Data Literacy for Lawyers (Heaton)
Faculty
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| Paul Heaton Professor of Law and Academic Director, Quattrone Center pheaton@law.upenn.edu |
Additional Information
Skills Training
Oral Presentations
Team Projects
Grading
25% Participation,
75% Exam
Exam
Essay,
Take Home,
Open-Book
No
Class meets in person.
Course Continuity
Students are encouraged to stay home if you are ill or experience flu-like symptoms. If you miss a class for any reason, it is still your responsibility to make up the work missed.
I offer the following to students who miss class due to illness:
- Class sessions are regularly recorded. If you are absent due to illness or some other unavoidable circumstance, email me and I can send you an email with instructions for accessing the recording for the class session(s) you missed.
- I will make PowerPoint slides or other class materials routinely available on the course site to everyone in the class.
Meeting Times/Location
MW 3:00PM - 4:20PM
Tanenbaum Hall 320
Category
First-Year
Credits
3.0
In today’s legal landscape, the ability to interpret quantitative data has become an essential skill for legal professionals, whether advocating for clients or managing organizations. However, many lawyers lack formal training in understanding, analyzing, and applying data effectively. This course addresses that gap, equipping Penn Carey Law 1Ls with practical skills to navigate and develop data-driven legal arguments.
Data Literacy for Lawyers provides a core toolkit for understanding legal materials that involve data collection and analysis—no prior statistical knowledge required. By the end of the course, you will be able to intelligently interpret data and quantitative research, leverage data to solve legal questions, and identify weaknesses in opposing arguments that rely on flawed or misleading representations of data. Key topics include sources and types of data, statistical inference, understanding correlation vs. causation, regression analysis, and advanced data analysis techniques such as natural experiments, meta-analysis, and machine learning. To deepen understanding, we will employ a blend of lectures, readings, and hands-on exercises. Readings will largely consist of primary source materials from recent, real-world cases and controversies, while examples will span a variety of legal fields—including administrative, health, education, criminal, employment, and tort law—to ensure broad relevance and applicability.
Whether you envision a future in litigation, policy-making, corporate counsel, or any other legal role, Data Literacy for Lawyers will empower you to confidently engage with data, sharpening your analytical edge in a data-driven world.
Skills Learning outcomes: Demonstrate an understanding of the individual course skill; Demonstrate the ability to receive and implement feedback; Demonstrate an understanding of how and when the individual course skill is employed in practice.
Perspectives on the Law Learning outcomes: Demonstrate an understanding of how the law affects, and is affected by, the individual course topic; Perform legal analysis in the context of the individual course topic; Communicate effectively on the legal and other aspects of the individual course topic; Demonstrate the ability to use other disciplines to analyze legal issues relevant to the individual course topic, including economics, philosophy, and sociology, as appropriate.