(A report from Radio Iowa) – A University of Iowa law professor and corporate law expert plans to use a popular and immersive fantasy trading card game to train future lawyers how to read documents carefully. Professor Mihailis Diamantis says reading text very closely is a critical skill all lawyers need to have, and they can learn it by playing Magic: The Gathering.
“A lot of people might be more familiar with Pokémon, if they have kids. Magic: The Gathering is basically Pokémon on steroids,” Diamantis says. “It’s a game system with a rule book that’s evolved over the last 30-some years. The rule book is now 350 pages long. They have 35,000 cards and an international, very devoted following.” Diamantis is developing a one-credit-hour course for the U-I in which he’ll teach essential and often-underdeveloped legal skills like interpreting complex text and working in legal gray areas.
“You have to be able to look at every single word and punctuation mark and interpret it in context,” Diamantis says, “and in an adversarial setting, like every lawyer is going to confront, there are going to be differing interpretations of the exact same language on the page. And that’s exactly what you encounter in Magic: The Gathering.” In the course, students will learn to use the game’s complex rulebook and the wide universe of tens of thousands of cards to resolve ambiguities, cite precedent, and build arguments like a practicing attorney.
The course will culminate in a competition judged by a Seattle lawyer and expert-level Magic player, who will evaluate students’ written and oral arguments. Diamantis says he realized the game could become an important teaching tool after watching his teenage son scrutinize one of the cards.
“It has just one sentence of text on it. We’re digging into every single comma, period, word on that card, its context, how to understand the way that it works in the context of other cards involved in the game,” Diamantis says. “It’s just a great avenue for law students to cultivate the skill of close reading and the interpretive toolbox they’ll need for the job.”
Diamantis intends to offer the course at the Iowa City institution in the summer of 2027. It will build on one of his other classes which uses the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons as a corporate law simulation, where students form companies, navigate governance disputes, and learn legal doctrine through immersive scenarios.
