LLM student, take note also!
As technology lawyers, we are Increasingly faced with a crop of students, who would like nothing more than spend a year listening to us talk (because only that constitutes “teaching” in their view) and then walk away with a degree and a thousand pages of printable ‘knowledge’.
I teach technology law, i.e. law that regulates technology. I have no idea what cray thing CompSci departments will come up with next. If I only teach you facts about “the law of technology x” that knowledge is going to be out of date before the ink on your degree is dry.
In that respect, Easterbrook was right at least. I would be teaching you “The Law of the Horse”.
What you will need to have a career in IT law is a solid understanding of how law is made vis a vis new and emerging technologies, the competing interests it serves, and the impacts - short-term AND longterm - different regulatory decisions may have on individuals and society.
In other words, what you will need to obtain is an adaptable skill, a critical appreciation of law’s tools and what they can do, of the power structures within which it operates and of law’s historical, economic, policital, ethical and societal dimension.
You need to learn law not as “fact”, not as it is, but as it:
can be,
may be,
should be,
will be
depending on a host of different factors (of which the actual technology that is being regulated is only one).
can be,
may be,
should be,
will be
depending on a host of different factors (of which the actual technology that is being regulated is only one).
Yes, you can hone that skill using any possible ‘use case’ (even the effing blockchain, if you must [sigh!]). But you can’t get it just by learning facts and cases and the detailed provisions of laws currently on, or even about to go on, the statute books.
You need to learn which questions to ask and then ask them. You need to learn about rationales and motivations and the best way to use a set of legal tools to achieve a certain regulatory outcome. And you need to consider what that outcome should be - now AND in 15, 25, 50 years.
It’s a lot less sexy and a lot more tiring than merely absorbing the contents of a folder with “the law of blockchain” written on it. It doesn’t make you immediately feel accomplished. That takes time. And it involves more hard graft by you than just listen to your tutor in class
But it will last you a hell of a lot longer.
