The purpose of the article is to study the essence of the work of IT-lawyers, determine the directions of their activities, as well as reveal the main skills that such a specialist should be endowed with.
Considering the trend of digitalization of society and the development of IT-companies based on this, we need to talk about the formation of a new direction of work IT Law as a scientific and practical field of interdisciplinary activity.
Attention is focused on the fact that an IT-lawyer is not a highly specialized, but must combine knowledge and skills in completely different areas. Thus, taking into account the extraterritoriality of the information space, an IT-lawyer should have a perfect command of the methodology of legal comparativistics, know at least the national legislation, the basics of the legislation of the states with which his activities are connected through information communication, and international law in the relevant field. In other words, when entering into documents (user agreement, privacy policy, contract with a foreign company, etc.), an IT-lawyer must take into account the legislation of the country with which his client will cooperate.
It is stated that, in addition to the actual IT Law, an IT-lawyer should have extensive knowledge of various branches and institutions of law. They cover at least Civil Law, Intellectual Property Law, Contract Law, Family Law, Inheritance Law, and so on.
Other mandatory competencies of an IT-lawyer include managing risks associated with the use of digital technologies. This includes, in particular, the introduction of new systems of protection against cyber attacks; innovations in protection against copyright violations and personal data protection, and so on. In addition, the scope of special knowledge of an IT-lawyer can be expanded through the basics of programming, computer technology architecture, and foreign languages.
It can be concluded that such a complication of the basic requirements for hard- and soft-skills of an IT-lawyer requires a comprehensive approach, which includes the creation of a separate specialization of the corresponding direction in universities, as well as the deepening of knowledge and practical skills among students through the development of legal clinics and laboratories of IT Law in collaboration with specialists in technical sciences.