The view from the back of a law-school classroom provides a good vantage point to see what is on the screens of the sea of laptops perched in front of most students.

Some students are diligently typing notes. Others are engaged in any number of online activities. They may be reading the newspaper, checking Facebook, reading or writing e-mail, or shopping for new shoes. Such distractions are the norm when wireless Internet access is available, as it is in almost every law school in the United States.

The "laptop is-sue," and whether wireless Internet access in the classroom hurts or harms the educational process, has been a hotly debated topic within law schools for the last few years. While individual teachers have been known to ban laptops from class, few schools have gone so far as to completely shut off Internet access.

However, classroom Internet was banned at no less an institution than the University of Chicago Law School last spring. Commenting on his discovery that wireless Internet could be blocked in certain areas of the school but kept in others, University of Chicago Law School Dean Saul Levmore told the National Law Journal, "It was a lot easier when I discovered I had technology on my side."

Levmore's comment may hit the nail on the head regarding this issue, just not in the way he intended.

What is often missing from understandably disgruntled teachers' assessments of student Internet use - no one should be shoe shopping during a lecture - is that the Internet holds the possibility of enhancing the classroom experience, not always detracting from it.

For the modern educational institution, the lesson of evolving technology boils down to what is very often the theme of this space - "if you cant beat 'em, join 'em." Law schools should not stand by and let technology indiscriminately take over, but instead make an effort to understand and utilize new media so that professors can better control how, when and where it infiltrates the legal world.

Although some schools have expressed interest in following the University of Chicago's lead, reverting back to pen and paper does not seem pedagogically prudent, especially when many incoming students have been typing their notes since high school. Therefore, many law schools are instead examining how to make technology a part of the law curriculum.

Librarians leading the way

Despite their stodgy stereotype, at most law schools, it is library staff who lead the way in acknowledging the new world of legal informatics when guiding students' research skills.

University at Buffalo Law School librarian Jim Milles catalogs some of UB Law's many efforts to incorporate new media into the law library as an information center and teaching outlet.

"At UB Law, international law librarian Nina Cascio has been teaching an advanced course on international legal research; the class project requires students to contribute to a wiki on international legal research. Our former head of access services, Susan Dow, recently completed a sabbatical project, producing a series of audio podcasts as a tutorial and guide to the law library. Archives and special collections librarian Karen Spencer has filmed a brief orientation to the library which will be posted on YouTube and displayed on the Law Library's plasma display for incoming first-year students. We are considering producing more videos on other topics which will be distributed via YouTube, Facebook and other online spaces where students already gather."

As for how librarians, many of whom were trained with hard-copy books and journals, choose to incorporate new media into their jobs, Milles says it is a matter of "to each his or her own."

"We all have our individual comfort levels with changing technologies. I keep up by following scores of blogs on law, libraries and technology. I don't try every new tool that comes along, but when I see the same tools being cited often enough, I take that as a signal to try it myself."

"I integrated a wiki as an experiment to create a permanent resource for my students that can be easily updated and expanded," Cascio said of her decision to require students to contribute to a wiki as part of a research course. "This wiki is one that can be edited only by those who are invited, though the world can see it. Each semester, my new students add to and update the work of previous classes. I have also invited my students to continue to add to the wiki even after the class ends, and even after they graduate, if they become aware of new information they feel would be useful to add to the wiki."

She points out that contributing to an online resource naturally leads to discussions about the pros and cons of using the Internet for research.

"When I first introduce the wiki to my students, some express concern that folks finding it on the Internet will rely upon this student-created resource," she says. "I have found that this first-hand concern has been an excellent way to highlight the fact that there are many Web sites on the Internet that can be edited by anyone. This then becomes a springboard for discussing all of the factors to consider when evaluating a Web site to determine whether it is a site that can be trusted or not."

Scholarly citations

It is not just law students who may rely on new-media sources to support legal arguments. They learn from scholarly examples.

Working on a law review has long been considered a highly sought-after student activity. Editing law-review articles demands hours of research to find exact sources to make sure that a citation is properly formatted, fostering a resourcefulness and tolerance for tedious tasks highly valued by firms looking to hire new associates.

But even the citations in the scholarly work of published law professors now include Internet sources. It is a trend the editors of the Buffalo Law Review, which publishes five issues each year containing articles authored primarily by professors of first- and second-tier law schools, have noticed.

"It is safe to say that every article we see contains at least one citation to a Web site, most with many more than that. Also, more and more academics documenting social trends and attitudes will cite to popular Web sites, including Wikipedia, legal blogs or online communities," says Gabrielle Petersen, the current editor in chief of the Buffalo Law Review.

Petersen's observations are no doubt similar to those of every law-review editor in the country. The editors of the Harvard Bluebook, the bible of legal citation format, have recognized the rise of such citations. The Bluebook added a citation format for Web pages more than a decade ago and for blogs within the last few years. Currently, it offers information on how to cite wikis in general and a specific format for citing Wikipedia.

For those lawyers who have memories of their well-tabbed bluebooks from their law-school days, it should also be mentioned that the Bluebook itself became available online for a subscription fee this year.

The shift is on

Law firms should be on notice: The law students who will become associates over the coming years will not research or access information in the same way the current partners do.

The shift will not only be due to cultural changes in home-computer or technology use; the change will also come because legal education is changing.

Ready or not, here they come.

Lawyer and freelance writer Caroline Bala Brancatella is an associate at Jaeckle Fleischmann & Mugel LLP. She can be reached at cbrancatella@jaeckle.com.