OU Law: On the Road at ABA TECHSHOW

Every year in springtime, lawyers, legal professionals, and technology wonks make their annual pilgrimage to ABA TECHSHOW.

As a leader in modern law school education, the OU College of Law is well-represented at this year’s conference. Kenton Brice, Director of Technology Innovation, and Darin Fox, Associate Dean and Director of the Law Library, have led OU Law’s efforts in the digital realm, making OU Law synonymous with innovation. Accompanying Brice and Fox to TECHSHOW are OU Law students Eleanor Burg, Emilee Crowther, J.D. Weidman, Zach Williams, Ryan Dobbs, and Brandon Landt, who received travel grants to attend the conference.

In his role as Director of Technology Innovation, Brice oversees the OU Law Center for Technology and Innovation in Practice, a new center launched in November 2017 to formally unite and expand the elements of the college’s groundbreaking Digital Initiative.

One of the center’s objectives is to investigate new and emerging technologies for use in the law school curriculum as well as in law practice. On Thursday morning of TECHSHOW, Brice was part of a panel that addressed how virtual reality is being used in these areas. Brice spoke about how lawyers are using VR, including presenting evidence in mediation and arbitration, such as a virtual reality simulation of a car accident. Brice also explained how VR can help create virtual models of crime scenes or relevant locations. 

In-depth coverage of Brice’s presentation and the VR panel, as well as the OU Law students’ visit to TECHSHOW:

• ABA Journal - Law schools dive into virtual reality experiences for their students
• Canadian Lawyer - Virtual reality is coming to a courtroom near you
• LexBlog - Virtual Reality in (Law) Practice at the ABA TechShow
• ABA for Law Students Before the Bar Blog - LegalTech school: Keeping up with ABA TECHSHOW

Background

In 2014, OU Law became the first law school in the nation to introduce a college-wide Digital Initiative. The program is built around three core elements:

• the common platform of iPad Pro with Apple Pencil, given to all students at no cost, for hand-writing notes and annotating documents;
• a digital training curriculum that educates OU Law students to use technology for productivity in law school and in practice; and
• the Inasmuch Foundation Collaborative Learning Center, a state-of-the-art space that allows students to become familiar with how technology can be used to collaborate on projects.

The immersive training curriculum is designed and implemented by Fox and Brice. Fox has decades of experience in IT management and legal research expertise. Brice’s background consists of administering law firm technology to enhance efficiency in all aspects of professional and legal work. Together, Fox and Brice make up the team that oversees the creation, management and execution of OU Law’s Digital Initiative programming. 

Each year, the college offers more than 70 training sessions that explore applications that aid in legal practice such as Office 365, Adobe Acrobat, cloud storage and practice management systems. Several sessions feature leading experts at tech companies. This year, it is anticipated that more than 3,000 attendees will participate in the training sessions – an average of six hours of technology training per student for the entire student body.

In November 2017, the college launched the OU Law Center for Technology and Innovation in Practice, with Brice at the helm.

In recognition of OU Law’s leadership through the Digital Initiative, in January the college was named an Apple Distinguished School for 2017-2019.