Digital psychology has affected human behavior, including in the educational sector. The advancement in digital exposure opens the possibility of learning in online-based systems. For years, this new shift has been considered to bring more advantages for people. Recently, this way of learning has been adopted by law schools as an impact of the pandemic in Indonesia. Forecasting the benefits of this digitalized education mechanism, this change is expected to last after the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only does offering help, but the change also raises some challenges and opportunities, including the potential markets for the higher education business, particularly law schools. This chapter analyzes challenges and opportunities to show how the digital world impacts legal education, its current development, and its future projection in Indonesia. This analysis applies qualitative methods supported by secondary data and information.
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The world's future is changing due to the advancement in technology which has affected almost every area of people's life. The advances impact people's communication and collaboration, taking into account the changes in the learning and teaching system. This world is undeniably becoming more digital, including the education sector. The increased access to internet connection is lessening the barrier of distance and location for higher education seekers (Oriji & Torunarigha, 2020). Online education has increased the rate of the previously disadvantaged populations to take part in higher education, such as students from rural areas and communities, as well as members of professional workers, including military staff (Kohnt, 2020).
Since we adapt to the growth of technology, the lines between education and work capacity are somewhat blurred. Digital psychology and mindset provide chances for education and training to be readjusted to an individual’s career. Not limited to the learning materials and education approaches, the market for digitized education is at the next level. By 2018, more than a million students were enrolled in online graduate programs, and nearly one-third of students in higher education institutions had taken online courses (Seaman et al., 2018). This shows a chance for a transformative mindset in institutions of higher education, including Law School.
Legal education has traditionally relied on teaching the evolution of case law. Historically, legal education was broad and unspecified, creating lawyers licensed to practice in a more significant number of areas. However, following the change in the digital mindset, legal practice has rapidly changed, particularly in specific areas such as intellectual property and technology matters. Thus, it shows a chance for a transformative mindset in higher education institutions, including Law School. In the US alone, thirty-nine out of its fifty states required their lawyers to understand the advantages and disadvantages in the technology use (the American Bar Association, 2020). It now requires lawyers to adapt to the needs of changing markets, with well-trained lawyers in technology. That is the result of the digitization of law. Previously, a lawyer used to spend two months reviewing thousands of pages of documents, calculating six days per week and ten hours per day. The digitized literatures and systems help lawyers to shorten the time required (McGinnis & Pearce, 2014).
It is such a digital psychology influence on legal data and information. It changes the pictures of legal knowledge from normative sources to quantitative models represented from the existence of the histograms, tree diagrams and other types of charts in the legal studies and writings (De Oliveira Fornasier, 2021). The issue of how to use technology to teach law has been a minor preoccupation of the legal academia for many years (Lewin, 2012). Given the numerous obstacles law schools face, this situation is genuinely worrying. On the other hand, many law schools neglect context and continue to teach law conventionally, resulting in a widening gap between legal education and legal practice. The immediate impact is declining job prospects for graduates. In this context, technology presents a compelling opportunity to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of legal education—the content of legal education and the system in providing education and its business procedures. Like the pocketed MBA courses, the current legal education considers the “pocketed” legal education program run on a digital platform that helps lawyers -lawyers or non-lawyers- obtain specified skills in the legal field. It is such a digital psychology influence on legal data and information. This is due to the fact that the today education needs to reform its focuses, to become more visionary and based on skills, not on content alone (Mark Fenwick, Wulf A. Kaal, 2018). It depicts the democratization of legal education for a modern market and the effective functioning of society.