Law School Program Adds New Technology

Harvard Law School has leapt into high-tech learning this year in a joint venture with Lexis-Nexis, a major legal database company.

The Bridge Project, headed by Warren Professor of American Legal History Morton J. Horwitz '62, gives first-year law students classroom access to cases, graphics and databases from a common computer network.

While Lexis has provided the Law School with free search functions for several years, the Bridge Project would make extensive use of a new interactive Lexis program, Folio, which allows students to display cases on one side of a computer screen and to take notes on the other.

This program is part of the larger goal of completely digitizing the first-year curriculum, so professors can constantly update courses and communicate better with students, Horwitz said in an article in the National Law Review.

The second--and more tentative--phase of the project will be to create an integrated, computer-based curriculum for one-quarter of next year's incoming class, said Professor of Law William W. Fisher.

According to Fisher, all seven professors involved in the project would teach a special computer intensive section, comprised of randomly assigned first-year students.

If this occurs, the program could change the structure of the school's curriculum, currently separated into distinct fields.

"The hope is that this project will partially dissolve those boundaries," Fisher said. He currently teaches a class on property law which makes extensive use of computers.

Law School Students generally expressed indifference to the goals of the Bridge Project.

"It really depends on how you work best," said law student Jane'S. Park. "I'm the type of person who prefers to download and read cases in print form."

Neal A. Potischman, a second year law student, said he was unaware of the Bridge Project.

"Most of our Lexis and Westlaw research is done outside of the classroom," he said

Neal A. Potischman, a second year law student, said he was unaware of the Bridge Project.

"Most of our Lexis and Westlaw research is done outside of the classroom," he said