Flinders Law Beyond:
Coding the Law

Who should attend?

Members of the legal profession, including practising lawyers, who have an interest in legal technology and are looking to adapt technology into their practices. Mid, senior and top-level professionals working in the ‘access to justice community’ can benefit from this opportunity to learn new skills and engage with fellow industry professionals. Discounts are available, including for former Flinders University alumni.

Course content

Topic 1: Coding

Learn the coding skills required to write your application. Follow examples and work on exercises to hone your coding skills. Learn to code in Docassemble using Python

Topic 2: Project Management

Organise your own project group and decide on your own software project, or be assigned to a software project and a group. It’s up to you.

Prepare a software design document for your application and a project plan for implementing your software project.

Topic 3: Software Development

Implement your project plan, and write your software application. Learn how to package and deploy your software into your own organisation.

Learning outcomes

You’ll walk away with:

• a completed legal software application
• industry-standard coding and web design skills
• greater insight to potential opportunities for transforming your organisation’s processes
• expert feedback on your legal software application to help digitise your business, and the opportunity to engage with industry professionals.

Assessment

The course includes milestone activities which are designed to develop your skills and knowledge in each topic.

Your facilitator will review each milestone activity with you as you progress through the course.

To achieve mastery of the course you must adequately demonstrate completion of all milestone activities as specified in the Topic Guide. Students that demonstrate completion of all milestone activities are eligible to receive a certificate for this course.

Course requirements

During enrolment you will be asked to download and sign a software license agreement. A pro forma copy of the agreement is available for review upon request to the course facilitator.

As your learning will be conducted online, it is recommended that you use a computer with these capabilities:

• access to the Internet
• min 13 inch display 
• 4 GB RAM
• capable of running the current versions of any modern browser, such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Safari
• a webcam and microphone.

“I am a director of Eastern Bridge, an Australian commercial and property law firm. There are 17 in our team. We have long understood that building applications for taking and processing client instructions is essential to getting our job done efficiently. But we also recognise that there is strategic risk in developing the associated intellectual property within third-party commercial platforms. That is why we have enrolled a number of our lawyers in the Coding the Law course at Flinders University to let them achieve university-standard training in the free, open-source Docassemble expert system for guided interviews and document assembly. Mark Ferraretto is a master of the subject and delivers the course in a friendly and encouraging way. Our team members enjoy the course and I commend it to any law firm or law department with a serious interest in broadening the skills of its team members. “

Simon Nunan, Director, Eastern Bridge Lawyers (Victoria, Australia)
May 2021

“The main focus of Coding the Law is building an app for a need in a legal field. We are in different time zones and in legal drafting and editorial services rather than private law practice, but the course structure and resources still meant we could take an element of our day-to-day work relating to gathering and reporting on legislation and create a solution for it. The use of Docassemble for this course offers a way to quickly build a practical app that can be used immediately which is very rewarding. The course addresses skills not just in programming, but design, logic, analysis and project planning. It is a challenging and exciting course. Mark was very supportive and his time, enthusiasm and expertise were great. We enjoyed the course and found it very stimulating and practical and we got both the skills and ideas from it to enable us to look at more projects.”

Kate Hannah, Legislative Consultant, Legislative Drafting Office (Jersey, United Kingdom)
May 2021