing and non-credit-bearing legal technology offerings.
How to identify and address obstacles and challenges in developing such offerings.
How to identify stakeholders and enthusiastic partners interested in collaborating to create and innovate.
How to generate roadmaps for producing successful programs focused on legal technology education.

Who should attend this session?

Anyone interested in developing new or enhancing existing legal technology instruction in the law school setting. It is ok not to know what you don't know. People who have a limited understanding of the "state of the art" are often not bound by the constraints of what is currently possible. All levels of technical skill are welcome; often political and administrative acumen is more valuable in realizing innovative initiatives. Anyone willing to contribute their practical knowledge navigating academia with the generosity to share is welcome and encouraged to participate.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Jackson Snellings

Shazam Mohammed

Session Track:

Experiential Learning

Visual communication is exploding but is anyone paying attention?

Zanada Joyner — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 20:33:19 +0000

Visual communication rules our relationship to technology. As presenters, we know that we rely on images, animated GIFs, video content to express, demonstrate, or explain relevant concepts while simultaneously entertaining audience members. But do we understand the broader visual communication concepts and theories about how our audience interprets visual information?

Learning the principles of visual communication will empower instructors and presenters to tailor the visual design of a multimedia presentation to the appropriate amount of information for the maximum retention level that the audience will have. A variety of factors affect the amount of information audience members retain, including length of program, the difficulty of the subject matter, the amount of text contained in slides, and the prior exposure of the audience to the concepts.

The presenters will offer best practices of visual communication for instructors to ensure effective reception by audiences with a variety of skill levels.

Katie Hanschke, Faculty Services Librarian, NCCU Law Library; Shelley B. Fullwood, Copyright & Trademark Law Fellow, NCCU School of Law; Zanada Joyner, Digital Services Librarian, NCCU Law Library

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Zanada Joyner

Session Track:

Technology

Topics:

Visual Communication; training; instruction; technology

Shaping a Social Media Policy for Student Groups

Christine George — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 20:39:51 +0000

With the onset of law students who are digital natives, it’s not surprising that student groups are taking to social media. An engaged student body is key to building a robust law school community and social media can be a way in which student groups interact with one another, faculty, and administration to help build that community. But utilizing social media accounts bearing the law school’s name and branding comes with great responsibility, and that may not always be apparent to the students. Knowing how to post as an ethical professional is not necessarily an innate ability and guidelines can help foster that growth. In this session we’ll discuss the considerations and process of creating a social media policy for student groups (and how it echoes or differs from policies for law faculty and administrators) and the outreach necessary to implement it.

After this session attendees will be able to:

Articulate why creating a social media policy for student groups is necessary
Identify the necessary parties in their institution who will need to be involved in the creation of the policy
Prepare an outreach plan to implement the policy

Experience level:

Intermediate

Speaker(s):

Christine George

Christine Arlene Arrozal

Session Track:

Case Studies

The nuts and bolts of doing a citation and semantic network analysis of international criminal law decisions: More fun than it sounds

John Heywood — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 20:52:25 +0000

This is a case study on an ongoing project to study a body of international criminal case judgments, constructing a semantic network analysis of their citations in order to show whether or not a "common law" is emerging. This session will focus on the the problems in obtaining the corpus in a usable format, the selection of appropriate tools for textual analysis, and on actual experience using those tools.

This session is aimed at folks comfortable with coding, although extensive knowledge is not required.

Attendees will hopefully leave the session with an understanding of the problems an analysis of this kind encounters and some of the solutions I have found (or at the very least, having had an opportunity to work on their own slides in the back row).

Experience level:

Intermediate

Speaker(s):

John Heywood

Session Track:

Case Studies

Topics:

Semantic network analysis tools

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: From Slides to Instructional Videos

Emily Barney — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 21:02:17 +0000

Many of us have slides we've created for classes, workshops, and trainings that could easily be reworked into video tutorials that can be shared in more contexts.

I'll compare the built-in features of different presentation tools, cover my favorite visual resources/design tips, and describe learning theory that applies to creating short instructional videos.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Emily Barney

Session Track:

Technology

Topics:

instructional design

Building CALI Dashboards: Leveraging custom Drupal Views to increase access to member data

Elmer Masters — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 21:05:31 +0000

This session will take a look at the challenges and code behind bringing 11,000,000 rows of Lesson data into Drupal Views and then leveraging that access to create meaningful reports. Some of the challenges include developing custom modules to let Views see the LessonRun table and LessonLink information, maintaining access security so member schools only see their own information, and theming a bunch of stuff that wasn't in the intial design.

Experience level:

Intermediate

Speaker(s):

Elmer Masters

Session Track:

Technology

Topics:

Drupal

IT Leadership 101

Tom Ryan — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 21:15:34 +0000

This session will offer an exciting dive into effective IT Leadership. Topics will include, but are not limited to;

"Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right"

"3 Lenses for Success"

"The Dance Floor and the Balcony"

"Meeting Practices"

Hope to see you there!

Tom

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Tom Ryan

Using Excel for a simulation exercise in a law office technology course

Wayne Miller — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 21:50:48 +0000

Simulations can run the gamut from paper based to full online environment. What if you want a “what-if” scenario, but don’t see the need to invest in an interactive environment? Excel can serve as a great intermediary solution. In this session I will introduce the simulation my co-instructor and I have used in our Introduction to Law Office Technology seminar. I will discuss how it was made and describe our experiences, both good and bad. Audience members will "play along," and have an opportunity to discuss their own experiences with simulations. Bring a device that can run Excel to get the full experience. No experience is required, but some experience with Excel functions would be helpful. You will leave understanding how Excel's conditionals can be used to create gamelike scenarios.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Wayne Miller

Session Track:

Case Studies

UNT Dallas Law Review: Two Online Journals with very Different Missions

Edward Hart — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 21:57:20 +0000

The UNT Dallas Law Review embraces two very different missions in the two online publications established by the new law schools' students.

On the Cusp has the mission of bridging the gap between law school and practice by providing a series of cogent and concise journal publications that keep those in legal practice and interested in contemporary changes in the legal environment apprised of the practical application of the law in various legal fields.

Accessible Law, on the other hand, is a multimedia journal that focuses on the public and access to justicem issues. Topics are presented in multimedia formats such as: articles, videos, columns, forms, photos, audio or other media, as determined by the membership of the journal. Student editors make all editorial and organizational decisions, and together with several faculty advisors.

Come hear from members of the founding student staff how they established their criteria for substantive content and promotion of online publishing.

Experience level:

Intermediate

Speaker(s):

Edward Hart

Session Track:

Technology

Topics:

online journals

Death-proofing Web Citations with Perma.cc

Brett Johnson — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 23:30:06 +0000

As the citation of web pages in journal articles, court briefs and decisions continues to grow, the permance of the cited item becomes increasingly important. However recent research has shown that 50% of the links in Supreme Court decisions from 1996-2010 had reference rot, one in five articles suffers from reference rot, and three out of four URI references lead to changed content. This link-rot and content drift is alarming for its potential to undermine the integrity of both the scholarly record and the law itself.

Enter Perma.cc: when a user creates a Perma.cc link, Perma.cc archives the referenced content and generates a link to an archived record of the page. Regardless of what may happen to the original source, the archived record will always be available through the Perma.cc link. Over 500,000 links have been preserved through the Perma.cc service from users at over 200 courts and academic institutions.

This session will discuss what makes Perma.cc different, and at times more effective, for citations than other archiving services, recent developments, its use in the legal (and legal ed) arena, and prompt discussion and solicit feedback about how best to educate regarding link-rot, expand use in other academic institutions, and how Perma.cc's new commercial option can best benefit firms and other commercial entities. (Speaker may be joined by managing director of the Library Innovation Lab, Adam Zeigler.)

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Brett Johnson

Session Track:

Technology

Online Student Success is not just Faculty Responsibility

Minara Mordecai — Sat, 03 Mar 2018 02:01:52 +0000

Recent ABA proposal to allow for more distance education in law school JD programing has opened the door to new opportunities and challenges as it relates to schools rethinking online education. As institutions consider introducing or expanding online course offerings, student success is at the forefront. One of the biggest myths about online education relates to perception about its overall lack of effectiveness in student learning and, ultimately, student success. However, as educators know, at the end of the day, ineffective educational environments are evident in a regular classroom, but more noticeable in an online classroom. Attend this session to learn more about administration’s role in supporting student success in online education. See what an effective administration/faculty partnership should include. This session will provide a historical overview of law and online education, small group discussion/activity-sharing with larger audience, and close with thoughts about possible next steps for
your institution.

Audience: Suited for law school faculty/administrators who develop or implement policies related to student academic success.

Learning outcomes: Understand the key components of effective learning in an online environment; learn the latest research developments in assessing student engagement and motivation in online courses; understand administration's role in developing online courses; discuss direct and indirect barriers to online learning in legal education.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Jacquie Carroll

Minara Mordecai

Session Track:

Course Management

Topics:

Online learning; law school administration; academic success

Sparking Innovation in the Classroom: How to Introduce Faculty to Instructional Technology

Alyson Carrel — Sat, 03 Mar 2018 17:11:30 +0000

Before the 2017-2018 school year, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law held TEaCH LAW, a day-long conference and fair for faculty to share positive experiences about incorporating technology in the classroom. TEaCH LAW has grown and is now an ongoing series of demonstrations and extensive website resource for faculty to learn about new instructional technology tools from their peers. This CALIcon session will discuss the key elements to beginning a successful and ongoing initiative that encourages law faculty to explore the benefits of different instructional technology tools, from involving key stakeholders across the law school, ensuring variety of platforms, engaging presentations, and peer involvement. You do not need any previous knowledge about instructional technology to attend. Faculty, staff, and administrators are all welcome.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Alyson Carrel

Clare Willis

Session Track:

Case Studies

Law School Transparency

Kyle McEntee — Fri, 06 Apr 2018 15:57:38 +0000

Kyle McEntee, executive director of Law School Transparency, will provide an overview of LST's Data Dashboard, including data/analysis about law school costs, enrollment, job outcomes, and more. LST created this tool to make it easier for legal education stakeholders, policymakers, journalists, and the public to understand the current state of legal education. It will, hopefully, lead to new insights that advance legal education. After all, the foundation of reform continues to be good ideas supported by data.

This session does not require prior knowledge.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Kyle McEntee

Session Track:

Case Studies

Is There Anything Law School Faculty Members Can Learn from Research on Evidence-Based STEM Instruction?

Marjorie McDiarmid — Fri, 06 Apr 2018 16:04:41 +0000

Since the 1990s, the National Science Foundation directed millions of dollars into research into how to increase participation rates and remove barriers to success in STEM education. For scientists, it was always clear that, “No one would think of getting to the Moon or wiping out a disease without research. Likewise, one cannot expect reform efforts in education to have significant effects without research-based knowledge to guide them.” (Shavelson and Towne, Scientific Research in Education, 2002) THe model of “evidence based STEM instruction” that has emerged from NSF-funded research is transforming science education in primary, secondary and higher education. Can any of the results of decades into making scientific knowledge more accessible be applied in legal education? This panel reviews some of the basic principles of evidence-based STEM instruction and considers how they might be applied to broaden participation and remove barriers to success in legal education.

Experience level:

Intermediate

Speaker(s):

Marjorie McDiarmid

Jane Winn

Keynote: How Do Lawyers Get Paid If Access to Justice is Free?

Scott Lee — Thu, 19 Apr 2018 15:30:22 +0000

The rise of the self-represented litigant has disrupted the civil justice system. Courts no longer rely on lawyers to manage the litigants, but the due process remains so courts have had to step-up and create user-friendly systems for lay people. By providing comprehensive, 24/7 self-help services such as forms, instructions, tailored procedural guidance, and triaged case flow management; courts can create transparent and navigable systems. However, the bespoke approach contemplated in an adversarial process is lost without lawyers. Lawyers are still very much needed, however, their new role is only beginning to be understood. It is one that has paradoxically narrowed in focus yet, because of technology, expanded in delivery opportunities. Legal education has an opportunity to equip new lawyers with the legal and practical skills to be successful in today’s legal market that demands 24/7 services accessible by cellphone from anywhere in the world while engaging more autonomous clients who seek refined and targeted legal advice, strategy and big-picture analysis. This talk will explore the many opportunities that are presenting in this re-aligning market, and consider the negative and positive impacts, particularly with respect to technology, on access to justice.

Experience level:

Beginner

Speaker(s):

Katherine Alteneder

Topics:

KEYNOTE SESSION