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Technology, Law, and Leadership – Fall 2024

leadership

This is the home page for LAW 5754 – Technology, Law, and Leadership for the Fall 2024 edition of the course.

The course will meet on Wednesdays from 12:40 pm to 2:40 pm. The class will meet on Zoom rather than face to face. Class meetings will not be recorded. Students are expected to be present for each meeting of the course.

Reading assignments and outline of classes

Class meetings are organized in a loose sequence: Introduction and context (why learn about leadership, and why learn learn leadership skills?); what are relevant leadership skills?; and what comes next? What do you do with what you’ve learned?

Each item below is identified in one of three ways, to indicate how you can access it:

  • [WWW] indicates that the item is on the World Wide Web, that is, it’s free for reading and/or downloading on the open Internet. In almost every case, materials designated [WWW] below are also available as pdf documents in the TWEN site for this course.
  • [YouTube] and [Video] indicates that the item is a video. Most of these are on YouTube, and most of these are approximately 1 hour long. Some are shorter.
  • [Tw] indicates that the item can be found as a pdf document in the TWEN (“Course Materials” subsection) site for this course. Each reading is numbered to correspond to the appropriate class meeting and identified by the first author’s last name.
  • [Spotify] indicates that the item is a podcast episode.
  • [eBook at Pitt’s University Library System] is self-explanatory.

The readings and other assigned materials are front-loaded, so that the workload is heavier at the start of the semester and lighter toward the end. The purpose of the front-loading is to give students more time and space to work their research papers into final form.

The biographies of the authors, speakers, and responsible organizations are provided here. Many of the works assigned below are related to larger works.

Recommended but not required: For continuing looks at the economic and technological challenges facing the legal profession today, I strongly encourage students to take a look at articles on these websites:

And, for podcasting fans, these podcasts:

Law-themed:

Not law-themed:

Class 1: Wednesday, August 21, 2024

Our first meeting will review big themes and expectations for the seminar. And we’ll talk about individual students: their backgrounds, ambitions, and questions.

[A] An introduction to leadership for lawyers and law students:

And

[B] Context: the changing character of law practice, the legal profession, and the legal industry:

[C] Context: Law is a human creation. As with all human creations – as with technology, for example – understanding is key. Law isn’t natural; law isn’t neutral. That means understanding where [law] [technology] comes from; how and why [law] [technology] is shaped, received, reused, and changed; and how [law] [technology] shapes [humans] [biophysical and cultural ecologies and environments]. Read one of the following two accounts of knowledge and culture in the so-called “field”:

Class 2: Wednesday, August 28, 2024

We will dig into the changing power and importance of law, lawyers, the legal profession, and the legal industry. We’ll talk about values and ethics, we’ll talk about economics, and we’ll talk about technology. For multiple reasons, having to do both with context (what do law graduates do, and what are they expected to do and why) and having to do with individual ambitions and conditions for success (how can law graduates built successful careers for themselves), we’ll talk about why leadership is important now.

Class 3: Wednesday, September 4, 2024

The first two meetings set the stage. Now, we’ll start to get into details. What should leaders know, and what should they do?

Friday, September 13, 2024: The short summary of the research paper topic is due.

Class 4, Wednesday, September 11, 2024

In a phrase, be curious. Why and how are imagination, creativity, and vision crucial to leaders and leadership? If those are skills to be learned and cultivated rather than attributes that are in-born or innate, where and how do they develop?

Class 5, Wednesday, September 18, 2024

New professionals often are advised to “network” – a verb, rather than a noun – in order to build careers. That’s terrible advice. Don’t “network.” It doesn’t work, and the people on the receiving end of your “networking” often feel exploited. Used. Leadership requires building relationships, and building relationships requires developing and using emotional intelligence; identifying and working toward satisfaction, goals, and success, however you define those; and navigating inevitable setbacks and failures. In contemporary jargon, that’s “EQ.”

Class 6, Wednesday, September 25, 2024

As the poet once wrote, “No man is an island.” Leadership is all about you, but it’s also all about other people. Leading means groups and organizations. Rallying and motivating people to work together. Figuring out what they want (and what the world wants), and helping them deal with getting that – and losing that. That leads to some critical skills: communication and storytelling.

[A] On organizational dynamics:

[B] On storytelling:

Class 7, Wednesday, October 2, 2024

We’ll talk more, and in different ways, about leadership as collaborating, team-building, and paying it forward.

Friday, October 11, 2024: The outline of the research paper is due.

Class 8, Wednesday, October 9, 2024

Getting everyone on the same page is difficult enough. Keeping them there may be even more difficult. How should leaders handle conflict, at small scales and large ones?

Class 9, Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Maybe leadership means “keeping the good times going.” Often, however, leadership means change. Identifying the need for change, understanding the character of new directions, strategies, or goals, overcoming resistance to change, initiating and guiding change, and knowing when you’ve arrived at your changed destination. We could spend a full semester or more on theories and practices of change management. Pilot projects to test ideas! Small wins as proofs of concept! Building and managing positive feedback loops and shutting off negative ones! But we’ll introduce change management themes in single session.

Class 10, Wednesday, October 23, 2024

As we approach the end of the semester, we begin to connect key leadership competencies with contemporary problems and possible solutions in the design of legal institutions.

Class 11, Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Keep going. Where are the problems, and where are the solutions? How can learning and mastering leadership skills help in both settings?

Monday, November 11, 2024: The first draft of the research paper is due.

Class 12, Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Zoom out from law to society and culture more broadly. “Legal” leadership is only the tip of a very large iceberg, and law graduates may well use their leadership skills in additional chilly settings. Those settings run the gamut from “will technology save us?” to “will technology kill us all?,” plus, of course, lots of settings that don’t (seem to) have much to do with technology at all.

Read or watch at least 5 of the following:

Class 13, Wednesday, November 13, 2024 (last class)

We will do our collective best to pull leadership together in a simple, useful, and usable package, the way that clever public intellectuals and management consultants do. There is the big picture (what is leadership today?), and there is the focused picture (what does that mean for you, right now?). Assess yourself: where are you on the path to leadership, and how are you faring?

Wednesday, December 11, 2024: The final draft of the research paper is due.