Law Professors Told to Expect Competition From Virtual Learning
By WENDY R. LEIBOWITZ
Washington
The Internet could throw many law professors out of work, and the law school as a physical entity may vanish with the growth of online legal education, according to A. Michael Froomkin, a professor at the University of Miami School of Law.
"As new technologies spread into society, how much of what law schools do, or should do, will continue to require a law school in the traditional sense of bricks, mortar, a quadrangle, and an ivy-covered faculty?" he asked during the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Schools here early this month.
"Law school is a product," said Mr. Froomkin, and new markets are presenting themselves. Although it is costly to create virtual lectures and seminars, the potential revenues from reaching out to new student markets, including corporate executives, government officials, and foreigners, could be tantalizing to law schools, he said.
Mr. Froomkin said the migration of legal education to the Internet was inevitable. "The question is not, 'Will we see virtual law schools?' but rather, 'When will we see virtual law schools?'" Mr. Froomkin said.
The winners on the Internet will be law schools with well-known brand names, as well as faculty members at those institutions, he predicted. Celebrity faculty members may find new markets for their courses and reap the benefits, financially and professionally. Mr. Froomkin called this the Arthur-Miller-on-a-disk model, referring to the Harvard University law professor who has already offered to tape his lectures for Concord Law School, an online program (The Chronicle, December 17, 1999).
Perhaps someday, all law students will study from Arthur R. Miller, and basic courses will become a commodity in the new national market for online legal education, said Mr. Froomkin. Nonacademics may find it easy to teach certain subjects, or to hire themselves out as graders, e-mail-discussion leaders, and even directors of the entire first-year curriculum.
The losers in the new era of legal education will be second- and third-tier institutions that lack name recognition and its concomitant prestige, and their faculties, he said. They will either have to become discount law schools, or go online themselves. And if a school goes online, he asked, what need will there be for a physical structure, especially that expensive law library?
The professor said he was trying to provoke people to some extent. "I was hoping people would tell me I was wrong."
One attendee was quick to challenge Mr. Froomkin. Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of cyberspace law at Harvard, noted the importance in legal instruction of the Socratic method. Live, intense question-and-answer sessions between professor and student cannot be replicated online, he said. Although he uses e-mail extensively in his courses, the online dialogue is less effective, he said, than a Socratic exchange in a classroom.
But there was little other resistance to Mr. Froomkin's ideas. Ethan Katsh, a professor of legal studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, participated in a panel discussion on technology and the law. "I have the sense that distance education was an item of great concern to a lot of people at the meeting," he said afterward. "It's very unclear how technology will affect the enrollment of traditional students."
Others at the meeting noted the roadblocks on the path to destroying the physical law school. The American Bar Association accredits law schools and, Mr. Froomkin conceded, would be loath to recognize an online legal institution.
State licensing authorities also police the practice of law, and the vast majority do not allow graduates of unaccredited institutions to sit for the bar exam. "The profession is well-protected," said Mr. Katsh, from virtual law schools.
Mr. Froomkin believed that may change. "The A.B.A. can't stand in the way forever."
Some law professors are already living the distance-learning model. Peter W. Martin, a professor at Cornell Law School, transmits his course, "Copyright and Digital Works," to three other law schools: Chicago-Kent College of Law and the law schools at the Universities of Colorado and Kansas. Mr. Martin is paid by the three institutions as an adjunct, and grades each course separately, on a curve.
Cornell contracted with each university directly, noted Mr. Martin, distinguishing his situation from that of Harvard's Mr. Miller, who offered his course to Concord Law School without authorization. "It wasn't Peter Martin, entrepreneur, offering the course," he said. "It was Cornell offering the course. So there was no conflict of interest, or appearance of conflict of interest, between my employment at Cornell and my teaching students elsewhere."
Eight students at each university enrolled in his course, and, despite the poor quality of the video, he has found teaching students in the different locations rewarding. A problem arose when there was a fire drill at Cornell during his class. He kept on teaching.
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