Canadian Lawyer 4Students

56 AUGUST 2017 C A N A D I A N L a w y e r 4STUDENTS " project management, operations and technology as key focal areas. Understanding the intersection between business and technol- ogy will be a vital part of a future legal professional's skillset, agree experts who spoke to Canadian Lawyer. Friedman talks about learning to code and becoming intimately acquainted with Excel pivot tables. Jones talks more broadly about analytics as a key component in legal practice. Future lawyers will need to be adept in managing data, she says. Ford says students oen bring a wealth of pre-law school expe- rience that will help them present a more rounded, multi-faceted skillset to potential employers. e average age of the school's in- take students is 27, she points out. "People come in with life experience, and oen with graduate degrees, and with the advantage of being much more plugged into emerging trends and communications than some of their elders," Jones says. Existing technology expertise could stand new legal recruits in good stead, making them agents of change in legal firms that are grappling with new technologies and ways of working, says Rox- anne Israel. She leads the Calgary business immigration practice for EY Law LLP and is also a member of the People Advisory Ser- vices practice of Ernst & Young LLP. "A lot of the ideas and processes that we implement are driven by junior lawyers and paralegal teams who are digitally savvy and are first adopters of some of the new technologies and new ways of doing things," she says. "We're taking our lessons from them at this point." If legal students are expected to bring new skills to their practice, then law schools also have a role to play, argues Deloitte's Austin. "I think there's an opportunity for law schools to take a leader- ship role in teaching some of this, but many are not quite on the leading edge at this time," she warns. "So, I think there's an oppor- tunity there for those who want to get into that game." TCN's Smith says this starts with an existential discussion: What is the law school's role in relation to the law firm? If it's focused on the bedrock of higher education such as teaching critical thinking, then questions around technology disruption will be less relevant. Conversely, if it is expected to start picking up some of the train- ing burden, then it will indeed need to change, he suggests — and it will have to figure out ways to do it more quickly to avoid a tal- ent gap as law firms accelerate their transition into new working models. Ford says the basics of a JD degree won't change. A law school isn't just about training students for a vocational profession, she asserts. Ethics, analytic rigour and scholarly inquiry will still form the foundation of a student's education. Nevertheless, it must move with the times and embrace new re- quirements. "It may be that different law schools across Canada will take different approaches in trying to train their graduates," she says. One such approach sees law schools embracing experiential learning. Hands-on practice beyond the traditional summer in- ternship can help ground law students in real-world scenarios where technology and automation are already coming into play. e University of Alberta has already embarked on a two-year program to explore how it must adapt to cope with technology THE FOURTH IF WE ARE RIGHT THAT THIS IS INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WE'RE GOING INTO A TECH AGE, THEN PERHAPS THE SKILLS THEY NEED TO LEARN IN ARE MORE AROUND COMMUNICATION AND RESPONSIVENESS AND LESS AROUND TRULY THOSE FIRST YEARS RESEARCH." SHELBY AUSTIN, DELOITTE

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