A new reality

• Author: Victor Li
• Pages: 30-32

Business of Law

30 || ABA JOURNAL JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2019

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY SARA WADFORD/SHUTTERSTOCK

A NEW REALITY

EDITED BY VICTOR LI / VICTOR.LI@AMERICANBAR.ORG

Some law schools have started using virtual reality to augment their curricula.

But legal, technical and fi nancial obstacles stand in the way of widespread

adoption BY ANNA STOLLEY PERSKY

This past summer at the Univer sity of North Texas Dallas

College of Law, a small team of law st udents and school

employees created a vir tual reality cr ime scene. There was

blood made of ketchup, a stapler, handprints a nd of course, a

dead body. Using a 360-degree c amera, the team staged a n

imaginative crime scene.

“It was an experi ment at the request of a criminal law pro-

fessor,” says Jennifer Wondracek, direct or of legal educa-

tional technology at t he school. “We did it low-budget

because we were tr ying it out.” The professor liked it,

Wondracek says, and asked for another t hat could be used to

supplement classroom material.

In fact, Wondracek says her depa rtment is ready to do a

lot more, including re-creat ing actual crime scenes for the

school’s criminal law cla sses.

And perhaps it won’t stop there.

Virtual r eality technology has t he potential to transform

the law school experience. “ We are at the beginn ing of what I

think is going to be a re volution in the way we train our stu-

dents,” Wondracek says. “We are right at the edge wit h vir-

tual realit y technology in both the law school sett ing and the

legal profes sion.”

Virtual r eality involves the use of computer technolog y

to create a simulate d environment, immersing a user in a

3D experience. In the pas t few years, the legal industry ha s

begun slowly exper imenting with VR technology—using it ,

for example, to re-cr eate crime and accident scenes.

However, it might take a while before VR e stablishes a