Next up, Julian talking about technological life, ‘onlaw’, future shock and towards an ‘onlaw’ curriculum. He started by talking about technology – what is it? He quoted Schon on technology extending human capability. Julian focused on ICT – information & comms technology, and how these are at the centre of a major social shift to a post-industrial society, evidenced by what we don’t see about what happens in comms and data exchange. He drew attention to ‘onlife’ (Luciano Floridi) and the state of hyper-connectivity, and that the most powerful technologies are those that become invisible and a fundamental part of our social environment. He described, riffing on Floridi, ‘onlaw’ and asked, is onlaw an emergent property or a new form of law? Because of course law itself is a technology.
He began with automation – the movement from information per se to decision-making tools, giving advice, etc. and noted how tech was out-running regulation (I’d say that that is more the norm these days, particularly with the speed of convergence of apps that Julian noted also). Is digital technology transforming the agency of the legal form and ultimately the form itself? He quoted Fuller on law as a design tool; and like a tool, has agentic effects. See nudge techs, which reduces choice to steer the subject in a particular direction. Change the tool, change the effects. Tech solutions sell replicability and certainty, though, based on the binary strengths of machine code. There is a tension between standardisation of decision-making and particularism, that has a moral implication. Tech in other words can reduce decision-making choices, reduce agency. And the black box problem, the lack of transparency, only increases the risk of such reduction, particularly in the field of AI.
Legal analytics and judicial result – how does tech transform relationships there, eg cab rank rule, the way we view judicial record, (much the same way, I’d add as surgeon’s records are used analytically in the same way). What happens to the situation of the advocate who takes up the challenges of difficult cases? What about his/her record?
He outlined one result: anxious legal studies. Law is already, always, behind technology. The pacing problem does have real impact on legal decision-making. It has implications for responsibility and accountability (self-driving cars). In legal education there are particular forms of anxiety: debates about relevance, what we’re trying to achieve, what would others think if we didn’t integrate tech into legal ed, etc. What might the law school look like in 2040? If we take tech sufficiently seriously? What’s the new USP? Solutions include the following…
Interdisciplinarity. J. noted that this goes back to Ormrod (I’d say it goes back to medieval law and the integration of law & theology & rhetoric). Now, risk and project management skills, basic tech design principles, etc are the new interdisciplinarities. Think of ourselves as a Business School, where business is a subject, and where we embed anthropologists, economists and others.
Technology. Has to be the new pervasive. Not law and technology, but lawtech, complete fusion.
The role of theory, with new problem-solving, thinking through human-centred design. We need tool design, yes, but we also need institution and regulatory design. We need a larger conversation about the core concept of UX.
Will there be a law school in 2040? Yes. The same as in 2018? – we’ll have lost the game if it’s the same, and J. argued for change in the way he had outlined in this keynote. J. took questions on the role of tech, the rule of law and the future role of students as being merely analysts of data, and excluded from the black box. Excellent keynote: full of suggestive, difficult, vital ideas, and essential thinking for the future of law schools.