Future Law Works is a global collective of researchers, technologists, practitioners, and designers envisioning the futures of law, legal institutions, and legal education. We are a virtual think tank.
We are motivated to act by the instinct that social, economic, and technological change now dwarfs the power of established institutions of legal education and higher education to adapt effectively in the incremental style to which they are accustomed. Fundamental, larger scale, and longer term re-thinking and re-structuring are required. Our initial vision is described in greater detail at the “Vision” link, above. We are eager to complement the efforts of others around the world who have been working to improve systems of education, training, professional development, the delivery of legal services and legal information, and justice.
History
Future Law Works was established in late 2018 following a “Law’s Futures” roundtable held at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California attended by more than 30 legal academics, lawyers, and designers aiming to think broadly and boldly about how law, education, and institutions should be refashioned in the decades to come. Additional roundtables have been held in September 2019 at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and online in October 2022.
One prompt for the roundtable and the programs, events, and initiatives to come was this essay on the future of legal education, distributed in December 2017 and later made the focus of an online symposium at Prawfsblawg, a leading blog covering legal academia. The essay and the online symposium are available at the “Readings” link at the 2018 Law’s Futures website.
This site was launched in late December 2018.
Last updated: 21 June 2024
Recent updates
June 2024: Three new prompts for innovation in legal education – on economics, curriculum, and talent/leadership – have been posted to a new “Resources” page on this site. Click here for more information.
AALS 2023: Future Law Works hosted a discussion and reception with about 40 people, including many current and former law deans, at the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) in San Diego in January 2023. We talked about the question of what Future Law Works ought to do exactly as a think tank and action platform. Click here for more information about the conversation and what it points toward.
Fall 2022 meeting: The “Law’s Futures 3” roundtable took place on for October 14, 2022. Click here for more information.
Click here for the latest from the Future Law Works Steering Committee.
Steering Committee
Hiram Chodosh has been president of Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California, USA since 2013. He served as dean of the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law from 2006 to 2013.
Michael Madison has been a member of the law faculty at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law since 1998. He is faculty director of Pitt Law's Future Law Project.
Daniel Rodriguez is the Harold Washington Professor at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. He served as dean at Northwestern from January 2012 through August 2018.
Lyrissa Lidsky is Raymond & Miriam Ehrlich Chair in U.S. Constitutional Law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. She served as dean of the University of Missouri School of Law from 2017 to 2022 and taught at the University of Florida from 1994 to 2017.
Danielle M. Conway has been dean of Penn State University Dickinson Law and Donald J. Farage Professor of Law since 2019. She previously served as dean of the University of Maine School of Law and as a member of the law faculties at the University of Hawai'i and the University of Memphis.
Sponsorship
Future Law Works has no formal institutional sponsorship or affiliation. It consists of the collected volunteer efforts of individual researchers, practitioners, technologists, designers, academic administrators, and business and nonprofit professionals around the world.