Emerging technologies, artificial intelligence, and machine learning are transforming our society at a lightning pace. Industries—including law—are moving quickly to adopt and apply new high tech tools, with an eye toward improving performance and efficiency while navigating ethical and professional risks that accompany them. The Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University is meeting these challenges head on and working to educate our aspiring lawyers in these technologies so they graduate from the school empowered to lead and prepared to practice in a changing legal industry.  

Our required curriculum in Legal Writing and Professional Responsibility provide lessons emphasizing how to use AI appropriately, professionally, and ethically, ensuring all of our law students leave Duquesne Kline School of Law with foundational knowledge in this area. Additionally, the law school offers a variety of classes in law and technology to support students who want to focus on the computing technology, as well as those who want to learn about the impacts of AI on the legal profession.  

Offering courses on AI Law & Policy and Big Tech, Law, & Democracy our faculty explore the rapidly evolving landscape of generative AI models and their capabilities, while helping students gain a sophisticated understanding of AI and its impact on our democracy and society. Students engage with current efforts to legislate and regulate generative AI, as government and industry must work together to harness the promise and manage the very real risks of this powerful technology.

For those students interested in digging into the nuts and bolts of computer science applications to law, Duquesne Kline School of Law is among a very small group of law schools that offers computer programming courses in the law school, even for those with no prior background in the field. We offer a unique concentration in Law and Computing that exposes students to coding, machine learning and natural language AI. In the Fall of 2025, we will pilot a Tech Track with a handful of entering students who wish to integrate programming courses beginning in the first year.

For students more interested in the broader applications of technology to the legal field without the emphasis on computer science, Duquesne Kline School of Law offers cutting edge courses in eDiscovery and Law Office Technology, along with more traditional innovation law and technology courses like Fundamentals of Intellectual Property, Patent Law & Drafting, and Cyberlaw. We also offer externship and clinical opportunities that intersect with law and technology.  

Courses

  • AI & Policy
  • Big Tech Law and Democracy
  • Coding for Lawyers
  • Data Structures in Python
  • eDiscovery
  • Fundamentals of Intellectual Property
  • Law Office Technology
  • Legal Tech Externship
  • Natural Language Lawyering
  • Patent Drafting
  • Patent Law
  • Statistics and Machine Learning for Lawyers

Faculty

These Duquesne Kline School of Law faculty intersect law and technology in courses in our Law and Computing concentration.

April M. Barton

April M. Barton

Dean and Professor of Law

Morgan Gray

Morgan Gray

Adjunct Faculty

Hon. Connor Lamb

Hon. Connor Lamb

Distinguished Lecturer of Law

Jacqueline Lipton

Jacqueline Lipton

Associate Professor, Carol Los Mansmann Chair in Faculty Scholarship

Katherine Norton

Katherine Norton

Associate Dean for Faculty Scholarship, Director of Clinical and International Programs and Associate Professor of Law

Wesley M. Oliver

Wesley M. Oliver

Director of the Law and Computing Program and Professor of Law

Tara L. Willke

Tara L. Willke

Associate Dean for Strategic Academic Programs and Associate Professor of Law

Research and Engagement

The Duquesne Kline faculty is actively engaged in the local, national, and international law and technology communities.

Computer Science and Law

Computationally Assessing Suspicion, 92 Univ. of Cincinnati Law Review 1108 (2024) (Profs Gray and Oliver, with Jaromir Savelka, Kevin D. Ashley).

Empirical Legal Analysis Simplified: Reducing Complexity through Automatic Identification of Legally Relevant Factors, 382 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 2270 (2024) (Profs Gray and Oliver, with Jaromir Savelka, Kevin D. Ashley).

Can GPT Alleviate the Burden of Annotation?, Proceedings of the 35th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (Dec. 2023) (Profs Gray and Oliver, with Jaromir Savelka, Kevin D. Ashley).

GPT4 Support Analysis of Textual Data in Tasks Requiring Highly Specialized Domain Expertise? Proceedings of the Sixth Workshop on Automated Semantic Analysis of Information in Legal Text (ASAIL 2023) (Prof. Gray, with Jaromir Savelka, Kevin D. Ashley, Hannes Westermann, and Huihui Xu, Can).

Explaining Legal Concepts with Augmented Large Language Models (GPT-4). Proceedings of the Workshop on AI for Legislation (AI4Legs 2023) (Prof. Gray, with Jaromir Savelka, Kevin D. Ashley, Hannes Westermann, and Huihui Xu).

Automatic Identification and Empirical Analysis of Legally Relevant Factors, Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law (June 2023) (Profs Gray and Oliver, with Jaromir Savelka, Kevin D. Ashley).

Toward Automatically Identifying Legally Relevant Factors, Proceedings of the 35th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (Dec. 2022) (Profs Gray and Oliver, with Jaromir Savelka, Kevin D. Ashley).

Identifying the Factors of Suspicion, Proceedings of the 33rd International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (Dec. 2020) (Profs Gray and Oliver with Arthur Crivella).

Transformers for Classifying Fourth Amendment Factors and Elements Tests, Proceedings of the 33rd International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (Dec. 2020) (Prof. Oliver with Evan Gretok and David Langerman).

Reducing Subjectivity and Bias in an Officer’s Analysis of Suspicion in Drug Interdiction Stops, Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law (June 2019) (Profs Gray and Oliver, with Arthur Crivella). 

Coding Suspicion, Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (2018) (Profs. Gray and Oliver, with Arthur Crivella and Morgan Gray).

Technology and Access to Justice

The Automated Legal Clinic: Family Division, Appellate Section, 7 Journal of Law and Technology at Texas (forthcoming 2024) (Profs. Norton, Gray, and Oliver).

Accessing Justice in Hybrid Courts: Addressing the Needs of Low-Income Litigants in  Blended in-Person and Virtual Proceedings, 30 Georgetown Journal on Poverty L. & Policy 499 (2023) (Prof. Norton)

Avoiding the Great Divide: Assuring Court Technology Lightens the Load of Low-Income Litigants Post-COVID-19, 88 Tennessee Law Review 771 (2021) (Prof. Norton)

The Middle Ground: A Meaningful Balance Between the Benefits and Limitations of Artificial Intelligence to Assist with the Justice Gap, 75 University of Miami L. Review 190 (2020)  (Prof. Norton)

Mind the Gap: Technology as a Lifeline for Pro Se Child Custody Appeals, 58 Duquesne Law Review 82 (2020) (Prof. Norton)

Technology, Ethics and Policy

Application of Cascade Theory to Online Systems: A Study of Email and Google Cascades, 10 Minnesota Journal of Law, Science and Technology 473 (2009) (Dean Barton)

Norm Origin and Development in Cyberspace: Models of Cybernorm Evolution, 78 Washington University Law Quarterly 59 (2000) (Dean Barton)

Internet Red Light Districts: Domain Name Proposal for Regulatory Zoning of Obscene Content, John Marshall Journal of Computer and Information Law 21 (1997) (Dean Barton)

Technology in Legal Education

Best Practices for Building a High-Tech Law School (ABA 2012) (Dean Barton)

Computer Science and Law

“Automatic Annotation of Factors”, Thirty-Sixth International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands (December 2023) (Prof. Gray)

“Computationally Assessing Reasonable Suspicion in Drug Interdiction Stops,” Conference on Data Science and Law (co-sponsored by Fordham Law School, University of Virginia School of Law, ETH Zurich), New York, NY, July 31, 2023.  (Prof. Oliver)

“Automatic Identification of Factors”, Thirty-Fifth International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany (December 2022) (Prof. Gray)

“The Computational Anatomy of a Drug Interdiction Stop,” Information Society Project, Yale Law School, October 19, 2021.  (Profs. Oliver and Gray)

“Identifying the Factors of Suspicion,” Thirty-Third International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems, Czech Technical University, Prague, Czech Republic, December 2020 (online) (Prof. Gray)

“Transformers for Classification of Bright-Line vs. Totality-of-the-Circumstances Rule in Fourth  Amendment Cases,” Thirty-Third International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems, Czech Technical University, Prague, Czech Republic, December 2020 (online) (Prof. Oliver)

“Reducing Subjectivity and Bias in an Officer’s Analysis of Suspicion in Drug Interdiction Stops,”  Seventeenth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, Montreal, Quebec, June 18, 2019.  (Prof. Oliver)

Technology and Access to Justice

“Clinical Perspectives on Developing AI to Improve Access to Justice,” Georgia State University Law Review Symposium AI & the Law: Practice, Ethics & Access. Atlanta, Georgia (March 22, 2024).  (Profs. Norton and Oliver)

“Collaborating to Bridge the Justice Gap with Legal Technology,” American Bar Association Tech Show, Chicago, IL, February 15, 2024 (Prof. Oliver)

“Intelligent Practice: How Firms & Institutions Are Adapting to Emerging Technologies,” Georgia State University Law Review Symposium AI & the Law: Practice, Ethics & Access. Atlanta, Georgia (March 22, 2024) (Prof. Norton)

“Technology and Pro Bono Appeals: An Allegheny Co. Pilot Program Aims to Bring Greater Access to Pro Se Custody Appeals.” Law in The Family (Podcast), Pennsylvania Bar Association (December 2022) Episode 22 (Prof. Gray)

“Empowering Parties through Artificial Intelligence,” ACT (Autonomy Through Cyberjustice Technologies) International Midterm Conference: Empowering Litigants while Disempowering Abuse, held at the Cyberjustice Lab of the University of Montreal (October 2022) (Prof. Norton)

“Artificial Intelligence as a Path to Closing the Justice Gap,” 2019 Artificial Intelligence and the Law Conference, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Prof. Norton)

“Electronic Civil Gideon,” 2019 Three Rivers Colloquium, University of Pittsburgh, School of Law, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Prof. Norton)

Technology, Ethics and Policy

“How Can We Create an Ethical World with Generative AI? Closing Plenary, Generative AI and the Future of Policy,” Grefenstette Center for Ethics in Science, Technology, and Law (November 2023). (Dean Barton)

“AI & The Future of Democracy: Ethics, Law & Policy,” Thomas R. Kline Center for Judicial Education, (April 10, 2024) (Dean Barton)

Technology in Legal Education

“Python for Lawyers,” Teaching Python (Podcast), July 8, 2024

“Computer Programming in Doctrinal and Clinical Courses,” CALIcon Conference, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington (June 14, 2024) (Profs. Norton and Oliver)

“Introduction to Python for Lawyers,” PyCON US 2024, May 16, 2024 (Profs. Gray and Oliver)

“Writing code with law students”, Talking Legal Ed (Podcast), Linda Jellum, Billie Jo Kaufman, David T. Ritchie (April 2023) (Profs Gray and Oliver).

Law and Computing Concentration

At the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University, our newly developed Law and Computing Concentration harnesses the power of modern computing to improve the legal profession and increase access to justice. Adding to the modern lawyer’s repertoire, we teach programming as a modern lawyer may need to use it. Students learn how to think like computer scientists as well as lawyers. Design thinking will be beneficial to any lawyer and an understanding of how computers work will assist lawyers who will increasingly deal with big data and automated decision-making. This training is also expressly fashioned to enable graduates to enter the rapidly emerging field of legal software design. Students who take four of our technology courses that expressly involve programming qualify for this concentration.

All the computer programming classes in this concentration are aimed at students with no previous coding experience and are offered in the law school, taught by lawyers who learned to code later in life, each of them learning this skill after being admitted to the bar. While the subject matter is challenging, we seek to make it accessible. We find that many of our students are like us – they never thought they would become coders and never realized the potential connections between law and computer science. Many of our students find – as we have – that programming can be incredibly satisfying skills to develop, a skill that can lead to a traditional legal career that focuses on technology, or technology career that focuses on law.

Our efforts in Law and Computing have earned university-wide honors. The instructors of the Coding for Lawyers class were recognized with one of two Creative Teaching Awards given across the entire university in 2023. That same year, integration of coding into the work of our legal clinics led to our clinical director receiving the University’s inaugural Creator-Innovator Award and funding from the American Bar Foundation.


Tech Track JD

In order to prepare students interested in Law and Computing to complete as many technology courses as possible, Duquesne Kline will begin a tech track pilot program in the Fall of 2025, which will allow students interested in developing their computational skills, alongside their legal training, to begin their technology training as they commence with their legal studies.

While we designed our introductory Coding for Lawyers courses for those with no computer science background, it is a pre-requisite for our other law and programming courses.  We therefore offer students an opportunity to integrate computer programming into their study of law starting in their first semester.   Property, which is traditionally a 1L course, is taken in the second year for those on the Tech Track.

First Year Tech Track JD

First Semester Second Semester
Civil Procedure I (3 hours)
Coding for Lawyers (Intro to Python) (3 hours)
Contracts I (3 hours)
Legal Research and Writing I (3 hours)
Torts I (3 hours)
Civil Procedure II (2 hours)
Contracts II (3 hours)
Criminal Law (3 hours)
Legal Research and Writing II (2 hours)
Statistics and Machine Learning for Lawyers (3 hours)
Torts II (2 hours)     

 

Legal Tech and Data Science Competitions

We have provided travel support for students who are interested in national competitions at the intersection of law, data science and computer science every year of the program's existence.  Students have competed in elite competitions, such as the Duke Future Contracts Competition, Georgia Tech Hackalytics 2024, and the Hofstra National Legal Innovation Tournament.  Our students have also placed first at the Brooklyn Law School Center for Urban Entrepreneurship Innovators’ Invitations and the Duquesne University-Wide Data for Making a Difference Hackathon.

Alumni Testimonials

"Because the concentration courses were so different than traditional law classes, it truly helped add a hands-on and engaging component to the curriculum that simply does not appear in other courses, and my education was enriched for it. I would recommend taking one of the introductory curriculum courses to anyone, new or familiar with coding, and further encourage pursuing the Law and Computing Concentration if you find you enjoy that introductory course." - Joe Pisano, L'24

"Personally, I had no background in computer science. It was something I had always wanted to learn more about, and coding for lawyers allowed me to expand my toolbelt while still studying law. I left that course with a strong foundation of how to use and discuss language-based systems like Python." - Ryan McEntire, L'24

"These classes offer a collaborative, encouraging sandbox environment where students can take issues they have learned through law school and make tools that can help better the legal field." - Morgan Barker, L'24

Contact Us

Wesley M. Oliver

Director of the Law and Computing Program and Professor of Law