Legal Education Through Ict Enabled Teaching Method: Challenges And Issues

Abstract

From a structural aspect, legal education has been a gatekeeper to the rule of law for ages, and it is expected that it would give to the future lawyers, judges, counselors, and legal scientists a deep understanding of how the executive, legislative and judicial system works (Ebenezer, 2022). This educational profession has traditionally been very conservative, retrospective and dogmatic. This is the traditional law school classroom, where students sit and take notes on a passive object, the physical object (Cella, 2011; Fornasier, 2021) and the professor in a position of total control, speaking monologically, and teaching in one direction. The fundamentals of the law, such as using the Socratic method, analyzing case law and carefully editing reporters, treatises and statutory volumes, all focused on face-to-face communication and dialectical argumentation. However, in the socioeconomic world the world has been transformed significantly with the onset of digital age and emergence of systemic technological disruptions. The legal profession is in the midst of a major transformation as society is moving through the fast-paced digitalization and industrialisation, as well as the advent of new data architectures. The practice is digital today, and digital case management systems, e-discovery algorithms, automated document assembly engines, electronic court filing architectures and others are commonplace in today's digital environment (Fornasier, 2021). This establishes a new gap between past (analog law school) and future (hyper-digitized legal marketplace of the present day). The academic institutions are constrained to use Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in their teaching models due to the growing competency gap. In a broad sense, ICT education is a broad convergence of integrated telecommunications, enterprise middleware, computers, and interactive digital software that makes the creation, storage, manipulation and transmission of knowledge possible. In the Indian context, the urgency for this transformation is particularly significant given the sheer scale of the country's legal education system. As of 2024, India has approximately 1,800 law colleges and universities enrolling around 70,000 new law graduates annually, many distributed across geographically dispersed institutions with widely differing resource levels. [1] The Bar Council of India has issued formal circulars directing all Centres of Legal Education to incorporate emerging technology subjects including artificial intelligence, cyber-security, blockchain, and electronic discovery into their curricula, reflecting an official policy recognition of the digitisation imperative in legal training. [2] ICT has various innovations that are put into place, including learning management systems (LMS) like Moodle or Blackboard, intelligent lecture capture systems, virtual mock courts and AI-based adaptive learning systems. While the subject of the use of ICTs in legal education cannot be ignored, there are pedagogical implications which are clear: pedagogical flexibility is unprecedented; the geographical reach of legal education has been extended and realistic professional simulations are offered. But, the shift from analog instruction has severe structural issues. This paper explores systemic problems and underlying issues when attempting to use technology to instruct and educate about the law. It discusses the multiple aspects of the difference, such as pedagogical differences, regulatory barriers, data privacy issues, inequities regarding resources, and the complex ethical dilemmas of AI in the learning context. Ultimately, it can pave the way forward for law schools everywhere. The second part is on the transition from analog pedagogy to learning with ICTs. The second part is dedicated to the transformation of analog pedagogy to learning with ICTs. The use of ICT in legal education is not merely about upgrading the legal classroom, it is about epistemology or re-thinking of legal education, legal knowledge and application. In an analog world, the knowledge of law can sometimes be thought of as a set of rules and precedents in history which could be learned, or memorized. This knowledge can be passed on to the student solely by the professor. At the same time, ICTs-based teaching practices are not only de-centralizing information, but also giving rise to the possibility to build a horizontal and collaborative relationship between teacher and student, rather than a vertical and dogmatic one (Cella, 2011) [1] 'Law School Rankings 2024: Cultivating Market-Ready Lawyers' (BW Legal World, 2024) <https://www.bwlegalworld.com/article/law-school-rankings-2024-cultivating-market-ready-lawyers-527915> accessed 1 September 2026. [2] Press Information Bureau, 'Circular to All Universities and Centres of Legal Education by Bar Council of India to Incorporate Subjects such as Blockchain, Electronic Discovery, Cyber-Security, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Bio-Ethics in Their Curricula' (Government of India, 2024) <https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2040667> accessed 1 September 2026.