About CALI

Posted Fri, 07/15/2011 - 2:59pm by Austin Groothuis

 

CALI® is the innovative force pushing legal education toward change for the better.

We are a nonprofit consortium of nearly every US law school that welcomes membership from law schools, paralegal programs, law firms, individuals, or any organization that wishes to learn or teach the law.

History

After a few years as a faculty project, The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction was incorporated as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) in 1982 by the University of Harvard's and University of Minnesota's law schools. CALI continued to gradually develop computer-assisted tutorials and add more law school members through the 80s and into the early 90s.

In 1991 the organization hosted the first annual Conference for Law School Computing®. With the development of CALI Author® software, lesson creation was taken out of the hands of computer programmers and into those of the faculty whom write the lessons. Aided by the new authoring software and the revolution of the internet as a viable platform, the library of lessons and their usage increased to over 100 and over 100,000, respectively, by the 1996-1997 school year. That same year, CALI began distributing the CALI Excellence for the Future Award® to the top student in each class at participating member schools.

By the turn of the century nearly all US law schools were members of CALI. CALI began looking for new and innovative ways to serve its membership, exploring ideas such as distance education, eBooks, blogging and podcasting, and open education tools. In 2007-2008 school year, students for the first time ran CALI Lessons over 1,000,000 total times in the school year.

Today

Students at over 200 member law schools still run over 1,000,000 lessons each year. The Library of Lessons is on pace for 1,000 lessons very soon. We continue to host the annual CALI Conference, distribute CALI Awards, and work on new and innovative projects like eLangdell® (open eBooks for legal education) and Classcaster® (a blogging platform for our members).