Lawyers working in the 21st-century environment

Lawyers working in the 21^st-century environment

Lawyers working in the 21^st-century environment have experienced drastic changes in relation to their profession and its needs. There have been radical changes in the law profession, although it remains unclear whether reforms in legal education have kept the momentum of contemporary law practice. Towards the end of the 22^nd century, the technological sphere is transforming. The world has changed into a single technologically powerful sphere. In an arena in which the tertiary segment has also been changed by external powers past its control, there has been significant re-conceptualization of undergraduate law programs by the law faculty. The final component in the modern mix is the major shift which has taken place in teaching as well as learning strategies, especially in institutions of higher learning through changing teacher-centered approach into independent and student-centered learning.

Consequently, the law profession is, on some occasions, more linked to arcane procedures, vast piles of paper, and odd clothing compare to contemporary advancement. However, several steps are attempting to give the legal profession that has sometimes been considered vexing and most conservative a digital start-up. For instance, Basha Rubin co-founded Priori Legal in New York, which a digital marketplace that links lawyers with other enterprises. Rubin co-founded the online marketplace after she realized there were numerous obstacles faced by businesses as they sought legal services in their line of work. Lawyers found in the online marketplace undergo a vetting process by the firm and are also required to have good references and valid practice experience of at least five years. Furthermore, the lawyers on Priori Legal undergo interviews through Skype or face to face.

As seen in the aforementioned environmental snapshot, it is clear that the traditional legal profession needs a significant re-conceptualization to ascertain the currency of legal education. The re-conceptualization helps students to be increasingly efficiently prepared for the shifting, challenging as well as globalized work environments which they currently enter. There have been massive reports produced nationally and internationally pushing for re-orientation of the previous approaches to the legal profession. However, the more current of these reports have revealed that providers of legal education have not embraced calls of change quite enthusiastically.

Rooting out valid research cases and documents usually takes quite a long time. As a result, legal cases tend to take ages and also prove costly at the end. Therefore, a search, as well as an alert tool, was developed to assist lawyers in finding and also track cases. The automation and artificial intelligence provide a promise of eliminating extensive work related to law. For instance, TradearkNow by Finland has developed an AI tool used to search and manage trademarks. The tool mentioned above is an example of the digitalization of the modern era, which raises the need for legal education also to transform. However, the approach taken by TrademarkNow has faced pitfalls in a sector which is heavily regulated.

The momentum of change in the legal profession with regard to the range of the provided legal services, medium of organizational in addition to the structuring of units of law firms, and medium of delivery is drastic. What remains unclear is the necessary change, which is essential for thinking concerning legal education, together with its methods and foci. In the traditional eras, educators training undergraduate lawyers took the curriculum planning process with an approach from the viewpoint of what was necessary for graduating lawyers to know. Whereas the above approach would normally result in proficient technical skills among the graduates, the effect is quite devastating in the current changing professional climate. According to research, only 50% to 60% of the graduates consistently remain in legal practice for the long term; hence the doctrinal-heavy legal education fails to equip learners with a significant amount of the required generic skills necessary to effectively perform in the contemporary workplace. Furthermore, the inadequacy is not the desire of graduates and employers in the legal profession. In 1998, for instance, Vignaendra12 revealed that communication, oral as well as written, was the prominently used skills among law graduates practicing in any form of employment related to law. Other commonly used skills included computer skills, time management, and document management. While skills specific to the law are crucial to private legal practice, they were not used frequently.

Report on the satisfaction of employers in relation to graduate skills also highlights that, considering the relative significance of skills among employers, the significant deficiencies in skills among new law graduates were viewed to be concentrated in areas of flair and creativity, problem-solving and oral business communications. In the field, it has also been identified that the current scenarios in all forms of discipline, including law is that students are required to undergo numerous career changes in their working environment and lives. As such, the emphasis is laid on the need for tertiary education to pay attention to developing the ability of law students to transfer their skills to different contexts according to the needs at hand as well as managing their individual learning necessary for new tasks.