Avatar Lawyering: Ethical Obligations and Professional Identity in a Legal Tech World

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Session Type: Concurrent Sessions

Session Capacity: N/A

Hotel: N/A

Room: Yosemite B

Floor: Ballroom Level

Many of us feel overwhelmed by the seemingly endless stream of technologies that our students, clients, and colleagues seek to utilize in practice. And the pace of the technological revolution in law practice in only accelerating. In this concurrent session, we will help prepare participants to thoughtfully and successfully integrate law practice technology into clinical settings. We will focus on the ethical considerations, impacts on student and attorney professional identity, and practice-readiness components of legal technology use in law school clinics. First, we will offer a model for programmatically assessing, and preparing our students to assess, whether and how to use various law practice technologies in a clinical setting, considering governing ethical principles and the unique situational factors presented by technology use in law school clinics. Second, we will identify the double-edged sword of technology integration, addressing the ways technology can improve efficiency and access to legal services, but also how technology can cause disconnection, exacerbate burnout, and interfere with professional satisfaction. We will offer strategies for setting boundaries around technology use to ensure we, and our students, are using it in a mindful, intentional way. Third and finally, we will discuss how the use of legal technology impacts students’ and clinicians’ professional identities and reshapes the attorney-client relationship, particularly in the areas of cultural awareness, communication, reliability, and commitment to preserving client dignity and trust. Participants will leave with a framework for a clinic seminar class on Avatar Lawyering, solidifying an intentional and thoughtful integration of legal technology in law school clinics, while sparking ideas about how to teach our students to set appropriate boundaries around the use of legal technology in their clinical practice and beyond.