Jacqueline Kinghan reports on the opportunities in the virtual classroom

The new media age has created a generation of law students well versed in digital communication and technologies. A host of social media tools and free-to-use communication platforms have become second nature to the lawyers of tomorrow. As legal practice becomes increasingly globalised and law firms explore the cost-effective and collaborative benefits of virtual technologies, how should legal education keep pace?


E-learning?

The internet now permeates the law at both a domestic and global level. From courtroom tweets and case comment blogs to e-disclosure software and virtual client negotiations, the use of technology is no longer peripheral but forms an integral part of legal practice. How then can we use new media tools and virtual technology to truly achieve a more worthwhile legal educational experience? And, as lawyers, in accepting this (relatively) new order, how should we contemplate the rules and norms created in the virtual legal learning world?

Of course, there is already an abundance of online lectures, long distance law degrees and vocational courses available to aspiring lawyers. But in thinking of ways to incorporate new technology in teaching, there is still a tendency at higher education establishments to use the term 'e-learning'. In many cases, this reveals a fundamental disconnect between the ultimate aims of education and how new media technology is perceived.

When online tools are so freely available and integrated into the patterns of daily life, their adoption in the educational sphere should not signal a distinct category of learning. Instead, these tools should become a natural extension of what we are already doing.


What is a virtual legal learning world?

Education that is international, real-time and virtual is not beyond reach. For a law student in a globalised world, legal education should ideally facilitate exposure to global perspectives. It should offer skills and experience and allow connection and virtual-educationco-operation with aspiring lawyers around the world. It seems obvious, then, that there are more creative ways to harness the collaborative potential of new media tools than simply delivering an online lecture.

One such example is a pilot project from University College London's (UCL's) faculty of laws called Law Without Walls™ (LWOW), established by pioneering academics at Miami Law School. Other partner universities include Harvard Law School, New York Law School, Peking School of Transnational Law and Fordham Law School. Selected students participate weekly in an online classroom on Adobe Connect where issues are presented by a diverse range of academics and practitioners on cutting edge areas of legal education or practice. These include entrepreneurship potential, new billing structures for law firms, virtual courtrooms and comparative legal education.

It is an exciting, international initiative that embraces interactive teaching and research and a multidisciplinary approach. As Professor Dame Hazel Genn comments: "UCL Laws is keen to promote creativity and innovation through inspiring projects such as this, which enable change and pave the way for a new legal experience."


Collaboration

A unique feature of LWOW is that UK students are paired with students from another global law school and they work together on a research project in an area of legal education or practice. The environment lends itself to delving deep into a challenging allocated problem given that students are transcending physical, international and cultural boundaries. They are each assigned an academic and practitioner mentor (who could be located anywhere globally) to assist them in the research process and meetings with those mentors are conducted on an interactive platform such as Skype or iChat.

This collaborative environment not only challenges the traditional classroom model but the traditional tutor-student relationship. It lends itself to experiential learning, long recognised as an effective teaching method, given the hands-on approach of conducting virtual interviews, communicating on virtual platforms and achieving worthwhile international research on issues of legal and practical importance.


Beyond the virtual classroom

Such an environment clearly has the potential to encourage critical thinking at a global level on issues of international importance. It can widen the opportunities available to a young lawyer by honing employability skills and providing a platform for networking. More than this, it gives students unique exposure to the new rules of working and researching in the virtual world. A whole host of new practical questions can arise: what is acceptable etiquette? How late is too late to click the button and 'enter' a classroom? What body language is appropriate on camera? What is an acceptable discussion or chat thread?

The virtual classroom also requires new levels of multi-tasking. Each presenter might share weblinks, video content, online reports or cases to illustrate their point. All of these have the potential to be posted at the same time as a discussion thread begins and students queue virtually to ask a question, make a comment or share a link to further online material. Plus, unlike a class where people face the front or perhaps even sit in a circle, the video of your classmates and your presenter is directly in front of you.


From class to client

A recent conversation with a partner at a City law firm about the virtual classroom illustrated that similar questions arise in practice. Many City firms use telepresence technology, delivering lifelike face-to-face meetings. In a virtual negotiation, however, you might choose carefully where to sit as being beside rather than opposite an opponent on a negotiation table makes for difficult engagement on points in issue. In court, a barrister who has conducted a video-link hearing knows that the nuances of trying to elicit evidence in this medium are very different.

As courts consider a greater move towards virtual hearings, these issues will become all the more salient. Indeed, we are confronted with the question of what virtual justice looks like and how we as lawyers can be trained and empowered to act in our clients' best interests. A classroom that deals with these issues head on is surely a progressive step towards educating lawyers equipped to deal with the challenges of tomorrow's legal world.

Jacqueline Kinghan is a senior teaching fellow in the faculty of laws at University College London.