Technology Forum Meeting - Transcript of Discussions - Page 7  <<   >>

MR. GALLAGHER: Could you explain the partnership that we currently have with the bar association?

PROF. MARTIN: Yes, I'm delighted to. It's important to us. It's, first of all, a lot of exchange of views, but it has more tangible form than that. One of the things that we got some foundation money to try to prototype was this thing that we call LLI Bulletin New York. We have law students who write summaries of the decisions handed down by the New York Court of Appeals.

Those of us who are old-timers remember that students did that for print journals once upon a time, case notes. Law journals don't do it anymore, for good reason; because the path to print is a long one, and the path to an audience is even longer. But we prototyped LIIBULLETIN-NY and since -- this is the third year, I believe, that the New York State Bar Association has been the proud sponsor of this activity. The partnership has made it possible financially, because the students who do this valuable work are paid, and the only way we're able to pay them is with the support we get from the New York State Bar Association.

Another strand of the partnership has been collaboration over the various section-related web pages, and Patrice has been at the center of that activity. So, there has been back and forth discussion about areas in which what we do and the needs of your membership overlap and how we can approach them together.

MR. GALLAGHER: Initially you were doing only as many selected Court of Appeals opinions as your part-time students could do, and we got together and said this would be valuable if we had all the Court of Appeals opinions or most of them. So, we knew we didn't want to do it ourselves, so we went back to our partner and said, "How could we work that out?"

PROF. MARTIN: Just stepping back from that partnership, let me say that the fact of that partnership very much continues to channel the students' enthusiasm and effort. For time and again, the students will come and say, "We would like to do another one of these. We'd like to go off in some other direction represented by our distinctive personal interest." And my rejoinder is, "Look, we have -- we've got this. It exists. It's a channel to a professional audience that relies heavily on it. Rather than going off in some new direction and trying to draw audiences, let's put new and better content into the channel that we've already got." So that one of the things that you will see before the close of this academic year are some New York State law-focused decisions of the Second Circuit being recorded on in Bulletin New York. Students want to go off and do Internet law. I said, "No, no, no. Let's keep it within the scope of the thing that we already have working so well, and is the fruit of this partnership."

MR. GALLAGHER: Another spin-off of LII was Bernice Leber’s project started with the Commercial Division Law Reports, where the Chief Clerk was going to do the case summaries, and the Federal & Commercial Litigation Section pushed the Law Reports out using Cornell’s LIIBULLETIN model.

MR. SIENKO: One of the things that's important is the Court of Appeals now has its own web site, and puts up its own decisions, but our model with Cornell adding the editorial content is still valuable.

PROF. MARTIN: And the New York Court of Appeals puts them up, and then takes them down.

MR. SIENKO: Exactly.

PROF. MARTIN: While they're up at least at the reporter's cite, they do have those links into West.

MR. SIENKO: Yes, they do.

MS. CIOFFI: Tell me if I misunderstood: When I heard you discuss legacy mind-sets, it seemed as though there was a negative connotation there. I don't know if I misinterpreted, but, to me, being in the practice of law, there's a value to a legacy mind-set.

PROF. MARTIN: Oh, sure. Let me talk from my world about legacy mind-set. I have wonderful colleagues who can't think about teaching in any other way than standing up in front of a roomful of students and doing what they know how to do well to doing what students have responded to favorably over a period of years. They can't themselves imagine teaching in any other way, and since they can't, they can't imagine teaching going on in any other way. That's a major limiting factor on what Cornell Law School is able to do with the opportunities in front of it presented by this. The mind-set of many of my colleagues, who identify with the profession, is that they teach with a particular set of practice s they are unable to change. They are unable to see that much of what they are doing now can be done at least as effectively if not more effectively using some new tools but would involve learning new skills in and would allow them to reach new audiences.

MS. CIOFFI: That problem will just be eliminated with the passage of time because, I mean, I find in my practice a generation of attorney.

PROF. MARTIN: Well, it can wait the passage of time, but things are moving rapidly, particularly when you're in a competitive environment. If you wait for the passage of time and others are more nimble, then time has passed you by, "you" being whatever institutions we're talking about.

MR. GOLDFARB: It's one thing for your faculty to fear and not want to do it. It's another thing for the ABA and other people to regulate and say this is a legal practice. If you get information in the hands of people as lawyers, and organizations and state legislators don't regulate it, so other people can't do it. I don't mind if Cornell or any other institution remains in the dark ages as long as someone else can go ahead and disseminate the information.

MR. SZEKERES: One of the things we're finding in theory, we've created this Intranet with a vast amount of very useful information. And it was primarily designed for the young incoming associates because a lot of that information is stuff that's intuitive to somebody who has been practicing for a long time. We found the young incoming associates were not using the site. They would do what their colleagues and their mentors had been doing for years, which is, well, I don't know the answer, I'll call the library or I'll call the colleague down the hall and ask what the answer is. First of all, there's less time for the partners to be spending on that because they're into all these other things, so that mentoring isn't happening anymore.

We've come to the realization, if the mentors don't pick-up and learn how to teach using these new methods, what we end up finding is that the young associates never learn that. And then, they don't turn around and teach it when they become the mentors because they're used to doing things the way they were taught, and they pass that along. So there is that legacy, and it perpetuates itself.

PROF. MARTIN: The greatest push that I think both of our professions have comes from external force, and that is for your clients and for our students. Our students are far more ready to do anything new with the technology than the faculty. And let a few different models loose within the law school and students are pressuring some of the more constrained members of faculty, "Why don't you respond to e-mails?" Or, "Why don't you put your syllabus up on the web?" It's a constant kind of pressure coming from the students rather than from colleagues or from administration.

MS. LEBER: I have a very different type of question. You put up on one of your slides the web site you created for social security law, and you made a statement about how you added value to that site. By adding additional information rather than a hyperlink, what was that value, and how did you decide what were you going to create for that value?

PROF. MARTIN: That is the ultimate place where my social security treatise is lodged, so I took it back from West Group when they merged, when they were bought by Thompson. And so my treatise is now on the web freely available, taken off the expensive CD ROM, and linked to the act, the regulations, the decisions, full set of materials that are either on our site or on the Social Security Administration's site. It is organized as well. And then my course is on top of that structure, so I draw upon that digital library as I'm teaching these 75 students social security law. The casebook is on line. The decisions are all there. And the architecture is open so anybody else who wants to put a layer of value on top of what I've done can do that, and some have.

MS. CIOFFI: One of the things that I don't understand as a general topic is the economics of the Internet and the free sharing of information. When you put your treatise up there, are you compensated for that in any way?

PROF. MARTIN: No.

MS. CIOFFI: Was Jack compensated for the hard work had he done when he turned over his Appeals Court cases, and will it stay that way, or is this something that's evolving, too?

PROF. MARTIN: There's a fascinating field called the economics of information. It teaches that there are many models for giving and also having -- giving away information, but also realizing reasonable return from it. Several of those models are the Legal Information Institute is exploring, playing with, trying to implement. They include getting sponsorship for giving away information. They include giving information away but also charging for various other packages of it.

For example, how many of you know the Nolo site? The Nolo site sells the various software products I have shown you, but integrated with it is all kinds of useful free information. They draw people with the free information, and then they're selling the Quicken Lawyer and the LLC Maker and the guides to social security disability benefits.

We will continue to give away the U.S. Code, but a year from now, you'll be able to download in pdf form particular chunks of the U.S. Code from our site for a fee. We give away our social security information. We sell our social security course. The six other law schools who have students in my course are paying Cornell for each of their seats, each of their places, their virtual places.

MR. GLEASON: One of the things I think is really going to change when provided different kind of value including the bar association is not just availability of information because the information is going to be out there. It's swamping people now. What really is going to be important is like the site agreement for social security, how you create and select the useful group of people who want that information because summarizing things can be brought too far, you know, if everything is out there and summarized.

This guy, James Glick wrote this book on the information age called "Faster." He says, and I think he's right, that there are certain things the human brain can't process that quickly. And you're going to have to spend time actually absorbing things, which is one of the reasons I think in some respects there is no substitute with real classroom and professor who really sits and engages with you. That's why we use telephone instead of e-mail. E-mail is really great for certain kinds of communication, but other kinds of communication, telephone is better, and we still will use it.

So what I see happening is not just the advancement of technology and the acceptance of it just because it happens to be newer and better, but rather some bright people, I think a lot of them here, just saying, "How can this really be better? How can we assemble people and give them the packaged information the way that's useful so your time is better spent?" Because with unlimited amounts of files, there is unlimited amounts of information, but we don't have amounts of time. That's why I think your institute and the site you have is so good because it's free. It's there.
It's quicker. It's quicker than going through Lexis sometimes. And that's value. But figure out where the value is and communicating to people, that's where I think the bar association really should.

MR. SZEKERES: It's the same model that Lexis and West Law use to stay in business. Case law has become a commodity. West used to have a monopoly on it. No more. You can get it on Internet. But do you want to go to all the different places to find the relevant case law, or do you pay Lexis or West Law to pull it all together? But, then they put another layer on top of it. That's why they bought all the different little publishers, Matthew Bender and Clark Boardman, so they go and provide the layer of explanation on top of the case law, and that's how they stay in business. They take the commodity and add value to it.

MR. LEVIN: It's interesting, I'm looking at this as complete a parallel as all the discussions we've had on the web site redesigned. We have people in the group who advocate for putting everything the state bar has on web site for free. And we have others who advocate to only put out the teasers for free and you place the added value, which is unique to the organization into a private area. That's what people pay for, and that's why they have to join the Association in order to get added value. So, it is very similar.

MR. SIENKO: But the problem is: If you think of the Internet, and it's been in existence for a while now as a living organism, the general rule is that if the Internet experience is damaged, it will build around it. And charging is considered damage or censorship is considered damage. So that if you start closing down the source of information here, the organism will build around it and offer it for free some other way. And so far that's
worked.

Now with the dotcom classes, we'll see if economic model stays. There isn't much in the way of successful subscription services other than perhaps The Wall Street Journal, you know. Most of those who have gone to subscription models haven't done very well when giving information away freely before. But watch to see what happens in regard to anything that's free that is then put behind a wall and charged for. The Internet will build around it and correct the damage.

MR. GLEASON: I think the free part you do get is the people who are in the organization find that, and someplace they get part of what they know. They say, "This is the way I'd like to see this group, this information organized," and that is valuable information. You can't really pay for that if you want to. And that kind of stuff being produced to the organization means you've got to go where the other people go. And if you do that, I think you can really supply real value and get value back at the same time.

Peter, thank you.

(Recess.)