(U-WIRE) CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.-In this age of cyber-communication, more law students are seeking classes in the growing field of Internet law.

While some law schools have already created centers and special programs to accommodate students’ increasing demands, the University of Virginia only recently began to increase its number of Internet law classes

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Law Prof. Daniel Ortiz said he has had to teach two sections of his Internet-related class for the first time this semester because demand was so high.

“There were students who came to my office after they found out they couldn’t get in,” Ortiz said.

Second-year Law student Matt Branson said he was disappointed not to get into Ortiz’s class.

“It seems like we’re still in the process of figuring out what we’re going to do,” Branson said about the lack of Internet-related classes at the Law School.

Prof. Robert O’Neil said he faces a similar problem each fall, when he offers his Free Expression in Cyberspace class: Too many students are applying for the limited number of slots.

O’Neil’s class, first offered in 1996, provides Law students a more specialized education in Internet law issues.

The class examines laws concerning obscenity and child pornography, indecency harmful to minors, libel and invasion of privacy, then spam and encryption, O’Neil said.

During the first meeting of his “Free Expression in Cyberspace” class every year, he asks the students to tell why they were interested in taking the class.

“I was struck by the representative mix. Some of them are high-tech junkies, some are simply curious, and others are looking for an interesting and relevant course to fulfill their third-year writing requirement,” O’Neil said.

The demand for certain types of law courses always correlates with trends in the courts and Congress, Law Prof. Glen Robinson said.

Ortiz said students are attracted to Internet law issues because there are many new opportunities and challenges and they are “pushing the frontier” of law and technology.

“People see a lot of potential for jobs and money” in this field, Ortiz said.

Richard Boone, third-year Law student and editor-in-chief of the Virginia Journal of Law and Technology, said law students are interested in technology because they grew up with the Internet.

“Students want to be part of the Internet boom,” he said.

Robinson said there now is a movement toward hiring Internet law specialists.

“In the Silicon Valley area, there are law practices with exclusively e-commerce clients,” he added.

There is also a broad spectrum of Internet-related job opportunities for University graduates that are fairly close to this area.

“There are many jobs in northern Virginia” in its high-tech corridor, as well as in Washington, D.C. and increasingly in New York, Ortiz said.

One of the hottest topics in cyberlaw right now is intellectual property law (IP), which includes patent, trademark and copyright law, said Robinson, who teaches a communications law course.

“It has a lot of sex appeal,” he said.

Although student demand for Internet law classes has increased over the past decade, the Law School is not necessarily meeting the demand with an increased number of Internet-related classes. Instead, some Law professors who are interested in the subject are molding their classes around the topic.

In addition to altering existing classes, the Law School faculty approaches curriculum changes by selecting new faculty who are interested in the field, Robinson said.

Other universities, however, have taken a more formalized approach to meeting the new demand.