University of Montana club teaches students ethical huntingT he amalgamation of technology and the legal sphere has given rise to an indispensable offshoot, the LegalTech sector. According to Future Market Insights, the LegalTech industry, currently valued at $29.60 billion, is estimated to reach $68.04 billion by 2034, growing at a CAGR of 8.7% from 2024 to 2034. LegalTech delivers support and services to the legal industry by helping lawyers, attorneys, and firms practise law more efficiently. With Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, and blockchain being key drivers, LegalTech makes data analysis, contract review, and monetary transactions more secure and seamless. These technologies further allow professionals to automate routine tasks, providing them with ample time to focus on strategic and high-value work. With increasing dependence on AI and technology, law firms and departments worldwide are seeking tech-savvy professionals. By pursuing a career as a LegalTech professional, one can position themselves at the forefront of delivering technologically refined legal services. Here are some of the most lucrative career opportunities in this domain. Regulatory Compliance Manager : Compliance managers ensure that a company complies with all relevant laws and regulations. They are primarily responsible for monitoring legislation and industry changes, proactively implementing them, and managing risks. Getting certifications like Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional (CCEP), Certified Regulatory Compliance Manager (CRCM) and Advanced Executive Programme in Cybersecurity can boost credibility. Legal Technology Consultant: Legal technologists help law firms leverage technology and set up their website, provide online accounting services, and manage software and hardware systems. One can pursue a Legal Technology and Innovation Certificate or Certificates in Technology in Law Practice. AI and Machine Learning Specialist: These professionals typically provide AI solutions to automate legal processes, process large sets of legal data, and create predictive models to gauge legal outcomes. One can pursue online courses in AI and Machine Learning for legal professionals from leading institutions. E-Discovery Specialist: A relatively new part of the legal sector, an E-discovery specialist manages a large volume of electronic documents and uses automated tools to reduce human error and improve efficiency. Pursuing a career in this requires E-Discovery certification courses from universities and online platforms. Legal Operations Manager : A legal operations manager is responsible for managing a multidisciplinary team and overseeing data analytics, project management, and marketing. One can obtain a Legal Operations Certificate, a Project Management Professional (PMP) Certification, or a Law-Diploma Certification. Legal Data Analyst: This involves using data analysis techniques such as statistical analysis to derive insights and support legal decision-making. A legal data analyst gathers, interprets, and analyses court documents, papers, case outcomes and other data to extract insights to support decision-making. To start a career in this field, one can purse Data Science courses for legal professionals. Outlook From AI to machine learning, technological integration into the legal sphere is creating exciting non-traditional legal career opportunities. Professionals who can seamlessly integrate cutting-edge technology into legal procedures will be highly sought after. Over the coming years, AI will further revolutionise the legal sector, enhancing efficiency, and even reshaping traditional law practices. By strategically preparing and embracing this technological evolution, aspiring law professionals can stay ahead of the curve and redefine the way legal services are delivered. The writer is Co-Founder and CEO at Lawyer Desk. Published - December 29, 2024 06:30 pm IST Copy link Email Facebook Twitter Telegram LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit education / The Hindu Education Plus / careers / higher education / students / university / universities and colleges / lawyer / laws
It is a truth universally acknowledged: A politician in possession of elected office must be in want of large economic development projects. Ivy Main Such is the power of this compulsion that it is proof against all reason. Certainly, it has been proof against everything critics of the data center buildout have said so far: that Virginia is catapulting itself into a costly energy crisis that will raise utility bills for residents; that the public shows no love for this industry; and that the benefits to be gained (mostly in the form of construction jobs) will continue only as long as new projects follow one another in perpetuity until the landscape is consumed by concrete and transmission wires. To the credit of the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, or JLARC, however, it has tried to sound the alarm. JLARC’s report “Data Centers in Virginia,” released Dec. 9, describes the challenges facing the state as a result of the massive, ongoing buildout of this resource-intensive industry. Many of JLARC’s conclusions seem way too sanguine to me, especially around risks to regional water supplies and air pollution from diesel generators, and the policy options it offers don’t always hit the mark. A view of the rooftop of a data center is seen in Haymarket. But on the threat to Virginia’s energy supply, JLARC is blunt: Building enough infrastructure to provide electricity for even just half the data centers projected for development across the state will be difficult, requiring far more generating facilities than are under development today. As for the current policy of allowing completely unconstrained data center growth — indeed, subsidizing it as we do now with tax exemptions to the tune of nearly a billion dollars per year — JLARC notes we are headed for a tripling of the state’s electricity usage over just the next decade and a half. Meeting that much demand, says the report, would be “very difficult to achieve,” even if the state jettisoned the carbon emission limits imposed by the Virginia Clean Economy Act, or VCEA. For those of you unfamiliar with the vocabulary of bureaucrats, “very difficult to achieve” is a term of art that translates roughly as “This is nuts.” It might have been better if JLARC had employed the vernacular, because as it is, Virginia’s elected leaders will probably take “very difficult” to be a sort of heroic challenge, like beating the Russians to the moon, when what JLARC means is more like achieving lasting peace in the Middle East. One problem is cost. The law of supply and demand dictates that a massive increase in energy demand that isn’t matched by an equally massive increase in energy supply will lead to higher prices for all customers. Yet new energy projects cost money, and under traditional rate-making principles that also means higher rates for everyone. The result is that it will be impossible to protect residents from higher utility bills, unless changes are made to the way costs get allocated. (Figuring out how to protect residents and other non-data-center customers is currently a focus of the State Corporation Commission, which held a technical conference on data centers on Dec. 16. Judging by what the experts it convened had to say, the SCC has its work cut out for it.) Even if ordinary residents could be protected, the bigger problem is that increasing the supply of energy to keep up with soaring data center demand will not be easy, fast or cheap. JLARC warns that providing enough low-cost energy requires that gas plants, solar facilities, battery projects and transmission lines all be built at a pace Virginia has never achieved before, along with onshore wind farms that have never found takers here (though that may be changing), offshore wind projects that currently lack a pathway to development and, starting 10 years from now, new nuclear plants in the form of small modular reactors, or SMRs, that haven’t yet achieved commercial viability. Data centers, such as this one that QTS operates in Henrico County, require a constant supply of electricity. Moreover, the new generation and transmission will have to overcome local opposition. On the gas side, Dominion Energy’s plans for a new plant in Chesterfield County face fierce resistance from the local community, which argues it has been burdened by fossil fuel pollution for too many years already. Clean energy also struggles at the local level. Industry representatives told members of the Commission on Electric Utility Regulation, or CEUR, on Dec. 17 that more than 30 localities have effectively banned utility solar projects within their borders. Legislators are loath to override local government authority over permitting, even when counties that welcome data centers turn down the solar facilities needed to power them. And of course, these generation projects involve willing landowners. When it comes to transmission lines that are forced on property owners through eminent domain — many of which will be needed only to carry power to data centers — the public backlash may be brutal. Given so much local resistance to new generation and transmission, the fact that so many legislators nonetheless remain wedded to the data center buildout testifies to the ability of the human mind to compartmentalize. For legislators who care about climate, JLARC has more bad news: Fully half of the new data center growth coming to Virginia is slated to occur in the territories of rural electric cooperatives, which are largely unaffected by VCEA limits. In addition, very large customers of Dominion and APCo have their own VCEA loophole: If they meet certain requirements, they can leave their utility to buy power from competitive service providers. Thus, if Virginia is serious about decarbonization, it will have to tighten, not loosen, the VCEA. The report comes with some caveats. JLARC used a team of consultants to model approaches to meeting the supply gaps, and a lot of assumptions go into the consultant’s report without a lot of details. The consultant group says it chose its mix of resources with a view to least cost, but it acknowledges that different assumptions would change the results. It may not have accounted for the fact that renewable energy and storage prices continue to drop; meanwhile, fossil gas prices are so volatile that the one certain thing you can say about any price forecast is that it will be wrong. Moreover, it appears the effects of reentering the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative were not modeled; nor were the social costs of carbon, both of which favor zero-emission sources over fossil fuel plants. Where there are details, some beg to be questioned. Both the consultants and JLARC take for granted that a shortage of generation in Virginia can be made up by importing electricity from other states. An easy way out, sure, but it works only if other states are producing a surplus. Unless tech companies are required to secure their own carbon-free energy supply, there is no way to guarantee imports will be available. Contrary to one of JLARC’s suggestions, then, retail choice should not be curtailed. The better move is to expand shopping options for large customers, so long as the electricity they buy is zero-carbon. An Amazon Web Services data center in Northern Virginia. Even more suspect is the idea that, in order to comply with the VCEA, all gas plants will convert to burning green hydrogen in 2045. The report might as well say, “And then a miracle occurs.” A miracle would be more likely. However unserious, hydrogen as a placeholder for any hoped-for technology that isn’t available today demonstrates the fundamental problem confronting Virginia’s damn-the-torpedoes approach to data centers. A refusal to put constraints on the buildout means taking a leap into the unknown and hoping something will happen to save us from the consequences of our profligacy. And sure, maybe it will work out. Legislators tend to be optimists, and they are already betting on bright, shiny objects like SMRs, fusion and anything else not close enough for its costs and drawbacks to be fully evident. (Not that I’m immune, but personally, I’m betting on advanced geothermal, which is not just bright and shiny but already here.) And hey, for all we know, artificial intelligence, the technology most culpable for today’s energy crisis, might even produce some unexpected new energy source. Or it might not. Given that most of the data center buildout will happen in just the next five years, we might need an actual miracle. On the flip side, maybe new technology will reduce the energy demand of data centers by orders of magnitude. That would be a fantastic outcome from the standpoint of climate, water and energy — though it would end the construction gravy train in Virginia and leave a wasteland of empty concrete warehouses and stranded energy infrastructure. Either way, the unconstrained buildout of data centers has handed Virginia leaders a problem that is, in the parlance of JLARC, “very difficult” indeed. This column was originally published in the Virginia Mercury . Ivy Main is a lawyer and a longtime volunteer with the Sierra Club’s Virginia chapter. A former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency employee, she is currently the Sierra Club’s renewable energy chairwoman. Her opinions are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of any organization. Get opinion pieces, letters and editorials sent directly to your inbox weekly!The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has ordered the removal of Special Assistant to Chief Minister Mashal Yousafzai from her position, it emerged on Saturday. A letter from the Chief Minister’s Secretariat to the secretary of the KP government’s administration department, dated November 29 and seen by Dawn.com , said: “CM KP has directed that Miss Mashal Azam, special assistant to CM KP, may immediately be de-notified.” It ordered that necessary action regarding the matter be taken at the earliest under intimation to the secretariat. The development comes following an interview of Yousafzai, who is also the spokesperson for PTI founder Imran Khan’s spouse Bushra Bibi, on Geo News programme ‘Naya Pakistan’ a day ago. Speaking on the show about the events surrounding the November 24 protest called by PTI, she spoke about Bushra Bibi’s participation in the protest and subsequent return to KP. Asked whether Bushra Bibi was taken forcefully from the protest, Yousafzai had said: “This is correct that she didn’t want to go from there, the reason she came back [from the site of the protest] was that there was direct firing on her car. “Still, she didn’t want to go but then there was some chemical thrown on her car’s windscreen which blurred it and nothing was visible. She was told the cars would be changed and she would be brought back to the party workers but the version after that I don’t know.” Yousafzai also denied reports of Bushra being in contact with anyone in the party or attending and chairing any party political committee meeting after her return from the protest. Questioned about criticism by PTI leaders on Bushra’s decision to persist with the location of D-chowk for the protest amid suggestions of Sangjani as an alternate venue, Yousafzai responded that she was an eyewitness to the discussions between the former first lady and PTI leaders when Bushra was told that Barrister Gohar Ali Khan and Barrister Muhammad Ali Saif had gone to meet Imran at Adiala Jail. She added that Bushra had retorted that Imran had taken a promise from her to reach D-chowk no matter the circumstances and wanted to talk to him directly to receive confirmation. Mashal quoted Bushra as saying that she would have gone to Sangjani if Imran had ordered her. Government ministers had mocked CM Gandapur and Bushra in the early hours of Wednesday for fleeing as law enforcement agencies took action to disperse PTI protesters from Islamabad’s D-Chowk. Protesters had managed to gather at the site for the party’s protest to demand Imran’s release, among other things, amid reports of intense tear gas shelling by security forces to curtail the large crowds. The PTI convoys had been plying roads countrywide since Nov 24. It was a day of pitched battles between security forces and PTI protesters across the federal capital which ended in a hasty retreat of the party’s top leadership and supporters from the Red Zone in the early hours of Wednesday. At least six lives were lost in the three days of protests, which included a policeman and three Rangers officials who were knocked down by a speeding vehicle, officials and hospital sources said. The late-night retreat by the PTI leadership, including Bushra Bibi and Gandapur, came after the latter was heard telling the protesters “to go home, have dinner and return tomorrow”.
The AP Top 25 men’s college basketball poll is back every week throughout the season! Get the poll delivered straight to your inbox with AP Top 25 Poll Alerts. Sign up here . JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — LJ Thomas had 25 points in Austin Peay’s 62-50 win over Georgia State on Tuesday. Thomas added five assists for the Governors (4-2). Tekao Carpenter scored 12 points while finishing 4 of 9 from 3-point range. The Panthers (3-3) were led by Zarigue Nutter, who recorded 17 points. Malachi Brown added 10 points and two steals for Georgia State. ___ The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar .
Okanagan MLAs express concern with removal of religious sign from nativity scene