Loyola Law School, Los Angeles recently launched its new executive education program, LLX. These new courses are looking to revolutionize the way executives, entrepreneurs and students learn the law. Hamilton Chan, director of executive education at Loyola Law School shared how the series of tangible legal skills taught online, on campus and at on-site company locations will benefit CEOs and entrepreneurs.
“LLX is the iPhone to online education’s flip phones,” said Chan. “Our video production quality raises the bar so that students see no drop-off from the shows they watch on their favorite streaming platform to when they come to LLX.”
LLX is designed to combine academic rigor with real-life experience by teaching the reasoning behind the law people need to know, in combination with the tactical strategies they want to learn in order to move their careers forward.
“Our online course on negotiations, for example, casts professional actors as negotiation participants so that students can visualize how a negotiation might really go down,” said Chan. “We also gamify the experience of learning somewhat, having built a choose-your-own-adventure video sequence that further enhances the learning.”
Chan is an L.A. native and graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. After earning his law degree, he returned to L.A. Throughout his legal career, he has represented high profile clients such as Kobe Bryant, acting as his corporate lawyer. He also has experience as an investment banker with JP Morgan, as a studio executive, a small business owner, a venture capital-backed startup founder and an executive coach. As a visiting professor at Loyola Law School, Chan designed the program to be a game changer.
“At Loyola Law School, we have always prided ourselves on practical legal education, so creating a program that would teach legal skills to executives was a natural fit,” said Chan. “Ever since the Recession of 2008, law schools have had to hop to the new economic realities of a changing educational environment.
“If universities won’t innovate on the online programming sought by students, startups will.”
LLX offerings will enable students to benefit from the advantages of remote learning, providing on-campus courses at its campuses in Silicon Beach and Downtown Los Angeles to foster community and career connections. The program will also teach on-site at company locations to entire teams that wish to boost their legal IQ.
“Our first course on negotiations is taught by me and is based on all of the experience I have gained from my career,” said Chan. “In the LLX course on negotiations, I teach a framework for negotiating – the vocabulary, the preparation, best practices – but I also cover the hard-bargaining skills most academics do not have the background to teach.
Chan continued, “As a [small business owner] in particular, I had to negotiate on the job every single day for 16 years. I learned not to be the first person to throw out a number, I learned how to cultivate rapport as the key ingredient in a successful negotiation, and I learned how to always make the last small concession in a negotiation.
“These are all best practices covered in the 6-week fully-online LLX course, Negotiating for Success.”
The LLX program definitely aims to make students, entrepreneurs and executives well-rounded. Subsequent courses will teach, among other topics: dealing with a lawsuit, practicing corporate law, protecting your intellectual property and marijuana law.
“We have discovered that there are many executives out there interested in the law, but not interested in attending law school,” said Chan. “Our online format and short-form courses bring legal education to an audience that craves it and that hasn’t had an outlet to satisfy that craving until now.”
For more information on the LLX program including application instructions, please visit https://llx.lls.edu/.
