Business Law

The business markets in which you practice law have altered tremendously and will not return to the comfortable norms of the past. We can debate whether non-lawyers should sell legal information on the Internet or in books, but the fact is they are doing so in large numbers. We can lament the transformation of our profession into an industry, but doing so will not retract the changes that have occurred. We can bemoan the "commoditization" of legal information, but we cannot return to an era in which even the simplest legal document or service could be sold for a high price. We can resist the specialization of our practices and the standardization of the delivery of legal information, but we cannot function as generalists in today's world and we cannot profit by resisting market demand.

The courses we offer in this track empower lawyers to embrace the change that has befallen the profession--specifically the changes which have come upon us from outside, from changes in the way the world accesses, processes and outputs information. Some of the courses in this track are designed to help lawyers become familiar with and more efficiently use technology that most of the world has adapted for some time. Other courses focus on reconsidering the way we deliver legal services and exploring how we can provide our knowledge assets to the public in ways that not only give people what they want, but also free lawyers from the chain of the clock.

Taken as a whole, these courses prepare lawyers and law firms to meet a worldwide market, made up of many vertical channels within the legal services and information realm--a market that is already present, but that our own professional norms and rules have not yet been able to decipher.