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The data protection lawyer of the future will be a key intermediary of innovation—or ‘transaction engineer’—who facilitates and coordinates new forms of business and other social relationships in rapidly evolving multi-disciplinary settings. The effective performance of this function requires legal professionals to develop a different mindset, along with new skills and capacities, specifically a better understanding of the underlying technologies and the value and techniques of legal design, as well as a knowledge of relevant data protection law. Transferable principles for teaching data protection law and privacy law in a digital age are identified. The article proposes a task-oriented, gamified, and sandbox approach to data protection education that delivers a more relevant student experience that cultivates meaningful capacities and skills that are more closely aligned with the needs and values of a digital age. Data protection law and questions of privacy, more generally, are amongst the most disrupted and disruptive sectors of the legal industry today. Algorithm and data-driven companies are driving market development across multiple sectors of the economy.1 Moreover, the exponential growth of these technologies is creating innovative business models and offering new products and services for customers and clients. The health care and financial service sectors are good examples of such data-driven disruption.2 Technological changes make it possible to gather, integrate, and analyse vast amounts of data in unprecedented ways. Recent events such as the Snowden revelations of mass surveillance by intelligence services and government agencies,3 the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica scandal which concerned the obtaining of the personal data of millions of Facebook users without their consent,4 and court decisions such as the Schrems II case,5 which invalidated the European Union (EU)–US Privacy Shield framework of data transfers,6 have raised awareness and concerns about the protection of personal data among legal professionals, the business sector, and the public, more generally. Regulators have responded to such concerns with far-reaching regulatory interventions, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)7 in Europe and the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA)8 in the USA. The recent Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has exacerbated the effects of the digital transformation.9 For example, the pandemic has pushed us further into digital spaces, and changes in behaviour are likely to have lasting effects when the economy returns to normal.10 The pandemic has also increased the uptake of technology-based solutions, tools, and services, accelerating and amplifying the global transition towards a digital economy.11 Given the centrality of data and data protection to our collective future, it is vital that data protection becomes a central pillar of legal education, and it is for this reason that we have set out to identify principles that might drive the development of a new style of data protection education at a graduate level, which integrates an in-depth understanding of law, cutting-edge technologies, and legal design. This will provide students with an opportunity to build upon basic knowledge they acquired as undergraduates and help them to understand—from both an interdisciplinary and technical perspective—how data protection law can interact with innovative products (software and hardware) and services in real-world settings. Moreover, it seems clear that future data protection regulation will be increasingly embedded in the architectural design of the technology itself,12 following the ‘privacy by design and by default’ approach.13 As such, data protection lawyers will operate in multi-disciplinary teams, comprising coders and designers. This new operating environment means that students must acquire a new way of thinking and data protection lawyers of the future will become innovation intermediaries or ‘transaction engineers’.14 As such, the next generation of data protection lawyers will play a vital role mediating between various actors, organizations, and communities, coordinating, and reinforcing a dialogue between diverse professions and businesses. The data protection lawyer of the future needs to be able to understand not only the technical and legal issues involved, but also the necessary human–machine interactions and the interfaces between the various stakeholders and complex systems. As such, transaction engineers will be the linchpin that facilitate business innovation and user creativity across multiple sectors of the economy. This article, therefore, aims to identify and describe some fundamental principles for the advancement of data protection education in this new context, exploring new teaching methodologies and student learning outcomes. Section ‘The disruption of education in a digital age’ briefly outlines the broader context of the disruption of education in a digital age. Section ‘The lawyer of the future as transaction engineer’ suggests that lawyers have been at their most effective when operating as transaction engineers that create opportunities for new forms of business and other social relationships and suggest that this provides a model for the data protection lawyer of the future. Section ‘Principles for integrating law, technology, and design in the legal education of tomorrow’ identifies core principles that can form the basis for designing a programme based on our experience as lawyers and educators. Section ‘Conclusion’ concludes. Over the last half-century, digital technologies have transformed the world. The emergence of computer-based devices and communication infrastructures have triggered multiple economic, social, and cultural effects. The term, ‘digital transformation’, is often used to refer to this shift from analogue, electronic, and mechanical machines to networked, digital devices, and the ongoing social effects associated with the proliferation of these new technologies.15 This process of digitization began in earnest with the launch of the Intel microprocessor in California in the early 1970s and has been driven by an ongoing series of technological innovations, most significantly cheaper and smaller digital hardware (first PCs and, more recently, smartphones); global communication networks and mass connectivity (the Internet); and cloud-based data storage and algorithm-driven processing. With ever-shorter innovation cycles, it seems obvious that these new digital technologies will continue to transform every aspect of our lives. Constant technological disruption is now the new normal and old-world ideas, practices, and organizations are becoming less relevant, even if they are still, obviously, influential. Software has gone from being a tool in assisting work to a fundamental infrastructure that defines and gives structure to our everyday lives. 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