It's been a year of disruption on a scale no one could have predicted.

Across the world, elections, coronavirus and geopolitical uncertainy all contributed to a year that will define a generation.

Throughout all this disruption, the need for effective technological solutions has never been more clear.

Student Bytes was born in March this year with the mission of making the intersection between law and technology more accessible to students and recent graduates. Echoing the Society for Computers and Law (SCL)'s core message "tech law for everyone", in 2021, we want to make our content even more digestible for all levels of prior knowledge.

This is why we thought it would be great to share our roadmap for early 2021. We plan on continuting to offer a platform to educate the next generation of lawyers on the world of Technology Law & Policy and LawTech.

Furthermore, in Janaury, we plan on advertising three new roles in the core team. Keep an eye on our website and socials for when these go live. This recruitment round reflects a new team structure with the formation of an external engagement function to be led by Cecila, currently Marketing & Communications Manager. You can find everyone's new titles on our about page.

Technology Law & Policy

The goal of our TechLaw stream is to make technology law easy to understand and interesting for law students, whether they are at the early stages of their degree, or recent graduates. We are so thankful for the hard work of all of our student contributors, who helped us to deliver top quality content on areas from self-driving cars and AI, to global responses to COVID-19, and more. We are also looking forward to the articles to come in 2021, whether from returning contributors, new contributors, or from our Senior Contributor, Aybike Ceren Kahveci.

We have a lot of big plans for 2021, and with the current state of the world, now more than ever there is a focus on technology and law and how these areas impact our lives. We are excited to dive into these concepts in our articles, our YouTube channel, and our Learn series.

Over the past few months we have also taken note of what you, our audience, are interested in. Going forward, we will continue to update you on the most relevant TechLaw concepts in our record-breaking student TechLaw Podcast, Making Sense of Tech Law.

We also understand that lately it has been increasingly difficult to stay on top of news updates, coursework, and applications. To make your life easier, a main focus of our 2021 plan is to bring you Byte-sized content, in the form of our Under 5 Minute articles. We are also going to help you prepare for interview-style topics about TechLaw, in our upcoming podcast series that focuses on short, snappy, answers to the questions you need to know!

LawTech

2021 will see the LawTech stream evolve to become even more accessible. Our aim is to make the concept of legal technology easy to understand for students and to help students understand how it is changing the way work is being done at law firms, big companies or in the bar. Our main way of achieving this is through short Industry Insiders podcasts providing insight into the life and work of leading professionals in law firms or legal technology companies and through accessible articles on key legal tech issues.

Industry Insiders will be making a return for the final series of the current iteration of the format over the next two months and we have plans to launch a new podcast series that will be comprised of shorter episodes that are more digestible. Some of the upcoming interviews in the months of January and February include insights from Slaughter and May, Addleshaw Goddard, the Legal Technologist, StructureFlow, Simmons Wavelength and many more!

Stay tuned for our upcoming articles and podcasts! There are also plans in place to host a panel event related to Legal Tech with leading professionals from the field.

Events

We're recruiting a dedicated Events & Partnerships Manager with a view to run two events in Q1 next year.

Contributors

We continute to welcome new and returning contributors to the site. In particular, we would be interested in hearing from those with article ideas that cover the following:

  • Online harms regulation; the Government's Online Harms White Paper; comparative law perspectives on social media regulation.
  • LawTech: the Establishment of Law Firm Innovation Teams.
  • LawTech: the Productization of Legal Services by Law Firm Innovation Teams.
  • The Digital Services Act; regulating the digital economy.
  • Competition; antitrust action against Facebook; breaking up BigTech.
  • LawTech: comparison of Legal Tech activity and market size in the UK and the US.
  • LawTech: exploration of a particular area of LawTech that is of interest to you, e.g. Document Automation, Case Management, Compliance.
  • Should we teach LegalTech on the LLB; what technology skills do junior lawyers need; LegalTech projects spun out of universities.
  • Applying Data Science to law; structuring legal documents; rethinking contracts.
  • A comparative analysis of where LawTech is at on a global scale.
  • Diversity issues in technology companies and how the law might help address them.

If you're interested, please complete our contributor form.

To all our readers, have an enjoyable winter holiday period and New Year.

We'll see you in 2021

Andrew, Bryher, Cecilia, Chris, Conor, Pantelis, Sophia and Stacy.

The SCL Student Bytes Team