Dayton Law Expands Online-Based Courses

The University of Dayton School of Law will begin offering distance-learning courses this summer, with classes on the unbundling of legal services and federal criminal law.

The courses will meet solely online and will be taught by John F. Stinneford, assistant professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, and Stephanie Kimbro ’03, who operates a web-based virtual law office in North Carolina and is director of the North Carolina branch of Burton Law, a Beavercreek, Ohio-based law firm.

“I am excited that we are able to bring national experts like Stephanie Kimbro and John Stinneford to our students through distance learning,” Dean Paul E. McGreal said. “Also, online courses allow our students to work away from campus over the summer while still taking cutting-edge courses at Dayton Law.”

Stinneford’s Federal Criminal Law course will be taught asynchronously through the LexisNexis Blackboard platform.

Kimbro’s course, Unbundling and the Future of Law Practice, will meet online three times a week. The course will provide students with a practical knowledge of unbundling and other emerging forms of alternative and complementary legal service delivery.

Students will use Kimbro’s case management software as associates in the virtual firm. While the classes will be held live online, students will also be able to interact with the professor and their classmates, outside of class time, within the virtual firm simulation.

“Throughout the course, different assignments will come up in the form of pretend clients with legal issues,” she said. “The students will be asked to respond to these different practice management and sometimes ethics issues as associates of the virtual firm.”

Students will readings Kimbro’s new book, Limited Scope Legal Services: Unbundling and the Self-Help Client and Richard Susskind's End of Lawyers?: Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services.

The two new courses are not the first distance-learning courses offered by the School of Law. From 1998 to 2006, Susan Brenner, the NCR Distinguished Professor of Law & Technology, taught a cybercrime seminar that took place purely online. She recruited cybercrime prosecutors, defense attorneys and investigators from the United States and other countries to participate as adjunct faculty.

The law school also offers blended-learning courses on Health Care Law and Remedies, both of which are taught by professor Vernellia Randall and combine traditional classroom instruction with online instruction. In addition, professor Andrea Seielstad has taught a virtual intrasession.