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Technology, Law, and Leadership – Fall 2025

leadership

THIS IS THE HOME PAGE FOR LAW 5754 – TECHNOLOGY, LAW, AND LEADERSHIP FOR THE FALL 2025 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.
  • [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 site (“Course Materials” subsection) for this course. Each reading is numbered to correspond to the appropriate class meeting and identified by the first author’s last name. Note that the Course Materials appear on TWEN (via Westlaw) rather than in Canvas.
  • [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 (strongly encouraged, even), but not required, on the economic and technological challenges facing the legal profession today:

And, for podcasting fans, these podcasts:

Recommended, because they relate to non-law themes of the seminar, but not law-themed:

Last but by no means least: leadership literature. “Leadership” has been the subject of numerous books and has been packaged and sold as several different “models” of leadership. Each has strengths and weaknesses. My general view, which is reflected in this seminar, is that a student of leadership – and a present or future practitioner of leadership – should pick what works in their context from any and all available resources, monitor their performance to determine whether those elements are working well,, look skeptically at what does not work, and be curious about changing course. Here are several of the best known “models,” with links to key texts that describe and illustrate them.

CLASS 1

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 20, 2025  

Our first meeting will review big themes and expectations for the seminar. We will 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. “Understanding” law and law practice mean 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 27, 2025  

We will dig into the changing power and importance of law, lawyers, the legal profession, and the legal industry. We will talk about values and ethics, we will 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 will talk about why leadership is important now.

Material on what lawyers have done and what they might do:

Material on how tech and economics are raising urgent, big questions about the values and purposes of lawyers and the legal profession:

CLASS 3

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2025  

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

Friday, September 12, 2025: The short summary of the research paper topic is due.

CLASS 4

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2025  

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 17, 2025  

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 24, 2025  

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 1, 2025  

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

Friday, October 10, 2025: The outline of the research paper is due.

CLASS 8

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2025  

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 15, 2025  

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! We will introduce change management themes in single session.

CLASS 10

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2025  

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

CLASS 11

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2025  

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

Friday, November 7, 2025: The first draft of the research paper is due.

CLASS 12

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2025  

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. Family. Neighborhood. Community. Team. Congregation. Volunteer group. Company or other organization.

Read or watch at least 5 of the following:

CLASS 13

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2025 (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 10, 2025: The final draft of the research paper is due.