In conversation with Josh Morrison
Earlier this month, Ultra Vires had the opportunity to sit down with Josh Morrison, the Director of the Future of Law Lab, to learn about the Lab’s latest programming updates and changes introduced this year.
The Future of Law Lab is an incubator dedicated to exploring the intersection of law and technology. It serves as a space for exploring how advancements in technology can reshape legal education and practice. Through forward-thinking workshops and programs, the Future of Law Lab equips students with the skills needed to navigate and lead in an increasingly digital world.
Ultra Virus (UV): How has the Future of Law Lab evolved this year compared to previous years? What new elements are you most excited about?
Josh Morrison (JM): Historically, the Future of Law Lab has been structured around four core pillars: speaker series seminars, experiential learning opportunities, research projects, and summer employment programs.
This year, we’ve shifted our focus toward enhancing the experiential learning component. We’ve integrated the speaker series into our workshop series to create a more cohesive experience. For the 1L Public Interest Recruit, we are offering four opportunities this year: two workshops and two research projects.
We really want to give students the opportunity to create, build, and experiment rather than sit and listen. There are many opportunities to sit and listen in law school. I want to give students the opportunity to collaborate and do.
By making our workshops part of the 1L Public Interest Recruit, we’ve built a coordinated series where each session within the series builds on the knowledge gained from the previous session. That has come with focusing less on the speaker series and panels and instead, having guests work directly with students, as opposed to just speaking on a panel. The goal is to foster a more intimate environment that enhances networking opportunities and allows students to both learn from and connect meaningfully with lawyers.
UV: Could you tell us about some of the workshops currently offered and how they’re structured to benefit students?
JM: One of our workshops focuses on the transformative impact of artificial intelligence [AI] on the legal field. The other workshop takes participants through the full lifecycle of a startup, from the idea creation stage to navigating an initial public offering.
The AI workshop is a topic that most students are really excited about! I wanted to find a way to place these workshops in the context of the learning that students do in their doctrinal courses, while also providing opportunities to engage with ideas that 1L students don’t generally get to do in classes.
We identified AI use cases in areas like competition law, climate law, and intellectual property law, all of which build on foundational teachings from doctrinal courses. Instead of focusing on how legal decisions are made, these workshops dive into how policy is shaped and explore specific AI tools and their applications. Students not only engage with material that goes beyond the traditional curriculum, but also with cutting-edge issues that are being decided in real time. Our aim is to immerse students in these ongoing discussions and provide them with the opportunity to learn directly from experts who are actively navigating these challenges.
The startup workshop is designed to provide students with firsthand insights into how startups navigate legal challenges. In this series, every student steps into the role of a senior partner at a corporate law firm. The goal is to give students exposure to tasks typically reserved for senior lawyers, such as incorporating companies, developing intellectual property strategies, negotiating asset purchases, and conducting capital raises.
By creating these series, my hope is that we can incrementally build the knowledge for each student participating. You can either learn these skills on the job, in a high-stress setting, or you can get early exposure to them now in a low-stakes setting!
UV: What key insights do you want students to gain about the Future of Law Lab?
JM: First, that you don’t have to be an expert in technology, AI, or business law (or really anything) to participate. The “Future of Law” is a broad mandate. Regardless of what you’re excited about, there is a place for you in the Future of Law Lab. I would love for it to be as inclusive as possible and for everyone to feel welcome.
Second, students should become comfortable with discomfort and uncertainty. Many topics we focus on are new, not well-established, and we don’t always have the right answers. It’s about iterative experimentation—embodying the “Lab” mindset. We aim to create an environment where students can explore, experiment, and pilot new ideas.
There are not a lot of opportunities to do that while you’re working, so why not start now?
Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
