Point/Counterpoint
Point: Computers have ruined the learning of the laws
By Marita Zouravlioff
There was a time, a beautiful, simpler, pure time, where students treated the law with the respect it demands. Both adoring and fearful, the students of yesteryear revered their noble profession enough to pursue it through book-learning. There was none of this Westlaw malarkey. The painstaking and arduous search it took to locate even a single piece of jurisprudence was a necessary display of a student’s love and undying devotion to the law.
Entrants to law school thought admiringly of their heroes – FDR, Irving, Lincoln – and were thrilled and honoured to join the throngs of white men that came before them. They passed through the doors of the university prepared with their fine leather satchel, brimming with parchment and ink pots. For there were no evil machines to distract and corrupt the soul. It was just you and the law; mano e mano.
In the olden days, this proud school’s pupils actually read cases because casebrief.wikia didn’t exist. There was a single set of excellent upper year maps and people would duel to the death for them. Any time an edit had to be made, a person would sit and copy out the summary in its entirety to append whatever the incremental change was. This was widely regarded as character building and an excellent opportunity to practise your calligraphy.
When you imbibed a tad too heartily at the pub on Thursday’s evenings, there was no reprieve in Netflix the next day. You would rise from bed, struggle through your daily calisthenics, and smoke your pipe on your porch while you ruminated over the sins you had committed the night before.
Now you heathens coast through your studies, spending more time on lifeinbiglaw than your readings. On facebook, you ungrateful whiners complain relentlessly, while posting strange photos of your peers with nonsensical captions in bold white font. Obviously, you are all suffering from computer-induced brain rot.
Unsurprisingly, scientists now hypothesize that computers will replace lawyers all together in a few years. Look what you’ve done, computer-enthusiasts! I hope you’re happy.
Counterpoint: All hail the computer
By Jacquie Richards
Knowledge is power. Where once only the strong, the swift, the white balding man and pirates had access to the marvelous power that is knowledge of Admiralty law, the legal constructs currently binding trade in the high seas (as well as all four Pirates of the Caribbean movies) are now accessible to future sea captains from all walks of life, and even to people from Wisconsin! This power exists because people can access near unlimited information on their computers.
Thanks to our robotic overlords and the inter-web, humanity now can choose to increase its understanding of nearly anything with the click of a button, and with this power we can be better lawyers and better people, all without putting on pants. With computers, we can Google case law summaries from our phones, choose to absolutely never watch the *progress* on the new building live on webcam and immediately share our newfound understanding of dogs learning to walk in snow boots or crossfit with nearly everyone we know on social media whether they want this knowledge or not.
What’s more, in the distant future, like say six months from now, when global warming and “Say Yes to the Dress” implodes our planet and sends our race plummeting through space in a desperate struggle to survive, humans will press on solely by merging with machines and becoming Google and Apple branded cybertronic time lords who live in climate controlled space ships while we populate new planets with new law buildings [eventually] and teach alien species the absolute necessity of consideration when drafting contracts.
If we kept struggling over our inkpots and textbooks, the human race would be doomed and we would surely deserve it. The universe doesn’t need a bunch of nostalgic, book-obsessed purists. Extinction was coming for us and we have been spared. F*cking THANKS, computers. Thanks for SAVING US ALL.
