Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law

Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law at Fordham Law

Rapidly evolving technology has fundamentally changed the world in which today’s law students will launch their careers, and the legal profession is changing along with it. To be ready, lawyers need to solve challenges and problems with new tools and apply established law in innovative ways.

Tom Norton ’16 JD, executive director of Fordham’s Center on Law and Information Policy, says, “The rapid development of technology constantly pushes the limits of existing legal frameworks. There’s a persistent, urgent need to craft law and policy that accommodates technological advancement while ensuring a free and fair society.” Fordham students will be up for the challenge, with courses on AI and blockchain as well as hands-on opportunities in CLIP’s fellowship program for 1L students.

The fellowship gives students such as Meredith O’Connor ’28 JD (above) the opportunity to gain expertise in the rapidly growing fields of information and technology law, as well as to meet and network with professionals in the field, Fordham faculty, and other like-minded students.

As a CLIP fellow, O’Connor is conducting research into the intersection of AI and student creativity. The work builds on her past work and research on mental health, neurodiversity, and education.

O’Connor says she is fascinated by the correlation between at-risk youth populations with ADHD and strengths such as creativity, adaptability, and abstract judgment. Her curiosity, along with the experience of founding a mental health practice before enrolling at Fordham, led her to more questions about neurodiversity and standardized testing.

“Students who show the most creative potential and original thinking are often undetected due to the weight traditional K-12 assessment places on domains increasingly automated, such as execution,” O’Connor says. “This pattern led me to ask a bigger question in my fellowship at CLIP: whether the systems we use to identify talent, from K-12 assessments all the way through the pipelines they shape, are actually calibrated to surface the capacities that matter most in an economy where AI automates routine cognitive tasks.”

Ultimately, O’Connor hopes her research at Fordham Law will make an impact by contributing real-world solutions for navigating the implementation and disruptions of technology in education.