Harvard Law School will offer the Counseling & Legal Strategy in the Digital Age seminar on Tuesday evenings this fall. Chris Bavitz and Dalia Topelson of the Cyberlaw Clinic will teach the course, and they encourage cross-registrants to apply. HLS has reserved a limited number of seats for graduate students from other schools at Harvard, including the Kennedy School, HBS, the GSD, HGSE, and SEAS.
The course may be of interest to those seeking to learn about the inner workings of organizations and companies that operate online and, in particular, about how individuals, Internet businesses, advocacy groups, and others develop legal strategies and manage legal risks associated with the development of technology and tech policy and the offering of goods and services via the Internet.
Details about the seminar are as follows:
Counseling & Legal Strategy in the Digital Age
Fall 2014 Seminar
Meets: T 5:00pm – 7:00pm
2 classroom creditsThis course explores the complex challenges that entrepreneurs, businesses, and other organizations face when trying to address legal issues relating to technology. The seminar’s approach is both practical and multidisciplinary, and it encourages students to explore the roles of a wide range of stakeholders (including lawyers, policy advocates and policymakers, businesspersons, and technologists) in developing legal and business strategies. The course draws on a rich set of case studies based on recent legal controversies (including pre-litigation correspondence, pleadings, briefs, and other litigation materials). Students also review, analyze, and critique transactional documents and other legal materials (including contracts and website terms of use and privacy policies), with an eye toward assessing legal and PR risks and protecting client’s interests. Using all of these materials, the course condenses and weaves together experiences that lawyers and clients encounter day-to-day with core doctrinal and theoretical principles of relevant areas of law (including IP, speech, privacy, and the like). The class focuses particularly closely on critical and strategic thinking and analysis, complex legal and practical problem solving and decision-making, and clear and persuasive writing and drafting. At various points throughout the semester, the instructors will bring in outside specialists to enhance students’ understanding of the interplay between substantive and practical issues.
Interested students should contact the instructors (cbavitz@cyber.law.harvard.edu, dtopelson@cyber.law.harvard.edu) for additional information about the course and their respective Registrars for information about the cross-registration process.