Courses / Module

Digital technologies are revolutionizing the world we live in, thereby disrupting the legal profession, impacting how we communicate, do business and work in the public sphere. We are seeing the emergence of new ways of doing law, creating new types of legal jobs, with major investment in artificial intelligence replaces human beings in the workplace and beyond. By the end of the module, students will have acquired both intellectual understanding and practical skills to tackle the problems in the field of law and technology, and the differing approaches to their solutions.
This is a clinical law module and builds on work in the previous module LW222. The module will focus on policy and regulation issues by addressing the legal principles and evolving regulation in technology and innovation. This module will give students insight into the policy level of law & technology issues. Students will draw on their understanding of the principles and policies to review the state of regulation, assess current and ongoing policy papers and proposals to understand the current state of the law, but also to look at where technology needs to develop and where new regulation is need. The focus will very much be on drafting issues in legislation through to issues in the outcomes of regulation and role of self-regulation, including use of regulatory sandboxes and legal incubators in legal innovation. This will include a deep dive into risk and compliance issues. Students will also be introduced to innovation design concepts and rudimentary principles of coding.

The class will undertake a project to create a White Paper on a chosen area of law & technology. Students will be introduced to legal technology tools and will draw on their knowledge of technology and the legal tools to develop strategic plans, and how to offer a solution to a client. Any aspect of this module may be changed in any given academic year, subject to the discretion of the module lecturer.
The module will enhance career prospects in the legal profession, in regulatory bodies at the international and domestic level, third sector organisations, the industrial and service sector in Ireland and abroad. The module incorporates a Virtual Internship. Any aspect of this module may be changed in any given academic year, subject to the discretion of the module lecturer.