In a trend accelerated by the coronavirus, the law is increasingly technology-driven, from the way lawyers prepare cases to the way courts try them.
In the Winter 2021 issue of PreLaw Magazine, a publication of National Jurist, Case Western Reserve earned an “A+,” ranking the school’s technology law program sixth-best in the nation. The placement jumped the law school's program, which was the highest-rated in the Midwest, over notable schools including Stanford Law School, Harvard Law School, New York University School of Law, Columbia Law School and Yale Law School.
The ratings were determined through an analysis of several academic areas, including concentrations (30%), clinics (20%), externships (10%), specialty journals (7%), student groups (8%) and other factors such as LLM programs, labs and the breadth of the curriculum (15 %).
Under the Spangenberg Center for Law, Technology and the Arts (LTA), students can explore a concentration in intellectual property (IP) law with 28 related courses including a hands-on interdisciplinary Fusion program that enrolls business, medical, engineering and law students. The law school also offers students the opportunity to work on real cases in the IP Venture Clinic, join the Journal of Law, Technology and the Internet, earn funded internships at the World International Property Organization and earn an LLM in IP law.
“It is a great honor to be highly ranked among such outstanding technology law programs,” said Craig Nard, director of the law school’s LTA center and the Galen J. Roush Professor of Law. “We are thrilled by this recognition of our innovative approach and commitment to law and technology.”
Since joining the law school in 2002, Nard founded the LTA center, the IP Venture Clinic and launched the Fusion Program with Professors Ted Theofrastous and Joe Jankowski. Nard is also a senior lecturer at the World Intellectual Property Organization Academy at the University of Torino, Italy, and a Visiting Professor at Bocconi University Law School in Milan, Italy.
Nard is assisted by Professor Aaron Perzanowski, the associate director of the LTA center, whose recent books include The End of Ownership (MIT Press, 2016) and Creativity Without Law (NYU Press, 2017). Twenty-five other full-time and adjunct professors and fellows teach two-dozen technology law-related courses, including Raymund Ku, who directs the law school’s Center for Cyberspace Law and Policy and recently published the fifth edition of his book, Cyberspace Law (Aspen 2019).