Future Law Project

The Future Law Project (FLP) produces a forum for leadership conversations about ongoing transformations in two areas. 

One is the future of law as a field of expertise and information. By tradition, that’s the legal profession, but traditions are changing.  Amid massive and continuing disruptions in economic conditions, technologies, and social and physical mobility, both locally and globally, what is the future of legal education?  What is the future of law firms, nonprofit organizations, and other legal services providers?  Courts and other dispute resolution institutions?  The bar?  Systems for providing access to law, legal information, and justice itself? 

Two is the future of law as a source and expression of social order and law as political, economic, and cultural infrastructure, again, amid massive changes to economic, technological, and geographic conditions. What is the role of law in harnessing the productive promise of computing technologies in a diverse and changing world?  How are those technologies changing the character of law?

Policy and action in each area should be informed by thoughtful cross-field and multi-field research. The FLP offers settings for high-level, stimulating conversations among researchers and scholars from multiple scholarly traditions:  from law to sociology to economics to engineering to public health to philosophy, rhetoric, and history.

The FLP’s mandate to convene makes it uniquely suited to host those gatherings.

FLP research, scholarship, and collaborations focus on three overlapping topics:

Governance

What will law and governance become? How are concepts and practices of authority and legitimacy changing?

Expertise

What will lawyers and law graduates do?  What is the future of expertise based on law and other professions and practices?

Economics

What are the economics of law-related institutions, including legal education, courts and dispute resolution providers, alternative legal services providers, NGOs and online platforms, and legal information organizations?