Details on Bucerius Legal Tech Essentials


Every summer since 2018, Bucerius Law School has offered a three-week, on-campus Summer Program on legal technology and operations. In total, the program has now educated nearly 70 highly selected students. The faculty has included some regular contributors to this publication and will hopefully also include others in the future.

 This year, we originally wanted to build the best on-campus program we’ve ever offered. When the pandemic forced us to cancel our on-campus program back in April, we were heartbroken. Especially in the face of a near-certain recession and the uncertainty it engenders, we were convinced that it would be worthwhile to offer something this year. Nonetheless, it would take some courage and an open mind to do things differently this year. 

Here’s what we’ve come up with: We now offer a curated program, via webinar, open to everyone, entirely free of charge. We call it Bucerius Legal Tech Essentials and it is a series of one-hour webinars, weekdays at noon US Central. The lectures will start in late June and carry on through early August. Participants can decide to join all webinars or pick and choose. So far, over 1,700 participants from more than 80 countries have registered and nearly 20 lecturers joined us for the ride.

We are aiming to cover a broad range of topics: From foundations in legal technology and startups, artificial intelligence and analytics and computational law to legal operations, digital justice, online courts and the regulation of legal technology. One category puts innovative founders into the spotlight, while another features ground-breaking research from Computational Legal Studies, complexity and data science. Finally, we’re adding in a series of lectures that offer entirely different perspectives on law by viewing them through the lenses of innovation diffusion, network science and design thinking.

Our lecturers include scholars from prominent law schools in the U.S., Europe and Asia, regulators from Canada, Germany and the European Central Bank, entrepreneurs from law firms, law companies and legal finance, as well as in-house innovators from Banco Santander and Google. They will bring different perspectives on the legal ecosystem and share their immediate experiences and learnings. We hope that they inspire our participants to change their industries for the better and give hope to those in difficult circumstances. 

Here are confirmed lecturers so far with more to be added soon: 

You can sign up for the program for free here.

This program is as much a learning opportunity for us as it is for those taking part. We are trying out new topics, new formats and an entirely new approach to our legal education. We will collect data, capture our experiences and share the results with the community. Others, such as our friends at the Institute for the Future of Law Practice, have demonstrated that you can take programs online. Our partners at Passport to Practice will follow an even more extensive approach including readings, homework and eventually a certificate.

Bucerius Legal Tech Essentials is made possible by generous support from Baker McKenzie. 

Bucerius Law School is a private non-profit law school in Germany. It has been leading the country’s most important ranking for over a decade. The school offers technology certificate, regular legal technology lectures and is regarded as a global hub for legal technology and innovation. Its Center for Legal Technology and Data Science and the Center on the Legal Profession regularly publish academic papers and studies, hold conferences and shape the discussion on legal technology and access to justice in Germany and Europe.

Dirk Hartung and Dan Katz

Bucerius Center for Legal Technology and Data Science