Legal Education: a New Growth Vision Part Iii-the Path Forward: Being Both Human and Digital

• Publication year: 2021
• Citation: Vol. 97

97 Nebraska L. Rev. 1020. Legal Education: A New Growth Vision Part III-The Path Forward: Being Both Human and Digital

Legal Education: A New Growth Vision Part III-The Path Forward: Being Both Human and Digital

Hilary G. Escajeda(fn*)

ABSTRACT

In the decades ahead, innovative and status quo-breaking law schools will leverage and combine multidisciplinary, multigenerational human expertise with digital platform and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to create vibrant legal education ecosystems. These combinations will deliver market-valued knowledge and skill transfer and development services that are high-quality, cost-effective, omni-channel, pedagogically sound, data-validated, personalized, on-demand or just-in-time, and multi-format (e.g., hybrid, HyFlex, digital-first, digital-live, etc.).

Modern business models (e.g., platform and open) will provide these future-focused law schools with solid foundations for reimagining legal education. These agile, shape-shifting programs are also likely to discover diverse revenue opportunities by offering complementary services to adjacent markets. Growth opportunities for inventive law schools abound, so long as entrepreneurial program leaders embrace a human-AI integrated future. Simply put, digital and business model innovations represent the only firewalls to obsolescence.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Introduction: Platforms Are Eating the World ......... 1022

II. Path Forward: Being Both Human and Digital ......... 1028
A. Envisioning Innovation Mission Trajectories ....... 1031

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B. Aligning Action with Innovation Mission Trajectories ....................................... 1035
1. Step 1: Build Multidisciplinary Digital Innovation Teams ............................. 1036
2. Step 2: Foster Conditions Where Innovation Can Thrive ......................................... 1039

III. Designing Education for the Future ................... 1042

A. Platform-Based Education ......................... 1043
1. From Pipeline to Platforms: Business Model. . . . 1045
2. From Pipeline to Platforms: Teaching and Learning ...................................... 1047
3. Platform Potential: Enhance Program Visibility and Increase Market Share .................... 1050
4. Platform Design: Open Versus Closed .......... 1054
B. Data and Metrics .................................. 1056
1. Data and Learning Metrics: Students and Teachers ...................................... 1057
2. Data and Innovation Metrics: Program and Platforms ...................................... 1061
C. Pricing Models, Strategic Cannibalization, and Cost Containment ...................................... 1067
1. Pricing Models and Strategic Cannibalization . . 1067
2. Cost Containment and Process Efficiencies ..... 1075
D. Current Offerings and Room for Growth ........... 1077
1. MOOCs: Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) with Promise ....................................... 1077
2. Future of Education: Human Expertise United with Omni-channel Platforms and AI .......... 1080

IV. Planning and Moving Forward ........................ 1084
A. Innovation Frameworks ........................... 1086
1. 70/20/10 ....................................... 1086
2. Three Horizons ................................ 1087
B. Moving Forward ................................... 1091
1. Day 1 Mindset Shift ........................... 1091
2. Organizational Shift: Being Both Human and Digital ........................................ 1092
3. OKRs: A Brief Introduction to an Effective and Coherent Transformation Management System . 1095
C. Sample Plans ..................................... 1096

V. Conclusions ........................................... 1101
Appendix I: T-Shaped Skills for Knowledge Professionals ...... 1104
Appendix II: Multimedia Resources ........................... 1106
Appendix III: Glossary of Key Terms ......................... 1110

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SERIES OVERVIEW

This final installment of the three-part Legal Education: A New Growth Vision series asserts that when a strategic inflection point threatens traditional law school business and service models, the strongest survivors will be led by forward-focused, innovative, and agile education entrepreneurs.

Like successful Silicon Valley startups, these survivor law schools will bring together dynamic teams-consisting of visionaries, thinker-planners, and drivers-to discover exciting pathways for innovation that yield sustained economic growth, program vitality, and institutional relevance. These education innovators embrace mindsets that (1) presume instability over stability, (2) value action over inaction, (3) imagine and nurture nascent innovations, (4) continuously reconfigure program operations and resources to identify and serve customer needs, and (5) nimbly respond to changing market conditions.

Part III also integrates the multidisciplinary ideas discussed throughout Parts I and II into a sample plan that moves law schools on a forward path consistent with Negroponte's vision of uniting humans with the digital realm-in other words, "being digital."

I. INTRODUCTION: PLATFORMS ARE EATING THE WORLD

In 2011, Netscape founder Marc Andreessen penned an oped titled "Why Software Is Eating the World," predicting that software will radically change business and society.(fn1) Eight years later, software remains important but the emerging apex technology predators that will redefine the business landscape include platforms and artificial intelligence (AI).(fn2) Because these technologies increasingly drive the digital

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economy, successful enterprises will constantly scout for and seize venture opportunities, adopt emerging platform technologies, regularly update business models, and continuously adapt their processes and program offerings to compete in a human-AI integrated marketplace. These nimble and wily enterprises approach each day as a test with zero-sum results: survival or extinction.

Amazon.com, Inc. typifies such an enterprise. Amazon's full embrace of the immense power of digital platforms, customer-focused business models, and human-AI integration illuminates the pathway forward for survival-oriented law schools.(fn3) Further, Amazon's unparalleled success highlights the role of "high-quality" and "high-velocity" decision-making focused on value, personalization, profitability, and market expansion.(fn4) Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has attributed Amazon's steady success to a relentless "Day 1" mindset, which he first articulated in his March 21, 1997 Letter to Shareholders:

But this is Day 1 for the Internet and, if we execute well, for Amazon.com. Today, online commerce saves customers money and precious time. Tomorrow, through personalization, online commerce will accelerate the very process of discovery. Amazon.com uses the Internet to create real value for its customers and, by doing so, hopes to create an enduring franchise, even in established and large markets . . . . The competitive landscape has continued to evolve at a fast pace . . . . Our goal is to move quickly to solidify and extend our current position while we begin to pursue the online commerce opportunities in other areas . . . . This strategy is not without risk: it requires serious investment and crisp execution against established franchise leaders.(fn5)

Businesses with an entrepreneurial culture, such as Amazon's Day 1 mindset, typically exhibit the following characteristics: (1) customer obsession, (2) a skeptical view of proxies [e.g., processes, research, and surveys], (3) the eager adoption of external trends, and (4) high-veloc-

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ity decision making.(fn6) In contrast, businesses that "wait and see"(fn7) or take the "Day 2"(fn8) approach generally descend down a path of irrelevance due to failure to experiment, evolve, and embrace industry and technology changes. In an April 2017 shareholder Q&A session, Bezos again explained the differences between Day 1 (leaders/survivors) and Day 2 (followers/failures) enterprises and quipped "that is why it is always Day 1."(fn9)

Since ecosystems represent the future,(fn10) savvy law schools should similarly adopt a Day 1 mindset to imagine and implement new digital strategies and build human-AI integration and personalized instruction into the core of legal education.(fn11) Part III of this three-part

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series posits that Day 1 law schools will be those programs that embrace entrepreneurship to differentiate their education services in a presently oversaturated legal education market.(fn12) Acutely aware of the transitory nature of success and that "every business model fails eventually,"(fn13) these forward-looking law schools actively scout and

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discover opportunities to deliver relevant, market-valued legal education services by combining compelling technologies with updated business models.(fn14) In building a state-of-the-art education ecosystem, law

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school leaders will discover and disseminate fresh pedagogical approaches that are both human and digital.(fn15) To make this grand vision a reality, this Article recommends that legal education entrepreneurs follow the lead of Larry Page, who expects Google's visionaries to be "uncomfortably excited" and have "a healthy disregard for the impossible" when inventing education services for an unknown future.(fn16)

The objectives of Legal Education: A New Growth Vision Part III are twofold: first, to propose ideas for designing and...