The Impact of Technology on Critical Legal Thinking With Michael Zuckerman (Northwestern Law School)

“Whatever benefits advanced legal technology may bring to lawyers, I am concerned about this sort of technology seeping into the legal writing classroom,” writes Northwestern University Legal Writing Professor Michael Zuckerman in an article he penned for the ABA Journal, Law Professor Makes Case Against Automating Legal Writing in Law School.

However, Professor Zuckerman is not anti-legal tech. In fact, as he explains in the latest episode of Technically Legal, he even founded a legal tech company before joining the law school faculty at Northwestern.

His concern is that if law students are not first taught to write their own legal documents and do their own legal research, but instead rely on tech, it may very well come at the expense of their ability to employ critical legal thinking and, ultimately, be effective attorneys to their clients.

Professor Zuckerman also talks about how the Rules of Professional Conduct are also implicated by the use of legal technology.