Course Information

Instructor:

Office

Room 705

Introduction

This course is a substantive law course covering a variety of legal issues raised by the growth of the Internet in society and commerce. The Internet is the fastest growing organic thing on the planet. In law firms and corporate law departments today and in a wide range of companies the Internet is becoming an increasingly important segment of the United States and world economy. The intersection between the Internet and our legal system is producing new legal doctrine here and around the world.

Some New Techniques for Learning the Law

To take full advantage of the technological support that the law school has available and to experience some of the factual issues raised by the topics we will study, we will implement some new techniques for learning the law in this course.

Internet Law Reading Assignments

All materials for the course will be distributed electronically on the Internet. Most of the assignments will be URLs that link to the documents to be read.

The sites on the Internet where the assigned documents are located will be free government, educational or public sites with the exception of http://www.lexis.com/lawschools/. You must have a current and working LEXIS ID to link to these cases and documents. Chicago-Kent’s LEXIS student representative is Omar Haydar. His email is OHAYDAR. Contact him immediately if your LEXIS ID is not current.

You should have your own notebook computer to take the course. I considered making ownership of a notebook computer a requirement but decided that you may register and take the course without owing a notebook computer. You will be at a disadvantage. The assigned materials for the course can be downloaded from the Internet and printed, but this may be an awkward way to work with the materials for the following reasons. World Wide Web documents are inherently hypertextual. It is easy and natural to link one document, word or symbol to any other in the same document or anywhere on the web. This linking characteristic also matches the type of legal analysis needed to succeed in this course. We will work to develop the ability to bridge between various subject matter categories and topics. Because the Internet is so new, the fact patterns frequently do not fall easily into preexisting legal categories. Often, the job of the lawyer is to find the most appropriate metaphor or analytical frame for a legal argument from another area where the results are more settled.

The Extended Classroom

Many of the communications features of the physical classroom are available to you for use after class from the labs, study areas in the law school and from your own computer. Electronic mail and a threaded discussion group called WebBoard will make it possible for you to exchange files and comments at any time. Participation in the discussion group will be considered an extension of class participation. Positive impact on your grade is possible if you participate with thoughtful and pertinent comments. I hope that the discussions of the classroom are continued in this way to permit a different kind of class participation for everyone.

The Linking Assignments

One of my pet peeves about law school education is that the professor and the student are rarely at the same level of enthusiasm about the material at the same time. I am deeply interested in the set of cases when they are taught in class. Invariably, students are more interested when exams are imminent, weeks later. I hope that all of us become more passionate about the material for class by involving every member of the class in building the materials for the course.

The facts of the "cases" in the course are uniquely open for your inspection and review on the web. The study of law is immensely more satisfying and interesting if you understand the underlying facts, the commercial and social setting for the disputes and the changes caused by the legal institutions on the players and entities involved.

The purpose of the student linking projects is to engage each member of the class in the process of building the course materials for the entire group. By this time in your law school education you are capable of making an important contribution to the investigation and analysis of legal materials. To solicit that contribution, each student will be assigned to a team and each team will be assigned to enrich the materials in a specific part of the course.

ASSIGNMENT #1: Individual Web Research Project

The student linking assignment grid matches each enrolled student with a particular subject area that we will cover in the course. The first assignment is to search the web to learn more about the business and social issues at stake in the assigned area. Use the cases and readings as a general guide for the scope of your inquiry. Find out what happened after the assigned cases were decided to the people and the companies that were involved in the dispute and to the way business is handled in that area. Ultimately, the material that you uncover should be evaluated in terms of the contribution that it might make to you and your classmates as practicing lawyers.

First, each individual will prepare a preliminary list of 10 web sites or links with a short annotation explaining what information will be found at the link site, critically reviewing its usefulness and explaining why that information is important to a lawyer practicing in this field.
The form of the first assignment should be as follows:

URL #1.
http:\\kentlaw.edu

CONTENT DESCRIPTION
This site contains extraordinary information about the activities of the Chicago-Kent law school community. It houses the Legal Domain Network, the opinions of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7^th Circuit, the Justice Web Collaboratory, the Distance Learning in Law Portal, Etc….

IMPACT
Judges and lawyers practicing labor law will find material here unavailable elsewhere that will be of significant value in evaluating access to justice projects …..

In your description and impact statement use full sentences that are grammatically correct. Do not cut and paste the text of the web site directly into your project. Use your own words and your own judgment about quality and relevance.

The first assignment is due to me on September 1, 1999. You must email the assignment to me and to each member of your team. The assignment may be in Word or HTML.

ASSIGNMENT #2 Group Project, Rewrite and Presentation

Between September 1 and September 8 each team must meet (in person or online) and agree on a combined list of 5 sites that will become part of the recommended reading for the course. You may select from the individual sites or choose new sites that the group agrees are the best 5. The group should review and rewrite the descriptions and impact statements based on the group contributions to the evaluation process.

The group project rewrite must be emailed to me as Word file or an HTML document no later than September 8, 1999. To soften the reading burden on your classmates, you should use your best judgment to evaluate, organize and summarize the material. I will make some of the new material required reading for subsequent classes and the exam.

During the classes devoted to the subject matter of the assignments each group will make a presentation to the class. The purpose of the presentation will be to share with the class the key resources that the group has identified, update the material with any new sites of interest. These presentations should last 15 or 20 minutes and will usually be delivered on the first day a new area is introduced in the course.

Grading

The examination for this course will be a controlled "take home" handed out during the last class. The examination will be due in the Registrar’s office on our assigned examination time. I reserve the right to change my mind about the style and manner of delivering the exam before December.

Preparation and class participation are critically important. The class is small and our subject matter is novel. The Internet casebook, linking assignments, threaded discussion group and e-mail system are designed to engage you as an active participant in the learning process. This set of tools will require teamwork. I assigned projects to student teams to push you toward cooperative work in an electronic environment. Collaboration is a key competency needed in law practice.

To encourage your active involvement during the semester, I will grade this course as follows:

20% of your grade will be based on the written project. The project itself will have three parts:

Individual annotated link assignment with 10 web sites, identified, described and evaluated for impact on the course, due September 1, 1999.

Link assignment with 5 sites proposed for recommended reading for the course, with edited descriptions and evaluations, due September 13, 1999.

Group oral presentation in class.

80% of the grade will be based on the final examination and general class participation as described next.

To encourage everyone to prepare and participate in all areas of the course, one-half of a grade differential will be based on class preparation and participation including the electronic extension of class in our discussion group online. If you are a conscientious, insightful and effective member of the class, your grade will be raised from your exam grade to one-half letter grade higher. If you are frequently unprepared and fail to participate, I will consider that performance in lowering marginal examination grades by one-half of a grade. If you are somewhere in between, I may exercise my discretion to raise your grade by one-half grade depending on the level of your class performance and the proximity of your exam grade to the nearest margin.

Class Attendance Policy

Class Attendance Policy

All students must attend at least 75% of the classes in this course. There are 28 classes. You must be present for at least 21 of these classes. Any student who does not attend the minimum number of classes has not met a requirement for getting credit for the course and may not take the final examination. Keep your own count. Sometime after the last class but before the hour of the examination, a list of students who meet the minimum attendance requirement and are qualified to take the examination will be posted on the class web site. This is not an "excuse" system; a student's reason for non-attendance is not of interest. A class roster will be passed around each class; your own signature after your printed name will be the only evidence of your presence that day for the entire class. If you leave shortly after the class begins, your signature should not remain on the roster indicating that you attended that class.

Syllabus and Assignments

The Syllabus for the course is a grid showing the topics that we will cover. Assignments listed are the readings developed during the Spring 1999 semester with a few changes. In many parts of the course there will be new readings and new cases as the course proceeds. In addition, the student linking assignments will be incorporated in the third week or so. While you may save the Syllabus and Assignments document on your local computer, be sure that you review it each week for updates and changes.

Student Project and Team Assignments

This link displays the Syllabus grid with the email addresses of the students assigned to each of the topic areas of the course.

Page last updated Thursday August 19, 1999 by Ron Staudt.