Battling Fake News and Developing Digital Literacy Skills within the Legal Profession

Alternative facts? Truthiness?  Post Truth?  Hardly a day passes without someone making a reference to fake news. But why should lawyers care and what can information technology professionals and the legal academy do about it?

In order to fulfil a lawyer’s duty of technology competency, digital information literacy is essential. Legal professionals must be able to locate, evaluate and use online information effectively.  Evaluation of the reliability of digital information is a complex skill that must be mastered for the successful practice of law.

This program will discuss digital information literacy in the context of fake news.  The session will provide an overview of fake news including tracing the history of its origin.  We’ll discuss why it matters and the consequences of failing to detect fake news. Tips and tools for evaluating the credibility of news sources will be provided as well as strategies for creating successful information literacy programming.