Welcome to Fordham Lawyer’s first-ever tech issue.

Why a tech issue? For one thing, it’s clear that the tech revolution is creating huge opportunities for lawyers. From AI to Instagram, the innovations that have emerged in the past two decades alone have been a powerful engine for growth, opening up new methods of analyzing and communicating, as well as ushering in novel, more efficient ways for attorneys to serve their clients.

At Fordham Law, we’re committed to preparing our students for whatever changes technology brings, whether five years down the line or 25. We equip students with the tools to seize the opportunities, as well as give them the ethical grounding they’ll need to wrestle with the inevitable societal challenges. With courses like Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in the Digital Age and Cybersecurity Law and Policy, as well as symposiums and conferences on such topics as blockchain and artificial intelligence, we make sure that graduates have a firm understanding of the intersection of law and technology. Not every lawyer needs to be able to code, but in the 21st century, all of us need to be able to look under the hood, so to speak, to spot the potential challenges and find the right solutions.

In this issue, we detail many of those challenges, including the battle against identity-stealing bots (“Keeping the Internet Honest”) and how artificial intelligence, far from being fair and objective, can perpetuate age-old frauds and wrongs (“The Long Arm of AI”). Then there’s the question of what it takes to navigate legal terrain that is changing in real time, as explored in our profile of video game industry lawyer Sean Kane ’98 (“From Fordham to Fortnite”).

Another crucial part of the Fordham Law experience, and one that transcends technology: the power of our student-faculty-alumni network. Assistant Deans Nitza Escalera and Tom Schoenherr are two people at the heart of that network; they have been connecting people here at Fordham Law School for a combined 50-plus years. As evidenced in “The Network Effect,” each has played a key role in shaping our community. Dean Escalera retired in December, and Dean Schoenherr retires in May, but their influence will continue to reverberate, as well as their deep concern for students. I want to take this opportunity to thank them for all they have given us. Together, they truly embody what it means to be in the service of others.

Matthew Diller
Dean and Paul Fuller Professor of Law