Several months ago, we at the Harris County Law Library featured a post on Ex Libris Juris called Coding for Lawyers -- Novelty or Necessity?. It explored the arguments for and against lawyers learning to code, recognizing that some basic skills in practical technology are an asset.
At least one law school is beginning to offer coding classes as part of its curriculum. According to a recent New York Times article, Get With the Programming, Georgetown University Law Center offered a computer programming course last semester on an experimental basis. Demand for the course was overwhelming, and five additional courses were added this spring. The professor who teaches the course, Paul Ohm, recognizes that his law students are not going to become programmers, but, he feels, coding skills will help them to be better lawyers. And the trend seems to be catching on.
A course based on the Georgetown model, will soon be offered at the University of New South Wales. Sponsored by Gilbert + Tobin, an Australian corporate law firm, the new course will help develop lawyers into "techo-legal" practitioners as they "learn about the automation of legal tasks and advice, how to design and build legal information systems, and use technology to generate legal documents and create and code user-facing, law-related apps."
As demand for lawyers with software skills increases, expect to see more law schools -- and perhaps law firms -- offer coding classes in the near future.