Abstract:
This paper discusses the questions of whether law schools should teach law students computer programming within their curricula, and if so, how. Recognising that it is not the objective of law schools to train law graduates to be programmers in the legal or legal technology industry, there remain several benefits for law students to learn computer programming: to have a deeper understanding of how computers function, to be able to read and understand source codes, and to write simple programs to improve workflow productivity. Assuming that the objections and reservations against teaching law students computer programming are overcome, one has to determine what programming language to adopt and the extent of computer science knowledge to impart. Currently the Python programming language is considered a favourite as an introductory programming language, but it is arguable that the R programming language is also a suitable and competent language given its prominence in the data science community. The advantages of using the R programming language are that it is completely open-sourced and available on all modern operating systems, is suitably designed for statistics, data science and visualisation, and has numerous packages for machine learning and deep learning applications. Most importantly, all fundamental programming concepts are implemented in the R programming language, which makes the generic programming knowledge acquired transposable to other programming languages in the future.
Speaker:
Prof. Dennis W. K. Khong, Associate Professor of Law, Faculty of Law, Centre for Law and Technology, Multimedia University, Malaysia
Dennis Khong is an associate professor of law at the Faculty of Law, Multimedia University. He is also the chairperson for the Centre for Law and Technology at his university. His research interests include technology law, lawtech, law and economics, and intellectual property. He sits on the board of the Asian Law and Economics Association, and is a co-editor of the Asian Journal of Law and Economics, and the Asian Journal of Law and Policy. Dennis Khong obtained his Bachelor of Laws (Hons) from the University of Malaya, and his PhD in Economics from the University of Strathclyde, Scotland. He is a lifelong enthusiast of computer programming.