Since time immemorial, advocacy has been widely regarded as a noble profession, with lawyers often seen as social engineers, responsible for upholding the Constitution, the law, rules, and regulations. To ensure that the best of lawyers are brought to light among young minds, a critical role is played by law schools which mold young minds into professional think tanks to create a successful legal career that is reliable and established.
What are the future scopes of legal studies? It is often difficult to give a comprehensive answer to it, as the field of law is dynamic and diverse. If we take a close scrutinized look, the art of “lawyering” gained a huge attraction from the latter half of British colonial rule until post-independence. The noble profession of Judiciary is also an enormous career scope, establishing it as one of the most robust Constitutional posts in the country. It is also possible for young and professional minds to pursue a career in the law field through other professions, such as advocacy. Until the beginning of the 21st century, the primary scope of the legal profession was academics and research. This was another possibility. Over the past few years, this field has been viewed in a more broad light, providing a broad range of opportunities for exploration in a dynamic field of adventure, learning, and career prospects. A few years ago, clients had only two options for their legal matters. They either had to hire a traditional law firm or handle it themselves. Today, society demands more options.
Some of these results have been the introduction of the concepts of “Legal Entrepreneurship”, “Law Journalism”, “Policy Analyst”, “Law Content Creator”, and “Legal Technology.”
A new era of legal entrepreneurship has begun.
The view of many people, older than me, is that lawyers are the biggest opponents of business and, unfortunately, have often played a role in the demise of high-turnover businesses. However, the current situation demonstrates that this is not always correct—many successful lawyers have turned out to be businesspeople themselves. For example, several CEOs and owners of India’s highest-turnover businesses have legal backgrounds or previous experience practicing law.
Law provides a more exceptional approach to entrepreneurship. Being a lawyer gives a functional involvement in industries and businesses. Practicing law teaches how to tackle those risks, and consequences, and teaches one how to convince with foresight, research abilities, market knowledge, leadership skills, risk-taking ability, self-assessment, and striving for betterment. These are all qualities of both an entrepreneur and a lawyer. The current legal field needs to improve in this area, and having legal knowledge as support to entrepreneurship helps fill that gap.
The Journalist:
There are many similarities between legal studies and journalism, even though they are divergent fields. Policymakers and people representatives must be covered in both fields, and they must be there from the time of elections until societal and economic declines. Moreover, several branched news media and mainstream news media deal solely or partly with legal factors news, so the concept of human rights for journalists and news media is protected by law. As per the rules of PTI, law graduates are exclusively not required to have a journalism degree or diploma in order to learn the craft of journalism.
While the legal field already pursues these features, India needs more specialized media in the legal field, compared to its counterparts in the USA and UK.
Analyses of policy:
Lawyers and law students often hold a critical perspective on legal policies, believing that many of the laws enacted years ago contain loopholes or have become stagnant, necessitating societal transformation. Policy analysts are responsible for crafting and revising policies, staying informed about existing laws, and shaping new legislation. Their role involves administering policy-making and maintaining the rules and regulatory framework of the nation.
Law and policies go hand in hand, so a lawyer has one of the best pieces of knowledge about administrative functioning. These organizations recruit lawyers and fresh graduates with law degrees. As a result, lawyers are best equipped with several planning tools and understand legislation, making them the best candidates for policy analysis jobs.
Due to the sophistication of their in-house counsel, clients now demand more money and time from law firms. This is slowly creeping up, and even more stringent demands are being put on legal teams – something that is only to be expected given the evolution of technology. While things are looking good for the court system in terms of backlogs, this doesn’t bode well for the future as people increasingly resort to using technology to resolve legal disputes.
The digital society must have the opportunity to institute extended courts that go beyond the judgments of judges to some kind of advanced online diagnostic system that will guide people in determining their legal options, how to gather evidence, and alternative methods of resolving disputes.
Future of Law
The fast and continuous changes happening in society and technology significantly impact the way Law is taught at institutions. In the legal industry, as well as with advancement in every field and the digital world encompassing every nook and corner, client expectations and demands have increased. The law practitioner of today needs to be tech-savvy, prompt and also be able to represent clients in all jurisdictions and forums to remain competitive.
These days, law schools emphasize technology-blended learning and multidisciplinary courses with practical methods as part of their curriculum to keep up with emerging trends.
A look at the emerging trends in Legal Studies –
E-Discoveries:
As more and more people are clinging to electronic devices to share, chat and communicate via digital media, social media, voicemails, emails, and e-calendars, law practitioners will need to keep up with this digital age and upgrade themselves to take advantage of these new communication methods.
Electronically stored information (ESI) is a new e-discovery or electronic discovery process. It facilitates the organization of relevant materials for specific cases and reduces stress.
The use of social networking and social media: –
Social media has become an integral part of everyone’s life today, and a lot of information is exchanged on social networks. From personal information to bank details, job hunts to career management, social media plays a vital role.
It is no different with law firms. Social media helps them find deserving clients, facilitating interaction and further investigation when needed.
In addition to advertising and personal branding, social media helps law firms and independent law practitioners to reach a greater audience. New law graduates can easily search for jobs of interest through social networking sites.
Curriculum for technology in law:
Globally, law schools are reviewing their curriculums to encourage students to learn certain technologies, such as –
- Law and artificial intelligence
- Law and cybersecurity
- Law and blockchain
- Mechanisms for alternative dispute resolution
- Law of space
- Laws governing education
- Analyzing big data
- AI (machine learning)
This introductory course will provide students with the skills they need in order to be more competent when practicing law in the modern world. The focus of legal education is shifting towards integrating technology into law practice, so that routine requirements can be handled electronically, and legal questions can be answered quickly and easily. Additionally, blockchain is making a big entrance into the legal world, and there are many opportunities for smart contracts and agreements to take off in the coming years.
The law and cyber security
In order to protect their businesses from security threats and hackers, the legal industry needs knowledge of cyber security. If a legal firm is not secured well, it runs the risk of losing confidential client information easily with any kind of security breach.
Approaches that are innovative:
Through flipped classrooms, role plays, and think-pair-share, law students can learn how to provide the best legal services and become entrepreneurs. Law schools focus on clinical legal education to equip students with these skills.
Outsourcing and virtual law firms
2020 everything will be virtual, so why not law firms as well?
Virtual law firms offer easy client connections, customer-focused service, time-saving factors, flexibility, and cost-effective setup.
Cross-country legal teams can come together with virtualization, making outsourcing more convenient.
As a result, law schools and legal studies need to embrace practical learning and introduce technology-integrated law courses to stay abreast of technological advances and improve budding law students’ knowledge and entrepreneurial capabilities. In order to enhance client-service quality, multidisciplinary courses will be incorporated.
Whether you are a law student or a practicing lawyer, being in sync with these emerging trends is highly effective to have a competitive edge.
In conclusion
The coming into existence of the above concepts is indeed a great leap of progress in the legal field. Today, there are more career opportunities in this field than just advocacy or judicial work. It has taken on a wide-angle approach to this profession, and it is up to future lawyers to make these concepts a reality in India and prosper in their respective fields.