In a bid to enhance legal education, one New York City judge has made the move from the bench to the App Store. New York City Civil Court Judge Josh Hanshaft recently developed and launched My BarTunes, an app that pairs core law school subjects to age-old nursery rhymes to assist law students studying for the bar exam. 

My BarTunes focuses on legal concepts taught in first-year law schools’ evidence, contracts, constitutional law, real property, civil procedure, criminal law and torts courses, and matches them to the melodies of nursery rhymes including “Three Blind Mice” and “The Farmer in the Dell.” Hanshaft said he combined his love of music and 20-plus years as an attorney and judge to help address the intense preparation needed to pass the bar exam and common first year-law school courses.

“It’s so much material when you are a first-year law student or taking the bar that every way to prepare is very important for law school students,” Hanshaft explained.

Although a developer coded the app, it took roughly seven years to create the content for My BarTunes, with Hanshaft working primarily on relearning all of the subjects and creating melodies.

“The process was basically: learn all the subjects, boil it down to what is necessary to know about the subject, find the song and put the words to lyrics that go with the song and then make sure everything rhymes and makes sense and review it,” he explained. 

Hanshaft released his app without a background in technology. While he has no plans to release more apps, he said it’s becoming imperative that judges have some understanding of technology when making judgments in a high-stakes environment.

“Criminal Court judges are signing warrants all the time,” he said. “If you don’t understand the technology, how can I sign a warrant about a crime that was committed or information involved in searching those materials unless I understand what that material is? You have to [understand it], you really don’t have a choice.”

Hanshaft noted that although older judges nearing retirement aren’t placing an emphasis on leverage technology, more court system are adopting new software to help streamline tasks.

“You need to see what a judge did six [court] appearances ago and following the history of a case is much easier when it’s automated,” he said. “There are many different areas that frees up other people who are processing paperwork. They don’t have to do that as much because they can look on the computer and find it easier as opposed to having buckets of paperwork to find what they need.”

Hanshaft said he expects more courtrooms to adopt technology to match the expectations of the incoming younger generations of lawyers. In the meantime, as courtrooms wait for tech resources, cases before judges are focusing more and more on modern technology. 

“There’s a lot of crime that has to do with computers and identity fraud, and cooking the books is now more technical,” he added. “Judges have to be aware and up on technology.”