Hotshot now free for law students and faculty

In the span of the last week,  virtually all of legal education has moved  to an online format. See Paul Caron, “More than 185 Law Schools (93%) Have Moved Online Due to the Coronavirus,” TaxProf, Mar. 14, 2020.   Per the above tweet from Paddy Cosgrove, it is hard to imagine that such a massive and sudden change does not result in the discovery of new capabilities.

To date, the best online legal education I’ve experienced is Hotshot, which is focused on the nuts and bolts of modern practice in a wide array of substantive areas. Although the practical aspect of Hotshot content is very valuable, what sets the company apart is the extraordinary user experience. Hotshot pours enormous time and resources into the production of each “course” because without raving fans that help sell the product, the business model just doesn’t work.  See Post 102 (deep dive into Hotshot).

Hotshot Co-Founder Ian Nelson

Late last week, I heard from co-founder Ian Nelson, who informed me that in response to the coronavirus, all Hotshot content will be 100% free for all law student and law school faculty for the next several months.  I am confident that this is part of the long-term positive disruption. Why? Because law professors excel at teaching theory. When that theory is snapped together with practice, the value of the education increases dramatically.  Thus, what now happens during the first or second year of practice can now be moved, at least in part, into the second or third year of law school.

Note that virtually all Hotshot courses come with checklists and assessments. Further, a significant number of courses include flipped classroom exercises.

When students, law faculty, and administrators experience highly engineered and highly scalable online content, our imagination around the value and potential of online education is permanently stretched.