Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction

The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction, also known as CALI, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that does research and development in online legal education. CALI publishes over 1,000 interactive tutorials, free casebooks, and develops software for experiential learning. Over 90% of US law schools are members which provides students with unlimited and free access to these materials.

"CALI" redirects here. For the U.S. state, see California.
Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI)
FoundedJune 22, 1982 (1982-06-22)
FounderHarvard Law School and University of Minnesota Law School
TypeEducation
FocusLegal Education, Technology, Access to Justice, formative assessment, open textbook, experiential learning
Location
Area served
United States, Some International
ProductCALI Lessons, A2J Author®, eLangdell® Press, Classcaster®, CALI Excellence for the Future Awards®, CALI Author™, CALIcon Conference, CALI LessonLink, QuizWright™
MethodComputer-Aided Learning and Teaching
Members
Over 90% of US law schools are members
Key people
Executive Director, John P. Mayer
Director of Internet Development, Elmer Masters
Director of Curriculum Development, Deb Quentel
Software Services Manager, Sam Goshorn
Systems Administrator, Dan Nagy
Marketing Specialist, Scott Lee
A2J Author Project Manager, Jessica Frank
Membership Coordinator, Ronella Norris
Employees
10
Websitehttp://www.cali.org

CALI was incorporated in 1982 in the state of Minnesota by the University of Minnesota Law School and Harvard Law School.[1] The cost of membership to CALI is US$8,000 per year for US law schools; free for legal-aid organizations, library schools, state and county law librarians; and US$250 per year for law firms, paralegal programs, undergraduate departments, government agencies, individuals, and other organizations.[2]

CALI Lessons

CALI Lessons are interactive tutorials written by law faculty and constantly kept up to date. They can be assigned as a study aid or to test your students' knowledge. The materials are rigorous, but short, taking 20-40 minutes to complete each lesson.

  • Over 1,000 CALI Lessons and more added every year
  • Coverage includes 40 different legal subject areas
  • Law students use CALI Lessons over half a million time each year
  • New modern lesson view in FALL 2018

eLangdell® Press

CALI's eLangdell Press publishes free casebooks and book chapters authored by law faculty. All are available under a Creative Commons license so that faculty and students can use and remix the materials to suit their educational needs.

  • Over 30 publications covering 17 different legal subject areas
  • Compatible with all mobile devices and tablets. No-DRM PDF, MSWord, Kindle and iPad versions of entire books are available
  • Print version available with no mark up cost

Classcaster®

Classcaster® is CALI's blogging and podcasting platform for law faculty who don't want commercial advertising on their course websites. Faculty who register at the CALI website can create a website for their courses, scholarship or podcast.

LessonLink is a service that law faculty can use to create a unique URL for a CALI Lesson that allows the professor to track the students' scores and usuage down to the individual question. LessonLink lets faculty use CALI Lessons as formative assessment.

QuizWright™

QuizWright™ helps Faculty track what students are learning it lets professors write Multiple Choice, True/False, and Yes/No questions as formative assessments for their students that can be run inside or outside the classroom.

  • Create a personal question bank to use with your courses year after year
  • View student responses in real-time
  • Build on the robust and secure CALI tools like CALI Lesson Viewer, AutoPublish, and LessonLink

CALIcon Conference

CALI's CALIcon is a two-day conference where faculty, law librarians, tech staff and educational technologists gather to share ideas, experiences and expertise. The conference is almost always held at a newly constructed law school. www.cali.org/cali-conference

Who Attends CALIcon? Our attendees are a mixture of law professors, law librarians and library directors, law school IT staff and law clinic faculty. We are also beginning to see attendees from the legal technology world. They are early-adopters, socially connected and highly influential in technology purchasing decisions. We expect 250- 350 attendees this year.

Who Exhibits at CALIcon? CALIcon exhibitors have traditionally been those in the education software and legal research industries. However, with the increasing emphasis on creating “practice ready law students," we are also beginning to see companies from the legal practice world use CALIcon as a way to introduce themselves to the new market.

Informative Sessions Sessions are all 1 hour long, with 30 minute breaks between each to allow for networking, conversation, reflection and, of course, snacks! The sessions range from beginner to advanced and cover a wide range of topics, from Assessment to Video Technology and many topics in between. The sessions are conducted by real people sharing real experiences creating, using, designing and implementing technology in support and practice of legal education.

CALI first hosted The Conference for Law School Computing in 1991 (then known as the Conference for Law School Computing Professionals) at Chicago-Kent.[3] From 1991 to 1994 the conference was hosted at Chicago-Kent, and since 1995 the conference has been hosted on-site by various CALI member law schools.[4]

CALI Excellence for the Future Award®

The CALI Excellence for the Future Award® is given to the top scoring student in each course at a law school as determined by the professor. CALI Award winners receive a certificate suitable for framing and a permanent URL/Virtual Award that students can tag to resumes, CVs, biographies and social media accounts.

  • 290,000 CALI Excellence for the Future Awards have been issued in 39,000 different courses since 2000.
  • Over 120 US Law Schools participate. View past award winners at www.cali.org/awards.

A2J Author®

A2j Author® is a cloud based software tool that delivers greater access to justice for self-represented litigants. A2J Author can be used as an experiential learning tool in law school courses to expose students to expert systems and document automation. Free training and technical support for your courses and students are available.

History
Old logo 1980s-2009
  • 1971 - Harvard Law School and The University of Minnesota Law School begin collaborating on the development of computer-based exercises for use in law school curriculum and in the development of a computer network for sharing these exercises.
  • 1982 - CALI is incorporated as a Minnesota non-profit by the University of Minnesota Law School and Harvard Law School.
  • 1991 - First Conference for Law School Computing Professionals (aka CALIcon) is held at Chicago-Kent College of Law. Eventually "Professionals" will be dropped from the conference name. CALIcon is hosted at Chicago-Kent annually until 1995 when CALIcon begins visiting a newly built law school every year.
  • 1993 - CALI joins the World Wide Web. Lessons will still be only available via CD-Roms or dedicated terminals at law schools until 1999.
  • 1996 - CALI passes the 100 CALI Lesson mark in 23 legal subjects.
  • 1996 - CALI declares 1996 to be the Year of the Electronic Author and encourages law professors to create electronic books for law students.
  • 1997 - The CALI Excellence for the Future Awards are created. These awards are given to the highest scoring individual in each law school course at over 100 participating law schools. The program is free for CALI members to join and to date, CALI has distributed over 200,000 awards.
  • 1999 - CALI Author™ debuts! This is the software tool that powers CALI Lessons. It also allows for CALI Lessons to be run from the web. CALI Author™ was and remains free for any member affiliated employee to use for educational or non-profit uses.
  • 2000 - The first CALI Lessons produced by our authoring fellowship program are published. CALI Lesson fellowships allow a group of 4-6 faculty members to work closely together to produce CALI lessons covering a large segment of a topic.
  • 2004 - CALI releases white paper for CODEC, the Consortium for Distance Education from CALI.
  • 2004 - Faculty enhancements for CALI Lessons are released: LessonLink, a tool that allows for faculty members to view the performance of students on CALI Lessons on a question by question basis; AutoPublish, which allows faculty to edit or create a CALI lesson and publish it on the CALI website; and LessonText, which puts the entirety of a CALI Lesson on a single webpage for easier review.
  • 2004 - CALI has over 400 lessons in 30 legal subjects.
  • 2005 - Classcaster®, CALI's podcasting and blogging platform is released. Within a year, there will be over 1000 legal education podcasts.
  • 2007 - InstaPoll, CALI's free classroom polling tool that requires no special software is unveiled.
  • 2007 - CALIspaces, a social network for law students is created.
  • 2007 - A2J Author®, created in collaboration with Chicago-Kent's Center for Access to Justice & Technology, is released. This tool creates guided interviews that assist Self-Represented Litigants in navigating the court system.
  • 2007 - For the first time, over 1,000,000 CALI Lesson runs are completed within a calendar year.
  • 2009 - The Legal Education Commons is created. An early open educational repository, this is meant to be a place for legal educators to share syllabi and course tools. It was closed in 2014 with the website re-design. Stay tuned...it may be back!
  • 2011 - CALI5 Viewer, the overlay that allows students to take CALI Lessons is upgraded to no longer require flash. This means that CALI lesson can be taken on mobile devices and Apple computers.
  • 2012 - The A2J Clinic program is created. This partners law school clinics with legal aid organizations.
  • 2012 - CALI begins publishing free and open casebooks and supplements under the eLangdell® Press imprint.
  • 2013 - Time Trial®, a card and online game designed to test a student's knowledge of important legal dates is created.
  • 2013 - CALI passes the 900 CALI Lesson mark.
  • 2013 - CALI sends out its 200,000 CALI Excellence for the Future Award®.
  • 2014 - The current version of the CALI website is unveiled. It operates on Drupal 7.0 and is mobile responsive.
  • 2014 - A2J Author® 5.0 is released. This transforms A2J into an entirely web-based authoring tool.
  • 2015 - A2J Author® hits 3,000,000 usages.
  • 2016 - CALI passes the 1,000 CALI Lesson mark.
  • 2017 - A2J Author® hits 4,000,000 usages.
  • 2017 - CALI launches QuizWright™, helps Faculty track what students are learning it lets professors write Multiple Choice, True/False, and Yes/No questions as formative assessments for their students that can be run inside or outside the classroom.
  • 2018 - We’ve added a Question Bank feature to CALI QuizWright™, our formative assessment system. The new feature uses multiple choice questions selected from CALI Contracts Lessons.
  1. Drake, Miriam A. (2003). Encyclopedia of library and information science, Volume 1. Dekker Encyclopedias Series. 1. CRC Press. p. 654. ISBN 0-8247-2077-6.
  2. Who Can Join CALI?
  3. Conference for Law School Computing. Chicago, IL. June 7–8, 1991. Retrieved 2010-03-04.
  4. "Conference for Law School Computing Archives". Archived from the original on 2010-03-08. Retrieved 2010-03-05.
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