Tech law seminar on climate engineering

Key links

1. Tech law syllabus

Class 01 (Law and technology)

1. Read our syllabus.
2. By Wednesday at noon eastern: Create a list of 100 potential future technologies. If you rely on any sources, follow the attribution policy for this course.
   1. Ensure your document complies with the course instructions for assignments, name the file "Class01 TechnologyList.pdf", and upload it here using your USC credentials.
   2. Bring a printed copy to class.
3. Read Law and Technology.
4. Browse the website for TechInLaw: The Technology, Innovation, and Law Collaborative.
5. We will use this link in class.

TechInLaw symposium

1. Attend the TechInLaw symposium on January 12th from 8:30am to 4:30pm.
2. If you cannot attend the day's events in person, contact Dean Gary Moore prior to January 12th to make alternate arrangements for viewing and documenting your engagement with the symposium.

Class 02 (Problem-solving overview)

1. Reflect on how you solve problems. Then, create a flow chart showing your problem-solving process. Save your document as a PDF, name it "Class02 Flowchart.pdf", and upload it here using your UofSC credentials.
2. Read Peace Corps Theory of Change Model.
3. Read John Gilmore et al., Four Reasons Lawyers Fail to be Viewed as Strategic Advisors.
4. Read Ben W. Heineman, Jr., William F. Lee, and David B. Wilkins, Lawyers as Professionals and as Citizens: Key Roles and Responsibilities in the 21st Century (pages 9 to 16 only).
5. Read Questions for the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy.
6. Create a vignette for class: Prepare a talk that, in no more than 60 seconds, presents an issue to your colleagues. The issue can be a topic, a challenge, or an opportunity. For example, "Covid-19" is a topic, "South Carolina's vaccine rate is too low" is a challenge, and "Can we use what we've learned during the pandemic to reduce the impact of other diseases such as the flu?" is an opportunity. The issue does not need to be legal in nature (although it can be). It does need to be understandable and otherwise accessible to your colleagues -- and your talk should provide the information necessary for your colleagues to meaningfully analyze it. You should also be prepared to answer any questions your colleagues pose about the issue.
7. Read the entire semester schedule on this webpage. As you can see, we will be working toward a "best solution" focused on one aspect of our larger topic.
8. Our topic last year was generative AI. Read your predecessors' deliverables under "Past Deliverables" on our course's Blackboard site. Did your predecessors succeed? What questions would you ask them?
9. Document your course-relevant inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts up to class two (including the symposium).

Class 03 (Topic overview)

1. Re-read Law and Technology.
2. This semester we will use a structured problem-solving model to explore the implications of deliberate climate engineering. This model will involve researching this topic, brainstorming challenges and opportunities, framing an underlying problem, brainstorming solutions, selecting and developing a best solution, and creating outputs with a view toward outcomes and impacts. ​Your charge is not to solve or even describe this entire topic but rather to make an original, credible, and meaningful contribution to an important dimension. Each step will require substantial research and reflection to combine knowledge, insights, and skills from inside and outside the law. In particular, many but not all of the frameworks, tools, impediments, risks, opportunities, issues, arguments, and strategies that you ultimate identify will involve law.
3. Reread the prior paragraph. It's especially important. What's the relationship between (1) your best solution and (2) your final deliverable?
4. Perform initial research to help you begin to scope and understand the topic of climate engineering.
5. Read Jon Gertner, Can $500 Million Save This Glacier?, N.Y. Times (2024). As a law student, you are able to access New York Times articles without cost. If you believe otherwise, consult our librarians.
6. This week's class session will be entirely yours to interview me. This interview should help you understand the fundamental aspects of, research directions in, and potential next steps for our topic. You can ask questions about our specific course topic, other subjects that are useful in your exploration of this topic, and my expectations for the course.
7. Consider how our logic model can help you prepare for this interview:
   1. Impacts: In the class sessions that follow, you will more effectively problem-solve our specific topic of climate engineering.
   2. Outcomes (to enable the impacts): You and your colleagues will understand more about climate engineering.
   3. Outputs (to enable the outcomes): You will obtain clear answers from me that connect my knowledge to climate engineering.
   4. Activities (to enable the outputs): You will ask initial and follow-up questions that are designed to solicit clear and relevant answers.
   5. Inputs (to enable the activities): You will have conducted the research (into our topic and into me) necessary to formulate effective questions.
8. By Tuesday at 8pm eastern: Prepare an initial research strategy memo that sketches both a classwide research strategy and an individual research strategy.
   1. What are key procedural questions? What are key substantive questions? What subtopics seem especially important or interesting? What information, both in and outside law, would help to better identify problems and, eventually, solutions? What kinds of resources might help to produce that information?
   2. You may prepare this memo individually or in a group of your choice.
   3. Although I am far more interested in quality than quantity, I suggest about three succinct single-spaced pages per person in either prose or outline form.
   4. Ensure your document complies with the course instructions for assignments, name the file "Class03 StrategyMemo.pdf", and upload it here using your USC credentials.
9. Document your course-relevant inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts up to class three.

Class 04 (Preliminary research)

1. Reflect on our class discussion, and record key notes and observations.
2. Update the document that you prepared for class three based on your reflection.
3. Review, and if you would like update, the subject you identified in class.
4. Review the other subjects in the document. If your subject potentially overlaps with a colleague's subject, ensure that you have coordinated with them either by collaborating or by delineating the subjects so you do not duplicate information. You can contact your colleagues through Outlook or Blackboard.
5. Research your subject using credible sources.
6. Create a concise outline that helpfully summarizes the results of your research into your subject. Your outline must include citations and be no more than one single-spaced page. Remember our discussion of essential versus extraneous detail. Acceptable outlines will make a meaningful contribution to our understanding of our course topic.
7. By Monday at 5pm eastern: Ensure your document complies with the course instructions for assignments, name the file "Class04 SubjectSummary.pdf", and upload it here using your USC credentials.
8. Read all of the outlines, identify connections and gaps, and prepare questions for discussion. You will not present your subject in class; rather, you will answer your classmates' questions. This will require you to know more about your subject than you have shared in your outline.
9. Document your course-relevant inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts up to class four.

Class 05 (General challenges)

1. Share your memo from last week with your classmates.
2. Continue your research:
   1. Research the subject you identified in class using appropriate sources.
   2. Create another concise outline that helpfully summarizes the results of your research.
      1. Your outline must include citations and be no more than two single-spaced pages.
      2. Remember our discussion of essential versus extraneous detail.
      3. Acceptable outlines will make a meaningful contribution to our understanding by synthesizing information rather than just collating it and by relating that information back to your specific subject and to our general course topic.
   3. By Monday at 10am eastern: Ensure your document complies with the course instructions for assignments, name the file "Class05 SubjectSummary.pdf", and upload it here using your USC credentials. Then share it with your classmates.
3. Individually brainstorm challenges related to our course topic.
   1. Spend at least one hour brainstorming so that you generate numerous challenges.
   2. Think creatively! Consider both the obvious and the bold.
   3. The focus of your brainstorming should be challenges that do not involve specific legal issues. However, keep track of potential legal issues that arise in the course of your brainstorming.
   4. Write each challenge in the form of a complete sentence.
   5. Organize your list only after you have completed most of your brainstorming.
   6. By Wednesday at 1pm eastern: Ensure your document complies with the course instructions for assignments, name the file "Class05 GeneralChallenges.pdf", and upload it here using your USC credentials.
   7. Bring a printed copy of your list to class.
4. Read all of the subject summaries.
5. Read Hal Gregersen, Better Brainstorming.
6. Read Art Markman, Your Team Is Brainstorming All Wrong.
7. Continue documenting your course-relevant inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts in and outside class.

Class 06 (Legal challenges)

1. Add your team's list of general challenges to this document.
2. Continue researching our topic.
3. Individually brainstorm legal challenges related to our course topic:
   1. You should identify some challenges through broad legal issue-spotting.
   2. You should then identify other challenges by focusing on one specific subject that would benefit from targeted legal research.
   3. As part of this targeted research, write a one-page memo to your colleagues connecting your research to the set of potential challenges that it illuminated.
   4. By Wednesday at 1pm eastern: Ensure your document complies with the course instructions for assignments, name the file "Class06 LegalResearch.pdf", upload it here using your USC credentials, and then share it with your classmates.
   5. Write each challenge in the form of a complete sentence.
   6. Organize your list only after you have completed most of your brainstorming.
   7. By Wednesday at 1pm eastern: Ensure your document complies with the course instructions for assignments, name the file "Class06 LegalChallenges.pdf", and upload it here using your USC credentials.
   8. Bring your list to class.
   9. If you think of additional non-legal challenges in the course of your brainstorming or research, add them to the document your teams created in class last week.
   10. This list of legal areas may help you expand your subsequent in-class brainstorming.
   11. Read our collective list of challenges to date.
4. Continue documenting your course-relevant inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts in and outside class.
   1. This should include your contributions as well as the contributions of your team and your teammates during class five.
   2. Note, for example, how the challenges you brainstormed in preparation for class five were both an individual output and a team input.

Class 07 (Underlying problem)

1. Ensure your team has added its list of legal challenges to our shared folder.
2. Read the general and legal research memos.
3. Read the general and legal challenges.
4. Review our course topic.
5. Reflect!
6. Continue researching our course topic.
7. Read Thaisa Fernandes, "Learn About the "How Might We" Framework."
8. Reflect!
9. Carefully construct three compelling "How Might We" ("HMW") questions that each capture an essential element of our course topic. (To reach three compelling questions, you will likely need to generate many more initial HMW questions that you then broaden, narrow, combine, refine, or set aside.) Be prepared to explain why your three HMW questions are the most important. Save your three HMW questions as a PDF, name it "Class07 HMWQuestions.pdf", and upload it here using your USC credentials.
10. Continue documenting your course-relevant inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts in and outside class.
11. In class: Develop and carefully formulate three HMW questions. Add them to our shared folder using your UofSC credentials.

Class 08 (Targeted research)

1. Review Thaisa Fernandes, Learn About the "How Might We" Framework.
2. Optional: Collectively refine your HMW question so that it is focused on our course topic, scoped appropriately, conducive to generating creative and legally relevant solutions, and written clearly and concisely. As always, you are welcome to reach out to me individually or collectively.
3. Collectively identify and assign key subjects to research in order to eventually brainstorm potential solutions.
4. Research your assigned subject and prepare a memo for your colleagues that synthesizes and analyzes your findings.
5. Ensure your document complies with the course instructions for assignments, name the file "Class08 ResearchMemo.pdf", and upload it here using your USC credentials.
6. Bring your memo to class (where you will have the opportunity to read, discuss, and present your teammates' memos).
7. Continue documenting your course-relevant inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts in and outside class.

Class 09 (Solutions)

1. Continue your research.
2. Individually brainstorm solutions to your HMW question.
   1. Spend at least four hours brainstorming.
   2. Consider solutions directly related to law, indirectly related to law, and unrelated to law.
   3. Think creatively! Consider both the obvious and the bold.
   4. Write each solution as a complete sentence: Who will do what how?
   5. Your brainstorming should generate scores of potential solutions.
   6. Organize your list only after you have completed most of your brainstorming.
   7. By Wednesday at 1pm eastern: Ensure your document complies with the course instructions for assignments, name the file "Class09 Solutions.pdf", and upload it here using your USC credentials.
   8. Bring your list to class.
3. Continue documenting your course-relevant inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts in and outside class.

Class 10 (Criteria)

1. Continue your research.
2. Continue brainstorming solutions -- both individually and with your teammates. You may collaborate synchronously or asynchronously.
3. Ensure that each solution you and your teammates have generated over the last few weeks actually addresses your underlying problem (i.e., your HMW statement).
4. Phrase each solution as a full sentence (subject plus verb plus object) that provides enough information (e.g., who, what, where, when, why, how...) to be understood and evaluated by an outside observer. Who does what how?
5. By Tuesday at 6pm eastern: Add your HMW statement and all your solutions to this document.
6. By the start of class, read all the solutions and individually highlight the three solutions you consider the most creative in yellow, the three solutions you consider the most interesting in green, and the three solutions that you find the most attractive in blue.
7. Think about how -- both procedurally and substantively -- you would evaluate solutions. In other words, how would you go about evaluating them? And what would matter in your evaluation? Bring your thoughts to class.
8. Continue documenting your course-relevant inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts in and outside class.

Class 11 (Best solution)

1. By this Friday at 5pm eastern: Send me an email with (1) your best solution in one complete sentence and (2) the names of the colleagues (if any) you will work with to develop this solution.
2. Develop your best solution by exploring and then elaborating the who, what, where, when, why, and how with a particular view toward law. Legal aspects might include legal frameworks, tools, procedures, constraints, conditions, opportunities, challenges, implications, arguments, and alternatives and involve legal substance, legal process, fact, policy, and practicality.
3. By this Tuesday at 5pm eastern:
   1. Develop a clear, careful, and legally grounded explanation of your best solution. At this stage, you may outline your approach and emphasize the questions you still need to answer. Your explanation should be no more than two single-spaced pages (or the equivalent in some other format).
   2. Ensure your document complies with the course instructions for assignments, name the file "Class11 Solution.pdf", and upload it here using your USC credentials.
   3. Post your document in our shared folder so that your colleagues can also access your work.
4. Carefully review the explanations of all the best solutions. Be prepared to workshop these solutions by questioning, critiquing, issue-spotting, buttressing, developing, extending, refining, and applying them.
5. During class on Wednesday:
   1. Individually pitch your best solution in one minute. Your pitch should be clear, careful, and compelling: Plan every word from your first to your last. Create this pitch on your own, even if you are working with others on developing this solution.
   2. Collectively facilitate a classwide discussion of your team's solution.
   3. Actively participate in the discussions of the other solutions.
6. Continue documenting your course-relevant inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts in and outside class.

Class 12 (Best solution)

1. Make sure you understand the deadlines for class 13 below. Satisfactorily meeting these deadlines requires starting now.
2. This week's class session is yours to use as you see fit. I strongly suggest using part of this time to meet with me, and I therefore suggest contacting me in advance to make a specific appointment for you and your team.
3. Continue documenting your course-relevant inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts in and outside class.

Class 13 (Next steps)

1. Work with your team (if you have one) to document your best solution. In form and substance, this output should be calibrated to facilitate an outcome that could produce your desired impact -- if it were to be shared publicly. (I do not expect you to actually share your output publicly, and if you are inclined to do so I encourage you to speak with me first.)
2. By Friday, April 5th at 5pm eastern:
   1. Ensure your document complies with the course instructions for assignments, name the file "Class13 BestSolution.pdf", and upload it here using your USC credentials. Even if you work with others, each person must individually upload this document. If your output is in a form that cannot be effectively captured (or linked to) in a PDF, contact me directly by this deadline.
   2. Share this document directly with your colleagues.
3. Analyze a legal issue related to your best solution, and write a legal memo that summarizes your analysis. You may work individually, with a partner, or with your team. Your memo should include the names of every person who substantially contributed and should be no longer than four single-spaced pages per person.
4. By Tuesday, April 9th at 10pm eastern: Ensure your document complies with the course instructions for assignments, name the file "Class13 LegalMemo.pdf", and upload it here using your USC credentials. Even if you work with others, each person must individually upload this memo.
5. By Wednesday, April 10th at 2pm eastern: Read your colleagues' documentation of their best solutions.
6. Come to class prepared to reflect on:
   1. The best solutions (in form and substance).
   2. Potential next steps for your best solution.
   3. Our course topic.
   4. Law and technology generally.
   5. Our problem-solving process.
   6. Our semester.
7. By Monday, April 15th at noon eastern:
   1. Review the course schedule and confirm you have submitted every assignment in the methods specified on this page. Missing an assignment is unacceptable.
   2. Save your record of your inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts over the semester as a PDF, name it "Class13 CourseAccomplishments.pdf", and upload it here using your USC credentials. If you have documented your work in a form that cannot be effectively captured in a PDF, contact me directly by this deadline.