Electronic Casebooks

Robert Ambrogi has a post over on Legal Blog Watch about a conference at Seattle University School of Law on the digital future of legal casebooks. It seems that the situation in the U.S. is no different from that here: publishers and academics are unclear about what they want in a casebook, though both (some academics, certainly) perceive that electronic casebooks are the way to go.

One upshot appears to be that CALI and Gene Koo will organize a group to build and use an e-casebook on cyberlaw. There is, of course, a certain “rightness” about a course in cyberlaw having a cyberbook; but there’s also the perpetuation of that same simplistic association common in law faculties, whereby an interest in information technology is felt to imply an interest in IP or tech law. What’s wanted is an e-casebook in contracts or the law of mortgages…