Makerspaces are becoming very popular in libraries, and today we talk with two librarians who are ready to bring the collaborative thinking and working spaces into the law school library environment. Ashley Matthews is at George Mason’s Antonin Scalia Law School, and Sharon Bradley is at the University of Georgia School of Law. Both believe there is a great benefit in carving out spaces within the law school library to allow students and faculty the ability to tinker and experiment with their creative sides, and potentially come up with the next big idea in the legal market.
Matthews recently wrote an article on makerspaces entitled “Teaching Students to ‘Tech Like a Lawyer’.” While some of us may see ‘tech like a lawyer’ as a way to stop technology, Matthews and Bradley think that the law school library environment can be the perfect place to teach law students the analytical skills they’ll need in their practice to truly understand how a legal issue can benefit from technology, and how to issue spot, reason, analyze, and resolve legal issues more effectively with technology.
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Information Inspirations
The Dangers of Categorical Thinking
The human mind is build to categorize the things we see and do in the world. It just helps us make sense of the world, whether it’s the fight or flight between seeing a stick and a snake, or the business decisions we make in selecting the perfect candidate out of a pool of ten qualified applicants. We group the hard skills and the soft skills. In this Harvard Business Review article, the authors warns not to be so caught up in the larger categorical picture, and lose sight of the details and nuances that really make the difference in the end.
Four Firms are Moving the Needle on Diversity… and looking for a Fifth
Eversheds Sutherland (US) announced this week that they are joining Goodwin, Orrick, and Stoel Rives in participating in a project called “Move the Needle Fund.” These four firms have committed to meet the goal of having 33% women partners, and increasing the overall representation of racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+, lawyers with disabilities, and veterans to at least 15% of their ranks within five years. The Move the Needle Fund is looking for a fifth law firm to join this group.
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Marlene Gebauer: Okay, here we go. No, we don’t.
[00:00:06] Greg Lambert: One more time.
[00:00:09] Marlene Gebauer: One more time. Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast designed to cover the legal information profession with a slant toward technology and management. I’m Marlene Gebauer.
[00:00:28] Greg Lambert: And I’m Greg Lambert. So this week, Marlene, we are doing the show nearly live, I think.
[00:00:34] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, almost.
[00:00:36] Greg Lambert: Yeah. So in a few minutes, we’ll be talking about a very hot topic in the overall education and library world and how it can be applied to the law library environment. And that hot topic is makerspaces. So Ashley Matthews from George Mason and Sharon Bradley from the University of Georgia are going to tell us all about makerspaces. And I know that I’m very excited to have them here because creativity and curiosity is definitely a theme that we use a lot on this podcast.
[00:01:06] Marlene Gebauer: Yes, this is a real learning opportunity. I’m not sure how many listeners out there know what makerspaces are. And even if you do, this is a great time to unplug from the grid and think about how they can be applied in the legal space.
[00:01:22] Greg Lambert: So before we go any further, Marlene, I wanted to encourage everyone who has not listened to last week’s episode on bias against women in the workplace, make sure you take the time to listen. So Marlene and I have gotten a lot, and I mean a lot of good feedback.
[00:01:38] Marlene Gebauer: All feedback is good.
[00:01:40] Greg Lambert: All feedback is good. So with what Andy and I had to say, if you did listen, share it with a friend or colleague, we’d love to get some more feedback on this important topic.
[00:01:49] Marlene Gebauer: We got a lot of commentary and questions and even requests for a part two to hit on things that we didn’t get to. So I’ll give you a little taste. People were asking, you know, why are men afraid of sexual harassment accusations? Is it because they don’t trust themselves or they don’t trust women? And you know, that that’s a pretty good question, actually. And another listener asked to delve more deeply into racial distinctions in this space, because not all women have the same experience just because they’re women.
[00:02:24] Greg Lambert: Amen.
[00:02:25] Marlene Gebauer: Now it’s time for this week’s information inspirations. Greg, I’m sticking to one inspiration this week since mine is kind of long. So I read an article in HBR about the dangers of categorical thinking. And this was really a neat article. The theme was how minds are categorizing machines.
[00:02:58] Greg Lambert: Yes.
[00:02:58] Marlene Gebauer: What’s brown and sticky?
[00:03:00] Greg Lambert: I don’t know what’s brown and sticky.
[00:03:02] Marlene Gebauer: A stick. It’s my favorite joke in the whole world. But seriously, our minds sort through all of the messy chatter, simplify it and structure it so you can function in the world. But the caution is, and Greg, this goes back to your inspiration about how personality tests create bias. If we compress members of a category as a shortcut, not for any malicious purposes, but to save time and effort, we run the risk of amplifying differences between different categories that might not truly exist. categories that might not truly exist, then discriminating or favoring certain categories over others and fossilizing. How do you like that?
[00:03:46] Greg Lambert: That’s a word. That’s a word. The categorical structure as if it were static. So here’s an example that I liked.
[00:03:54] Marlene Gebauer: Imagine you’re responsible for hiring at your company. You post a job and 20 people apply. You do a first screening ranking candidates in terms of their technical skills and invite the five highest ranked candidates back for an interview. Even though the technical skills vary considerably among the five, you’re not much influenced by that now in deciding who to hire. Once you’ve screened candidates on the basis of technical skill, those who made it to the next stage all seem similar to you on that dimension because they all pass the barrier, right? Right. So affected in this way by categorical thinking, you’ll decide primarily on the basis of the soft skills the candidates demonstrate in the interviews, how personable they are, how effective they communicate, and so on. Those skills are important, of course, but the top requirement for the job was the highest possible technical skills. And the screening effect hampers your ability to pinpoint them. You base the final decision not on the most important factor, but on the other factors.
[00:04:57] Greg Lambert: So the way I took a look at this article and the way it looks like is we do these broad categorizations and put people into these boxes, these categorical boxes, and make decisions on that. And sometimes we forget, one, what is our highest priority? And two, what are the specifics and the nuances that make these candidates in your example the best candidate and not just the best that fit into those two categorizations? Did I understand that? I think you did.
[00:05:30] Marlene Gebauer: Well done.
[00:05:32] Greg Lambert: All right, Marlene, since you stuck to one information inspiration, I will do the same, and probably for the same reason. All right, Marlene, what do the law firms of Evershed Sutherland U.S., Goodwin, Auric, and Stowell Reeves have in common?
[00:05:49] Marlene Gebauer: A stick.
[00:05:51] Greg Lambert: A stick. They are all participating in a project called Move the Needle Fund. So Evershed’s announced it’s joining the Move the Needle this week and stated that through their work with the Move the Needle Fund, Evershed Sutherland will work to meet the goal of increasing the percentage of female partners to 33% and the percentage of diverse partners, including racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+, lawyers with disability, and veterans to 15% by the year 2025. So do those numbers sound a little familiar?
[00:06:32] Marlene Gebauer: They do.
[00:06:33] Greg Lambert: Like the Mansfield rule that we talked about previously?
[00:06:35] Marlene Gebauer: Maybe that’s what they sound like.
[00:06:38] Greg Lambert: Actually, I just found out this week there’s a Mansfield 3.0. I’ll have to dig some more into that. So the Move the Needle Fund is promoted as an experimental laboratory, which incubates new approaches on diversity within law firms over a five-year period. which was launched by Diversity Lab and 26 general counsels to create more inclusivity within the legal market. So I want to go back to a previous information inspiration from the book by Randall Kaiser on American law firms in transition. So Kaiser cites to a Bloomberg Law Big Law Business Diversity and Inclusion Annual Report from 2016, where 30% of attorneys who responded to the question of what do firms do to recognize and reward those working on diversity and inclusion strategies within their firm? 30% of them said they do nothing. Nothing.
[00:07:36] Speaker D: Oh, boy.
[00:07:38] Greg Lambert: I do want to put out some stats here from Kaiser’s research on what the value is, the actual value of having diverse teams are. So diverse teams are seen by clients as being more responsive, and the overall satisfaction rate is significantly higher for clients. Mixed-gender teams significantly outperform single-gender teams, especially in the performance of strength in relationships with those clients. Clients are much more likely to recommend diverse teams to others looking to hire law firms. And having a litigation defense team where they’re both a female and a male decision maker, it reduces settlement errors by 31% versus teams with two male decision makers. That’s significant. That’s a lot. So while a lot of firms see diversity as a moral and an ethical obligation, the statistics actually bear out that diversity is also profitable.
[00:08:39] Marlene Gebauer: So I want to add something because there was a really interesting podcast on Make Me Smart, and it was talking about how the economy isn’t working for women. The whole thing was really interesting and I would encourage everybody to listen to it. But the one point I want to highlight here is that the interviewee was saying that it is actually more effective in some of these diversity programs not to highlight it’s a moral obligation, or it’s the right thing to do, or the differences between people, but to really just highlight the benefits. So something like this where it’s like, hey, we can reduce settlement errors by 31%. That’s the type of thing she was saying that you need to start highlighting because then people say, okay, yeah, that makes sense. They’re more likely to participate in that type of…
[00:09:42] Greg Lambert: Well, you have to make it a culture.
[00:09:45] Marlene Gebauer: They’re more willing to participate in that type of culture.
[00:09:49] Greg Lambert: Yeah. I mean, it’s seen as logical business sense.
[00:09:55] Marlene Gebauer: Right.
[00:09:55] Greg Lambert: Not just a, oh, out of the kindness of my heart.
[00:09:59] Marlene Gebauer: You should do this.
[00:10:00] Greg Lambert: Yeah, because.
[00:10:01] Marlene Gebauer: People will want to do it because it will benefit them.
[00:10:04] Greg Lambert: Well, and I will tell you that, you know, I love saying, well, it’s the American way. When it comes to kindness of your heart versus profit, profit’s almost always going to win. So, well, it’s going to be interesting to track these four firms to see how they meet their five-year goals on diversity and inclusion. They are also looking for a fifth firm to join them. So, if your firm is interested out there, you can go to Move the Needle Fund and find out more information on that. All right, Marlene. And with that, I’m going to jump off the diversity at law firm soapbox for a little while and say that’s a wrap on this week’s Information Inspirations. Marlene, makerspaces are something that I’ve heard a lot about lately from my wife who happens to be a middle school librarian. She is very excited about the creativity and thoughtfulness that these spaces allow young minds to grow. And so, when I saw George Mason Law School librarian Ashley Matthews’ article on this topic, I knew I had to get her on the show to tell us more about how she’s doing this. And she insisted when I talked to her that we also get her colleague from UGA, Sharon Bradley, on the discussion as well.
[00:11:28] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, it was a really good article and I am very, very curious to learn more about this because it sounds like something that can be quite useful in our space.
[00:11:44] Speaker D: We are absolutely delighted to be joined by two very forward- thinking law librarians. We have Ashley Matthews from George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School and Sharon Bradley from the University of Georgia School of Law.
[00:11:56] Marlene Gebauer: Sharon Bradley from the University of Georgia School of Law.
[00:11:59] Speaker D: So welcome to you both.
[00:12:01] Ashley Matthews: Hello.
[00:12:02] Sharon Bradley: Hi, thanks for having us.
[00:12:03] Speaker D: Can you tell us just a little bit about yourselves and how you got into the space? Ashley, let’s start with you.
[00:12:10] Sharon Bradley: Okay, so I graduated from the University of Miami School of Law in 2012. While I was in law school, I mostly worked with legal aid and public interest law work, a lot of immigration, housing, advocacy work, prisoners’ rights. And after law school, I moved into working on student debt policy with Equal Justice Works. And I started working more with law students, which I loved. And I loved it so much that I decided to switch gears and become a law librarian. So this is my very first law librarian job, but I still very vividly remember my entire law school experience, what was lacking, what I wish there was more of. And that’s what sort of led me to keep trying to tinker with legal education and our format and what kind of lawyers we want to produce. So I’m very, very interested in all of that.
[00:13:01] Speaker D: And Sharon, are you new to the law library world as well?
[00:13:06] Ashley Matthews: I’ve just been here a couple days now. I am not going to tell you when I finished law school, but I actually came to law librarianship after practicing law. after practicing law. I’m still admitted to practice in Florida to keep that up, but knew that that’s not how I wanted to spend the rest of my life. So I fortunately lived in Tallahassee, Florida State has a library school, and literally just met someone by accident in a class I was taking at FSU who was working on her PhD in information studies. Being a librarian never even crossed my mind.
[00:13:47] Speaker D: And yet here you are.
[00:13:48] Ashley Matthews: It was, yeah, and it was that chance encounter with that person who to this day is now my BFF and lives in Vancouver. Very accidental coming into librarianship, but obviously I think it suits my personality more than practicing law, which I loved. But it can take its toll on you. But I think it was a good move. You see a lot of unhappy lawyers. You don’t see as many unhappy librarians. They might not be happy with their employer at that moment in time or their salary, but they’re generally happy they made that career choice. And I’m not sure the same is true of lawyers.
[00:14:22] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, I think you’re right about that. I want to direct this question to Ashley. You recently wrote about the very hot topic of makerspaces and libraries, specifically law school libraries. Before we jump into the article, can you give us a little background information on what makerspaces are and how this idea has evolved?
[00:14:43] Sharon Bradley: Sure thing. So makerspaces are sort of a holdover from the public library system. Makerspaces, they’re just a location within a library where patrons can go and collaborate, learn, and explore using different tools. Sometimes these tools can be low-tech. It could be a whiteboard, a laptop, markers, Play-Doh, clay, anything you can think of. Sometimes makerspaces are targeted towards different age groups, so that might decide what type of tools are in there. And other times, it can be very, very high-tech tools inside of a makerspace. You could have 3D scanners, 3D printers, different types of digitization tools. Anything your mind can think of to put in a makerspace, it can go in there. So it’s really just a creative room within a library for patrons to think outside of the box and actually create a product or a service or something that they can take home with them and say, look what I’ve done. It kind of turns a library from sort of a passive learning environment into a very, very active learning environment. So that’s sort of my quick definition of makerspaces.
[00:15:58] Speaker D: Well, Ash, I have just a bit of a confession to make here. Your article, you use the term, in fact, it’s in the title, to tech like a lawyer. And I will tell you, I totally used this in a recent presentation I did for the students at the University of Oklahoma. And I’m going to use it again next week when I talk with some students at Duke Law School. So thanks for that inspiration, for one. But one of the things that we tell our law students is that the law schools are there to help you think like a lawyer. And that you’re supposed to use your analytical skills, your reasoning, to be able to understand the legal issues at hand. Those same skills that you use to analyze the legal issues are the same skills that you can apply to technology issues. By looking at it, understanding the technology, and how it applies to answer the legal issue at hand. So again, thanks, and hopefully we can build on that as we talk a little bit more. Are makerspaces meant to be creative spaces just for the sake of being creative, or can that creative process be directed toward the creativity within, say, the law school curriculum? curriculum environment?
[00:17:16] Sharon Bradley: I think a little bit of both. There might be room to have different sort of freewheeling creativity sessions, almost like brainstorming sessions where students are the drivers, and they can sort of propel themselves forward any way they want. And then there could be more structured workshops that are geared towards the curriculum, towards ensuring that 1Ls have sort of basic skills that they might need. And even just to touch back on what you said, you know, with teching like a lawyer, another thing we have to be mindful of is that a lot of law students these days are digital natives, meaning that they’ve been using technology their entire lives. But we might want them to use it in a little bit of a different way as lawyers. You know, if we give you a laptop, ideally, unless you’re in marketing or communications, you shouldn’t run to Facebook or Instagram first. There are different tools that lawyers use that will be more helpful. So I think it would probably be a combination of both, you know, just to make sure that they’re reining it in. Just like me, a lot of students have a ton of ideas and a ton of different ways that they could see legal services being implemented. But it’s going to take a supervisory attorney or a professor to really root them in reality and practice what could actually work.
[00:18:33] Speaker D: And Sharon, do you have something to add to that? And Sharon, do you have something to add to that?
[00:18:35] Ashley Matthews: I do. And I have to admit, in kind of thinking about this over the last few years, that I’ve really actually tried to focus on the things that I thought were not necessarily the more creative side, because that’s important. But trying to bring out a lot of reasons to have a makerspace, and obviously in an academic institution, we need to have pedagogical reasons to do that. So I know that the presentations that I’ve done, really trying to focus on sort of those kind of things because I felt like that’s how you maybe can sell this to your dean and that sort of thing.
[00:19:12] Speaker D: Still have the politics to play.
[00:19:14] Ashley Matthews: Absolutely, you really do. You don’t want to, while it is creative, if this is something we hope to see happen in the future, we don’t need to make that, at least in my opinion, you know, our lead, right? It’s not necessarily the lead thing that we talk about in having reasons to have maker spaces as well. That said, law school is definitely a process where most of the joy is sucked right out of it.
[00:19:43] Marlene Gebauer: No.
[00:19:44] Ashley Matthews: I hate to break that news to you.
[00:19:50] Marlene Gebauer: You’re not sharing anything with me that I don’t already know.
[00:19:54] Ashley Matthews: So if we can have something like a makerspace or, you know, a hub to maybe bring back a little creativity, a little free thinking, a little joy. One of the things that I’ve mentioned in a presentation is Cory Doctorow wrote a book a few years ago. Oh, I think it’s just called Makerspace. I can’t remember the title now. But he referred to unleashing the inner five-year-old. And I honestly think that we need more of that in legal education, because the students, particularly with doctrinal classes, they can get very lockstep, A to B to C to D. And I think if you can have someplace where there’s a different creative approach, then perhaps they can change their thinking that way as well. And not, you know, they can go from A to Z to B and just maybe expand their analytical skills. And I know I’m putting a lot on the concept of makerspace. But there are learning theories to do back me up.
[00:20:52] Speaker D: We could use a little bit of that in the law firm environment, too.
[00:20:55] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, well, I mean, if you get away from things that you’re doing, and sort of focus on other things, I mean, it’s known that that kind of releases your mind to come up with, with more creative ways to approach things. So we understand. So Sharon, from what I’ve read about makerspaces, and I admit that is not a lot, there’s a communal interest among the participants, which makes a lot of sense. But also, there seems to be some sort of physical activity. And I think Ashley touched on this earlier. So tinkering, playing, manipulating something, and there’s a real product, you know, there’s a real result at the end, not just sort of an idea for one. So how does that apply in a library or a legal environment, either a learning or commercial environment?
[00:21:43] Ashley Matthews: Well, I want to stress that no makerspace is going to look like any other makerspace. I think they’re all very much, I think Ashley touched on that as well, they’re very much about the place where they are. So you will have ones in public libraries that may have sewing machines and soldering irons and things like that. tools that may work in a law setting? The 3D printer, I have joked that I am not ever retiring until I get a 3D printer. I’m not going anywhere till I get one. Because I think you can you have a tool like that that you can use to create evidence, pieces of evidence that the students can use in their mock trials, or to replicate actual pieces of evidence. But then using those things to learn how to introduce evidence in a courtroom setting. Most of our courts still haven’t progressed as far as we thought they were going to 20 years ago. Greg may remember when, you know, the tech courtroom of the future was all the hot thing. And that was about 20 years ago, right? Really hasn’t happened. But I think if we use a makerspace within a law school and a library, could we get accident reconstruction software and get a fancy computer to do that? Can we bring in other things, like the 3D printers, or scanners, or students are still using foam core boards, for gosh sakes. So it’s the kind of thing that I think we can have a space that we can tie it into our trial practice classes, our advocacy classes, and our clinics. Are we teaching them, you know, some of that law firm management stuff they can be doing in the clinics as well? So I think there’s no shortage of ways that this could be tied into what we do.
[00:23:34] Speaker D: I can, I can also give you an example. Marlene and I, early, late last year, were at one of the Lexus facilities, and one of their creative spaces had a 3D printer in there. You can use that as a leverage.
[00:23:50] Ashley Matthews: Lexus can do it, right?
[00:23:51] Marlene Gebauer: Then you can. Ashley, did you have anything that you wanted to add?
[00:23:55] Sharon Bradley: I think that a huge obstacle is how to visualize the law. And on top of that, I think a lot of 1Ls coming in, we take for granted that they know everything that practicing attorneys know. I don’t know if that sentiment is, you know, as prevalent as it was when I was in law school. But I remember my first week thinking, I’m brand new to this. I don’t have any family members who are in the legal field. All of this is a completely new world to me. But there was this expectation that I already knew everything about the inner workings of the law, the inner workings of the government, you know, the branches of government, and there was so much that I had to sort of backtrack and relearn. had to sort of backtrack and relearn. And I think a makerspace could also present an opportunity to have a low pressure environment, where people can go and learn things. I mean, you know, we, you know, Sharon talked a little bit about how, you know, you want to unleash the inner five year old. And that’s absolutely true. I can’t tell you as a reference librarian, how many legislative history questions I get, where it is very apparent that people don’t know how a bill becomes a law. It doesn’t matter if they’re a 3L or if they’re a practicing attorney, we all sort of need those refreshers. So a makerspace could also present an opportunity for people to go and visualize the law, backtrack, talk to each other, like we’re all three years old, and have fun with the law. Let’s take a trip through the halls of Congress. Let’s take the trip, let’s take a trip and see, you know, how a bill becomes a law. And you could take a big whiteboard and draw the whole process out. So there’s, there’s a lot of different things you could do with a makerspace in terms of visualizing the law that we might be overlooking, because we just assume everybody’s brilliant as soon as they enter, you know, the halls of their law school.
[00:25:41] Speaker D: What would be the difference between makerspaces and things we hear like hackerspaces? Is it, is it just the name? Or is it, is it a different type of discussion overall?
[00:25:54] Ashley Matthews: My understanding of the difference is that the makerspace really does focus more on an educational component. And the hackerspace, particularly the coding piece of it, that doesn’t mean that you might not have a makerspace where you do have workshops on coding. That’s something that’s kind of been talked about last few years about lawyers learning to code. But that’s my understanding of the difference when I was preparing for my presentations and things is just kind of the focus.
[00:26:24] Sharon Bradley: I think also, a hackerspace could imply that you already have a finished product. And then you’re going to take that product and turn it into something else. You’re going to take a system and you’re going to flip it inside out, poke around in it. And just like Sharon said, I think that’s completely possible to do in a makerspace. But I think that’s the big difference is that I, you know, a lot of times you might come into a makerspace with the intent to create something new or think about something in a different way.
[00:26:55] Ashley Matthews: Whereas a hacker, a hackerspace or a hackathon or anything like that, you’re already taking a pre existing system. And you’re just poking little holes in it and seeing how you can change it. You know, you could do all of these things in a makerspace. But I think just like Sharon said, that might be primarily the difference.
[00:27:11] Marlene Gebauer: So for both of you, how have you found people responding to participating in a makerspace? You know, what’s the takeaway for both of you?
[00:27:21] Ashley Matthews: Well, we don’t have one here at the law school. The UGA does have a makerspace at the science campus, which is what inspired me to get interested in makerspaces was I went to a program at the makerspace in our science library. So, yeah, so far it’s pretty much, you know, heartbreak and disappointment. It’s a country song in the making. I don’t get to make nothing in my makerspace. That’s a good thing you’re in Georgia. The reaction is people think it’s very cool, but I’m not sure they kind of then see where to go from there. And then of course, well, physically, where are we going to put it? Like most law schools, we are short on space. And then the funding. So when Ashley called, I was thinking, oh, there’s somebody young out there who’s going to carry this on.
[00:28:16] Sharon Bradley: Yeah, for me, you know, I was shocked that there currently is not a law library makerspace in existence. I mean, this was the most shocking thing to me in my research. I thought for sure that I was behind and that this was something that had already been happening. And so I called Sharon and I said, this can’t be true. There has to be a mate. And she says, nope, because, and I think she’s already hit the nail on the head. There are so many hurdles in the way that I think a lot of administrators are fearful of the funding aspect. You know, what exactly are we going to do, the programming aspect of it, do we need more staff? Is it something that’s just going to be another headache for us? So I think, we’re all sort of fighting an uphill battle, which I think is always the case with any innovation in the legal field, it seems. So I also have really strong feelings about it, though. And I think we are at a turning point. And I think in future years, maybe even, you know, sooner than we think, there are going to be maker spaces popping up, but I just don’t think they’re going to be called maker spaces. This could be for a lot of the same reason that Sharon mentioned earlier about, political things and things of that nature. I saw an article where a law school was talking about how they’re going to be starting a tech lab. And it sounded so much like a maker space, you know, what’s in a name? So as long as people are creating these programs and services for students, you know, I don’t mind if it’s not. makerspaces popping up, but I just don’t think they’re going to be called makerspaces. This could be for a lot of the same reason. that Sharon mentioned earlier about, you know, political, you know, political things and things of that nature. I saw an article where a. law school was, you know, talking about how they’re going to be starting a tech lab. And it sounded so much like a makerspace, you know, what’s in a name. So as long as people are creating these programs and services for students, you know, I don’t mind if it’s not called a. makerspace, as long as we do have that space. That’s the most important thing.
[00:29:50] Speaker D: In that case, what I want to do is I’m going to jump ahead here and we’re going to do what I’m going to call the fast round. And that is we’re going to give some schools some ideas on what they could be doing with some makerspace activities. What I want to do is go around the virtual table here and give everyone say five to ten seconds just to come up with some creative activities that you think would work in a law school makerspace environment. And Ashley, since you wrote the article on this, literally, let’s start with you.
[00:30:26] Sharon Bradley: What’s a one or two good ideas that you think could really work in a makerspace for a law school? OK, I feel like I’m cheating a little bit since I did just write the article. But my favorite idea from that article was GIS mapping. Geographic information systems are the wave of the future. And I think if we can learn how to harness that technology, firms and legal aid organizations can do a lot with it. So I think GIS mapping is just my favorite. I would love to see a group of students in a makerspace tooling around with that technology, seeing how they can reach rural clients, seeing, you know, where I mean, just the possibilities are endless. So that would be my favorite thing to do in that space. This is going to get me laughed at.
[00:31:11] Marlene Gebauer: I can’t believe I’m admitting this, but I’d like to see more role play in makerspaces, maybe even with dolls.
[00:31:18] Sharon Bradley: If you don’t want to role play with another person, how to speak with clients from different cultures, clients who may not, who may speak a different language, kind of to teach, you know, cross-cultural competency in makerspaces. That’s very touchy feely, but that’s just the kind of person I am. So I would love to see something like that. But I don’t know that that’s just out of the box, out of who knows if that would ever work.
[00:31:45] Speaker D: I like it. I don’t see anyone laughing. I think that’s a great idea. All right, Sharon, you’re on the clock now.
[00:31:51] Ashley Matthews: Oh, OK. I’d like to see more things of perhaps practice oriented things, learning how to perhaps their own websites, learning more about social media and those kind of aspects as well. I think makerspaces are particularly useful for evidentiary kinds of things of learning how to digitize and deal with photographs, audiovisual stuff. But how can they be changed? You know, if you have something that might have been altered, learning how to recognize that, learning how to create items of evidence so you don’t have to degrade the original and the copy could be passed around. But then authenticating it as a true replica, you know, that’s an evidentiary thing that students have to learn as well. So I think those are really important as well. And I’d love to see this as a practice development, I think, is one of those things you can sell in making a makerspace and all the things that can be used in that scheme and even creating a whole suite of tools and products that the students can use to test out for their own practices as well. So a few ideas.
[00:33:01] Speaker D: Sounds great. All right, Marlene. Now it’s our turn. I’ll let you start.
[00:33:06] Marlene Gebauer: All right. Well, first, I want to add on to Ashley. So she was talking about role playing. So what about like avatars and personas, as part of that idea, when she was talking about, people from different cultures and how to interact. I mean, that just came to head to my head. So I like games and I like teaching through games. So, a couple of things, maybe you could do like, study guides using like a trivial pursuit sort of model. So she was talking about role playing. So what about like avatars and personas, you know, as part of that idea, you know, when she was talking about, you know, people from different cultures and how to interact? I mean, that that just came to head to my head. So I like games and I like teaching through games. So, you know, a couple of things, you know, maybe you could do like a, you know, study guides using like a trivial pursuit sort of model. Or I don’t know if this is even good, but like a Jenga balancing for the legal structure. So statutes and cases and precedent and you basically have to put the right ones on each one in addition without it falling down. Some sort of issue spotting game like those those apps where you have like puzzle games and trying to find, you know, the different issues that way. Then, you know, maybe I don’t know.
[00:34:05] Speaker D: I may have to cut you off there because otherwise you’re going to take all the.
[00:34:08] Marlene Gebauer: All right. All right. All right. You go ahead. You go ahead.
[00:34:11] Ashley Matthews: Could I add one thing to what you mentioned, the games. And I didn’t know if she meant sort of playing the games within the maker space or using it to actually have the students create the games.
[00:34:23] Marlene Gebauer: I think you could do both.
[00:34:24] Ashley Matthews: Right. Because creating the games would be the lesson itself.
[00:34:29] Marlene Gebauer: But you could create something that is actually marketable. Right. Yeah.
[00:34:33] Speaker D: And the one that I thought of and it kind of got the idea because if you’re on one of the law library listservs, a friend of mine, Mary Matusak, who’s in New York, loves posting errors that she finds on Westlaw or Lexis or other online tools. And I was thinking it’d be great to have just like a list of flashcards of go to this case and see if you can find the, you know, the error in this, you know, within this paragraph on this page, you know, just kind of give them something to look at some real world examples of things, because there’s actually a Reddit site for law students. And one of the number one gripes is citations is creating citations.
[00:35:20] Marlene Gebauer: That’s nothing new.
[00:35:22] Speaker D: The blue book never dies. Yeah. And so I think sometimes giving people examples of things that are wrong and understanding why it’s wrong is better than, yeah, better than trying to have them create something, following a set of rules and not understanding how those rules apply and what happens when things go awry on those.
[00:35:45] Marlene Gebauer: So I think we’ve got some some great ideas here. I had one. I have one more. And this, this was
[00:35:50] Speaker D: Of course you do.
[00:35:52] Marlene Gebauer: Overachiever. So this was this was for the librarians. This is for the law librarians, not for the, not for the students, but basically having some sort of 3D software that helps you design different displays for the library. See, see, everybody liked that, Greg.
[00:36:12] Speaker D: Yeah, thank you. So I think that we’ve had a lot of good ideas here. And I think that there’s a lot of just just in the quick little round robin that we did a number of things that have practical application to how law students can can become better thinkers when it comes to the art of being a lawyer. So it’s, as they say, it’s, it’s why they they call it practicing law because you’re always learning as you go. So
[00:36:41] Marlene Gebauer: Well, I mean, is, is there anything that either one of you would like to close out with in terms of, you know, advice for anybody who wants to to get started doing something like this.
[00:36:52] Sharon Bradley: Well, I’ll go first because I think Sharon should have the last word. I just think that going into it with an open mind, but also understanding that it might be an uphill battle to get it accepted. Um, you know, I think having that mindset and being ready for it is the best thing to do. And this is what I’m doing because I’m never going to stop proposing this idea, you know, wherever I work. And so I think having that type of tenacity. It’s going to be a very helpful because, you know, if I just if they say no. The first time and I give up, then where’s the idea going to go. But if I continue fleshing it out. If I continue like Sharon said, going into it with an open mind. If I continue like coming up with pedagogical reasons to have this space in the law library. There’s no way they can turn it down forever. So I’m just going to keep being annoying.
[00:37:47] Speaker D: Keep it up.
[00:37:49] Marlene Gebauer: Tenacious, tenacious.
[00:37:51] Ashley Matthews: No, and I actually, I think I have a unique phrase for that concept. I’m going to call it prescient advocate advocating for something before it becomes the thing.
[00:38:02] Marlene Gebauer: Nice. So you’re an influencer is what you are.
[00:38:08] Ashley Matthews: I’d also like to throw in that perhaps finding a champion amongst the faculty, as we know, a lot of these things if we can get faculty support for it. Then it can happen. So perhaps finding a champion within our relative faculties to help us shepherd this thing through as well could be important.
[00:38:28] Speaker D: Ashley and Sharon, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us today. This has been great.
[00:38:33] Marlene Gebauer: Yes, thank you very much.
[00:38:35] Ashley Matthews: Yeah, thank you so much for having us. Thank you.
[00:38:42] Marlene Gebauer: Well, Greg, I thought that was really interesting in our discussion with Sharon and Ashley. And I like at the end where, you know, Sharon is essentially talking about being an influencer, you know, basically being the person who’s pushing something before it becomes something. So I think that’s a very modern concept and people should definitely, definitely do that. I also like the discussion about let’s be five again, because I do think the stress and just kind of the drudgery that can sometimes be part of the law school experience. It’s just good to take a break from that. Yeah, and, you know, maybe just come up with sort of different approaches that, you know, are a little more lighthearted, a little more fun.
[00:39:29] Speaker D: Yeah, and sometimes you got to take a different approach. You’re just on all the time when you’re in law school. Yeah. And you need you need a space to go to that can still help you understand what you’re being taught, but in a different way, in a way that allows you to not just be sitting in a chair, soaking things in, but rather standing up and moving around and touching things, moving things around and and doing some activity. I think there’s a lot. Of opportunity in makerspaces and not just in the law school environment, but also in the law, the law firm environment as well. I can think, well, just just think of the war rooms that we have, that we set things up. You know, we do things like, you know, a lot of pretrial techniques and some of those pretrial techniques might be something especially for newer associates that we do these role playing things.
[00:40:27] Marlene Gebauer: You know, let’s let’s bring out the dolls and I thought about that, you know, with the avatars and the, you know, the personas and, you know, virtual reality where you could basically do this type of practice, you know, how to take a deposition, how to argue in court of all of all of those things.
[00:40:45] Speaker D: Well, I think if anyone can make this happen, I think Ashley and Sharon are going to be able to yes, that they are very passionate about it.
[00:40:52] Marlene Gebauer: So good luck to them. Listeners, please take the time to subscribe on Apple podcasts Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts read and review us as well. If you have comments about today’s show or suggestions for a future show, you can reach us on Twitter at a gay Bauer em or at Glambert or you can call the Geek and Review hotline at 713-487-7270 or email us at Geek and Review podcast. That’s a mouthful at gmail.com. And as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David to Sika. Thank you, Jerry.
[00:41:29] Speaker D: Thanks, Jerry. All right. Thanks, Marlene. I’ll talk to you later.
[00:41:32] Marlene Gebauer: Bye bye.
[00:41:55] Speaker G: Devils back home. Devils back home.