In a special Conversation with Dr. Harsh Jain to know the emerging trends in legal education
Dr. Harsh Jain, co-founder of LawSikho (the world's largest legal edtech) and co-founder of SkillArbitrage
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Dr. Harsh Jain is a co-founder of LawSikho (the world's largest legal edtech) and co-founder of SkillArbitrage, which is making opportunities for global talent arbitrage accessible to Indian learners.
He is a farmer who cracked several competitive exams like the judiciary, UGC NET, JRF and SBI SO scale 2 and completed his Ph.D. on human rights of undertrials accused (with special reference to the LGBT community).
1) What are the emerging trends in legal education?
The legal education landscape is continuously evolving and there has been an emergence of an important trend, which is the focus on practical training. This opens up the doors for legal professionals to get jobs and clients in India and to exploit freelance and remote job opportunities in developed countries. This, in turn, enables a legal professional to grow his or her income significantly.
A seismic shift in the training approach can be seen since practical training and simulation-based exercises make a lasting impact and make the professional industry ready. Some real-life legal issues are converted into exercises for learners to solve. In this age of competition, it does not make sense for people to waste 5 to 10 years before they can establish their practice.
Earlier, it was believed that a second or third-generation lawyer would have an advantage over his peer who is a first-generation lawyer. However, rapidly evolving technology has challenged that notion and the emergence of new fields of practice in law have acted as an equaliser.
It is only possible to do well in the job if you have been adequately trained through practical assignments and have been given feedback to improve.
Even a job post for a fresher can be seen asking for two years of experience. Practice-based training is the only solution to get through all these requirements.
Diminishing borders due to technology is another trend through which lawyers are benefitting. They are exploring freelance and remote legal opportunities in developed countries. This presents the opportunity to earn thousands of dollars every month while retaining their freedom and maintaining a sound work-life balance.
2) What are some of the innovative learning techniques that are being incorporated in the legal edtech?
From static curriculum, legal edtech firms (specially LawSikho) have now moved to outcome-based training.
Earlier, course materials curated by legal edtech startups and companies were disseminated in PDF forms. Pre-recorded lectures were delivered to students. However, this approach had limitations since such material could not be updated.
Now the focus is on outcome-based training and that requires lots and lots of hand-holding. Students and professionals don’t have time and patience. They demand immediate or at least quick results.
Unfortunately, the curriculum of the universities is largely theoretical and thus of little help to legal professionals. People used to see internships as a solution but unfortunately, that is also not useful in this era. An internship might give some basic exposure but does not teach skills from scratch till the end. Professionals don't have time to sit and train interns and provide hand holding they need.
Not only students but legal professionals with years of experience need hand-holding to quickly build their credibility and make their profiles better in order to secure better job opportunities or get high-value clients, especially in this fast-evolving legal world after the pandemic.
People are taking help to learn techniques to build their online brands, get online work, international clients and jobs and techniques to get clients without violating non-solicitation provisions of law.
The global legal services market is projected to grow to USD 1511.45 billion by 2030 and therefore there is definitely not a dearth of opportunities but of the requisite skills to grab those opportunities.
Legal edtechs have no choice but to teach such techniques to law students and legal professionals which they do not learn in law schools.
3) How technology helps in bridging the gap between theory and practice in the law study? Which is the key software or technology that young legal professionals should master?
Technology, particularly AI, is changing the way we learn and practice law.
AI can enhance legal professionals' work but cannot replace their expertise. People think that technology and AI will take away the jobs of lawyers and sometimes clients also. However, human judgement, critical thinking and legal interpretation is crucial in the legal profession. AI like ChatGPT can definitely make your work easier and faster by giving you base-level suggestions.
For legal edtechs, AI is helping them cater to a huge number of legal professionals and provide them with practical training.
For example, we at LawSikho are developing an AI which can analyse all the submissions of practical assignments by our students and identify the places where improvements can be made.
It helps us to efficiently identify gaps and give first-level feedback. Thereafter, human evaluators can add value to it.
This makes the work much faster and feedback high quality as compared to what the AI or humans can give alone.
In a way, it strengthens the whole learning mechanism and stretches the bandwidth of individual learners, professionals as well as edtech companies.
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