Law and Innovation

As a result of receiving SATLE funding, Dr. Rónán Kennedy developed and deployed innovative tech-enabled modules at the University of Galway School of Law. This has particularly facilitated the creation of two successful undergraduate modules Lawyering, Technology and Innovation and Law and Analytics which provide hands-on experience with design thinking and data analytics.

Students engage in real-world projects, prototyping solutions for complex issues, learn basic coding skills, and the basics of data visualization. Students regularly report that this new skillset makes them more employable.

These modules have also been offered as a micro-credential, making the suite of learning tools developed through the SATLE award available to a wider population of mature and non-traditional students. The lessons learned have been foundational for the establishment of the new LLM in Law and Digital Innovation, which includes graduate modules that build on the existing success.

SATLE priority area: Digital Transformation

Context and key activities

Recognising that rapid developments in ‘artificial intelligence’ are changing the workplace for which our students require preparation, the School of Law at University of Galway undertook a transversal project to examine how to incorporate innovation into its teaching, beginning at undergraduate level but leading to the launch of a new master’s programme. The background to the decision was that many of the predictions regarding the future of law and of the legal profession – the end of law (Hildebrandt, 2009), the end of lawyers (Susskind, 2009), or even the end of law schools (Campbell, 2014) – involve information and communication technology. In this context, how does a university education remain relevant, and how should it interface with preparation for the legal professions?

The first step was to learn about what was happening in practice. This involved semi-structured interviews with a dozen practitioners (six solicitors, four barristers, and two technologists), in a ‘snowball fashion’, to better understand what changes are underway, and to get suggestions on what skills graduates should have, which fed into teaching design.

The cornerstone of the project was a new module, Lawyering, Technology and Innovation, for final year undergraduate students. It was designed to be practical, but with a pedagogical and theoretical underpinning to develop deeper learning rather than just straightforward skills training. Initially, because students worked on “real-world” app projects, enrolment was limited to a dozen in the first year. The learning outcomes require students to demonstrate a capacity to:

1. Critically assess the suitability of ICT to solve particular practical issues
2. Conduct preliminary information gathering and analysis for a particular application of ICT
3. Work in a team in order to develop a coherent design and presentation for the users for the system
4. Integrate legal and ICT knowledge to develop an appropriate solution
5. Develop, plan, and complete a high-quality research essay

Amongst the pedagogical practices employed for this purpose were small group, hands-on workshops in which students were facilitated in developing bespoke applications. After an introductory session from the module leader, colleagues from the disciplines of Management and Business Information Systems in the School of Business and Economics give sessions. Most of the remaining workshops were led by staff from the LaunchPad (now IdeasLab) who are highly experienced in the application of design thinking to the development of practical solutions. (For more on these approaches to law teaching, see Hagan, 2020.)

The apps had real-world application, and came from NGOs with an access to justice focus. Initial projects included enabling better access to environmental information or freedom of information requests; reporting illegal hedge-cutting during the nesting season; assisting in applying for Irish citizenship; and helping adoptees to obtain information on their birth parents. Assessment was through a combination of internal blog posts, learning journals (following the recommendations of Leering, 2019), an academic essay on an aspect of innovation in the legal services market, the app itself, and a written report and oral presentation on the development process. This developed a capacity for self-reflection on change, career development, and the relationship between individuals and technology.

The sourcing of projects proved to be a substantial challenge: although the goal was to enhance access to justice and NGOs were regarded as key stakeholders, involving them was a very time-consuming process. They had concerns about what was proposed, limited capacity to engage, and many leads ultimately did not result in projects, making this approach unviable in the long term. Conversations with colleagues about this led to the adoption of a more sustainable approach. Students are now required to gather information through their own networks on issues in the long-term residential care sector, with reference to the Health Information and Quality Authority’s ‘Guidance on a Human Rights-based Approach in Health and Social Care Services’ as a key reference document. As many students have links to this sector, this has been substantially easier and leads to more manageable projects. This also allowed the cap on enrolment to be lifted.

In any group context, inter-personal issues are somewhat inevitable. In some instances, groups would ask the module leader to intervene. Acting on guidance from a colleague in the School of Business and Economics, team charters were integrated into the assessment as the first deliverable. This has helped greatly.

Long-term financial sustainability is also a challenge. The SATLE funding was invaluable in allowing the project to begin but was time-limited. The Law School provided support for a number of years but reducing budgets made this impossible in the long run. The project team responded by contacting platform providers to enquire about free access for educational purposes. This yielded three good options (Checkbox.ai, BRYTER and Bubble), which have put the module on a stronger footing for the future.

Strategic alignment with national policies and relevant SATLE priority area

The initiative is aligned with education for the digital transformation. It is research-informed from the outset. Since the project began, Dr Kennedy was selected through a competitive process to write a Spotlight paper report on ‘Algorithms, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence in the Irish Legal Services Market’ (2021) for the Oireachtas Library and Research Service, with funding from Science Foundation Ireland. This explored the transformations which ICT and AI are effecting in the legal industry and provides the context in which the project contributes to this priority area, as it is grounded in a comprehensive understanding of how this change is playing out in law and the report is core reading for the Lawyering, Innovation and Technology module.

This project aimed to prepare students for a changing environment. It sought to provide education, not training – the aim was not to teach students how to use particular applications or environments, but to have a good grasp of the basics of the use of technology, an awareness of innovation and change that they can turn to their benefit and to the benefit of society, and a capacity for self-reflection. Although the hands-on use of app-building platforms is most striking within the context of a relatively traditional legal curriculum, the intention was not to teach students how to build apps but to learn to ask ‘how can we do this differently in the future?’, and to consider the perspective of the user of legal services, rather than prioritising the lawyer (as is too often the case).

The goal was simultaneously to familiarise students with technologies which could be applied in legal practice, and to enable them to take a critical distance from it. Students were encouraged to ‘get their hands dirty’ by specifying and building apps themselves, but also exposed to critical literature on information technology, and ‘lawtech’, so that they develop a higher level capacity to stand back from the ‘shiny toys’ and make informed decisions about the appropriateness and usefulness of particular technologies.

The approach taken, therefore, was to prepare students to build their own future, one in which they can make informed and (one hopes) values-driven choices about which technologies should be developed and favoured. If the target is moving, graduates should be empowered not only to hit it better but to make it easier to hit because they can move it into their own immediate vicinity. The project demonstrates that it is possible to assemble a cross-disciplinary module which engages and stimulates students, and that design thinking can be an effective means of teaching innovation (echoing Lee & Benza, 2015). Students are thus fully engaged in the digital transformation, as evidenced by these additional skills being key to success in job interviews after graduation.

Innovation in specified SATLE priority area

The traditional content of a law degree does not involve very much exposure to technology (Simon 2014, Ryan 2021), group work (Weinstein 2013), or discussion of emotions (Jones 2018). This project innovated in preparing students for digital transformation by taking a hands-on practical approach (while remaining grounded in theory). This involved an interactive approach to teaching, with very few traditional lectures but instead many workshops in which students worked in groups to learn how to apply design thinking and were given tasks to complete outside of class in order to progress their project.

Design thinking itself involves thinking about the ‘user journey’ and how people feel at different points in a process. Empathy is not part of the standard law school curriculum. One student commented that it was the first time in their law degree that emotions had been discussed in the classroom, demonstrating how novel this is.

Once the projects had moved through the sequence of design thinking workshops, moving from developing a user persona, mapping that user’s journey, and developing a solution, the groups were given a session on business pitches, which is also not part of the usual law curriculum. There was also a session on the theory and practice of innovation in legal technology.

Students develop skills in reasoning through decision trees and understanding programme flow, which requires breaking complex problems into clearly defined, sequential steps. This methodical approach contrasts with legal reasoning, which often must account for ambiguity, interpretation, and “grey areas” in the law, where outcomes are not simply binary but context-dependent. Asking students to reflect on these differences highlights the challenge of translating legal principles into code—where decisions must be reduced to explicit rules—and encourages them to think critically about how to plan for and accommodate the nuanced, sometimes uncertain nature of legality within the rigid logic of programming.

Students learned to be patient when developing a project, iterate through alternative approaches in a resilient and reflective way to overcome roadblocks, and how legal tech might alter the dynamics of the marketplace. Crucially, they learned how to take an innovative project from a short description through information-gathering to a finished product. A key insight was that not everyone involved will be keen on disruption – when conducting interviews, students were surprised at how unreceptive state agencies were to new tools that would make it easier for them to do their work.

Students also enjoyed the module: anonymous feedback highlighted how they liked the control they had over their projects, the complete contrast to their other modules, and the new problem solving techniques which they learned. Practicality was repeatedly highlighted as a benefit:

“Workshops, a lot of practical work, development of creative thinking.”

“It’s mostly student-driven which I enjoy. I also like that we’re encouraged to work as a team and work independently.”

“I feel like I have learnt skills I will use in a professional setting.”

“We’re learning a lot of new skills in terms of organisation, team work and interviewing.”

Outcomes

Impact

The project has had a significant impact on the Law School. It has been a testing ground for novel approaches to teaching for the digital transformation, and has allowed the team to develop skills in design thinking and the facilitation of workshops using this method. It has led to an academic publication (Kennedy, R. (2022). Integrating Innovation into a Law School Curriculum: The Galway Experience. In Gledhill and Thanaraj (eds), Teaching Legal Education in the Digital Age (pp. 142-152). Routledge) which has provided an opportunity to disseminate these learnings to a broader audience.

A further iteration of the creation of modules on ‘lawtech’ has been Law and Analytics, a final year undergraduate offering which also involves input from the School of Business and Economics. This is also innovative as it introduces students to the application of analytics to legal work, the theoretical and rule of law concerns which this raises, and gives them unique hands-on experience with the construction of small data analytics projects using open legal data, so that they gain an understanding of the strengths, weaknesses, and practical challenges of applying these techniques in practice.

Most importantly, it has demonstrated to school management that there is appetite for and value in developing similar offerings. The integration of technology in legal education remains a challenge despite its clear importance, and so the funding received has placed us on the cutting edge of adoption, ahead of many of our peer institutions. As a result, the School’s strategic plan commits to “embracing the LegalTech revolution”, including “law, technology & innovation” as an area of particular interest for future growth, with specific initiatives including a new LLM programme, continuing professional development offerings.

This has led directly to the securing of additional central funding for teaching and research on law and innovation, through which Dr Abigail Rekas has been hired in order to provide additional human resources. This enlarged capacity has enabled the development of a new master’s programme, the LLM in Law and Digital Innovation, which has its first intake this year. The lessons learned about external partnerships are being taken into account in the implementation of the Design Thinking for Lawyers year-long course which is a backbone of the LLM, and a collaboration with the Mercy Law Centre is being established with a focus on the long-term sustainability of the relationship.

Both of the undergraduate modules have been a success. The benefits to the students are clear, with a strong increase in employability. Students comment either in feedback surveys or via email after graduation:

On Lawyering, Innovation and Technology –

“I would like to thank you for the opportunity to learn about Lawtech, I found it rather progressive, and I believe this module contributed to my success in receiving a job offer, for Vodafone Ireland’s graduate programme in their corporate security and legal department.”

“I want to thank you for teaching this module it was really interesting and something new.”

“This is a very challenging module but in a really good way as the subjects are very interesting.”

“… such a great course, I assume it’s always getting more popular, but would love to hear more on that. It really set my life path on an upward trajectory, which I am so grateful for.”

On Law and Analytics –

“I found Law and Analytics a very interesting module and I have applied for a few graduate programmes in law and technology since taking this module. The skills I have learned from this module are very beneficial and lots of employers seemed to be very interested in this area of law during interviews.”

“As Law and Analytics is a relatively new area of Law it is great to have classroom discussions about topical issues which may effect the workforce. This allows for us as potentially young lawyers to keep in mind that analytics is used in the legal profession and it needs to be carefully applied. There is growing rate of AI technology entering the legal profession and this module reflects the importance of how the legal profession is currently being reskilled. This module overlaps with other modules also but in a legal context and this highlights the need for analytics. I am anxious about the use of Python and the data analytics project, however I look forward to learning this new skill as I have completed interviews for careers in law and coding seems to be a skill which is favoured.”

Both of these undergraduate modules have been re-purposed as micro-credentials as part of the national Microcreds initiative.

The modules have been taught with an eye to replicability, with a suite of materials prepared and refined over the years to a level where teaching of the undergraduate versions has now been handed over to another lecturer.