Podcast discusses future of legal education: flexibility, justice and AI

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WASHINGTON - Kellye Testy, the executive director and CEO of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), is featured on a new episode of the Legal Services Corporation's (LSC) podcast, "Talk Justice." Testy spoke to host Cat Moon, a law professor at Vanderbilt Law School, about opportunities for students to contribute to access to justice, the need to integrate evolving technologies into legal education, and degree programs that offer more flexible paths to becoming a lawyer.

AALS is a non-profit membership organization, to which 174 law schools belong.

Prior to joining AALS, Testy led the Law School Admission Council. She has also served as dean and professor of law at University of Washington School of Law and at Seattle University School of Law. She has been people-focused throughout her career in legal education, and she explained that that approach also applies to how she views the law.

"It's something that I've always encouraged in my teaching for my students to remember," Testy said. "I think it is something that helps build more of a humanity in law that I hope all lawyers will take to heart, so that they remember that part of the privilege of becoming a lawyer is that you have real power to influence people's lives, and understanding that those are real lives helps you use that wisely."

Moon and Testy discussed how an emphasis on access to justice has grown over the past few decades in law schools.

"I am pleased to see that today there is much more discussion of the connection between law and justice, and there's much more discussion of the widening inequality in terms of who has access to legal resources," said Testy. "There's many more programs for students to pursue an equal justice public interest focus in their work and much more support for that along the way."

Asked about the phenomenon of "public interest drift"- the fact that the rate of law students interested in public service careers is higher than the rate of lawyers entering those positions -Testy said that an under-discussed aspect of this issue is that limited funding for these public service roles makes them competitive.

"I think that if we invested more, it would help close the access to justice gap because there are unmet legal needs, and there are students who absolutely would go do that work if they could do it," said Testy.

Arizona State University (ASU) recently launched an online, part-time J.D. program to expand how and where students can earn a law degree. ASU's goal is to strengthen the legal profession and help address critical gaps in legal services nationwide. Testy expressed support of this innovation and named other law schools who have also been creating more pathways for students, like St. Mary's University in Texas and Mitchell Hamline School of Law in Minnesota.

Testy said that these alternative formats offer people who can't relocate or attend school full-time access to a more affordable path, while still maintaining a high-quality legal education.

"We don't have to choose between excellence and innovation," she said. "Sometimes, I think, people have a little bit of an adolescent view of innovation where any change just for the sake of it is a good one because it disrupts something. I don't believe that."

"I think that change needs to be change that's going to propel us forward."

Moon said that in her work at the Vanderbilt AI Law Lab, she often hears from law firms with questions about how schools are preparing students for the future of artificial intelligence (AI) in legal practice. Testy explained that the initial wave of fear that often comes with new technology has subsided, and AALS and law schools across the country are working to understand AI and to integrate it.

"There is so much happening in terms of how [AI is] being brought into the classrooms, clinics, scholarship, just every aspect of operations - and there's still a lot to learn," said Testy. "I think we will have some complexity, we'll have some evolution, but people are at the task, as I think they should be."

To hear more from this conversation with Testy, listen to the full episode of Talk Justice online, on Spotify, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. The podcast is sponsored by LSC's Leaders Council.