Excerpts from UChicago Law School’s memo from last month, Rethinking Legal Education in the AI Era, which is an interesting peek into how one prestigious institution is orienting towards AI.
Introduction:
Artificial Intelligence is already impacting higher education and the legal profession, and the pace of change appears only to be accelerating. It is thus critical for us to use this moment to carefully reflect on how legal education should adapt. This memo describes the approach we are taking to legal education in the AI era.
humans are expected to remain in the loop due to anti-ai sentiment:
AI may transform the legal profession, but many aspects of legal practice are likely to remain the domain of humans, not merely because humans are good at them, but because clients, employers, judges, and society will want humans to perform them… To be sure, there are ways in which AI can assist humans with these tasks. But legal education should renew its focus on training students for the aspects of legal practice for which humans are likely to remain essential.
all electronic devices will be banned in the classroom in first year:
During the 1L year, the value of effortful struggle, even with concepts that are second nature to experienced lawyers, is paramount. Student expertise at judging the quality of AI output is at its nadir.
...
Across all 1L sections, we will prohibit the use of electronic devices such as laptops, tablets, and phones in the classroom. There will be some limited exceptions to this policy. For instance, professors can designate classroom “scribes” who can use electronic devices to take notes for the class, professors can authorize electronic device use for specific tech-enabled activities (such as interactive in-class polling), and we will ensure that disabilities are accommodated in conformity with applicable law, as appropriate for the program of study. Additionally, examinations will be in-class without access to the internet, electronic files, or apps.
i hope this works out because it seems wise but wouldn’t be surprised if a significant percentage or even a majority of students request accommodations to get around this.
law firms are now overwhelmingly AI-pilled, so students will also receive training in using AI tools:
Many (if not most) students will spend their 1L summers in professional environments where they will be expected to use AI tools for research and writing tasks. Thus, the LRW curriculum must also include instruction in the responsible, effective, and ethical use of AI. At the same time, even AI skills training must itself be AI-resilient.
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Client needs and expectations will create pressure for graduates to be able to immediately use AI responsibly, effectively, and ethically. As a practical matter, this means that for many graduates, law school clinics are the best opportunity to receive close and careful supervision of their use of AI tools.
how can a law school both ban devices and also train students in AI use? it seems like here’s two streams of courses, one for legal principles (“core”, including courses on tort law, contracts, criminal law, etc) and one for research and writing skills (“LRW”). devices are banned in the first stream only. in the second, they’re piloting a structure where students will write without AI but use AI for all other parts of their coursework and study:
We will thus be piloting a new structure to the LRW curriculum during the 2026–2027 academic year. Our approach will treat writing without AI as the foundation and will layer writing with AI onto it. Throughout the year, students will write without AI, while also using AI for research, revision, iterating on drafts, and preparation for oral argument. Students and their instructors will review together both their writing and their use of AI. In this way, students will develop their own writing skills independent of generative AI tools while also developing their ability to supervise AI and critique its output.
past first year, they are encouraging their teaching staff to be “creative” about “ai-resistant pedagogy”, i.e. discouraging AI use:
• In-class student workshops of their papers; • Writing reaction papers or portions of longer papers in supervised, in-class settings; • Group presentations or panel discussions by students with related reaction paper topics; • Students, individually or in groups, leading portions of class discussion relevant to their reaction paper topics; and • One-on-one discussion of a research paper with the professor outside of class.
they are also adding a new requirement to their capstone project:
all students will be required to engage in an oral discussion of their [capstone] with their supervising professor, in an in-person setting.
they acknowledge that this comes with tradeoffs:
Some responses, such as requiring writing to take place in supervised, in-class settings, address the need to cultivate practice while ensuring original human effort. Yet such requirements lose an important aspect of the exercise of writing, which is sustained and independent effort across hours, days, and weeks to create a significant piece of work. This is a valuable formative exercise for thinkers and lawyers, and we cannot wholly abandon it in favor of writing methods that are easier to administer in AI-resilient ways.
Excerpts from UChicago Law School’s memo from last month, Rethinking Legal Education in the AI Era, which is an interesting peek into how one prestigious institution is orienting towards AI.
Introduction:
humans are expected to remain in the loop due to anti-ai sentiment:
all electronic devices will be banned in the classroom in first year:
i hope this works out because it seems wise but wouldn’t be surprised if a significant percentage or even a majority of students request accommodations to get around this.
law firms are now overwhelmingly AI-pilled, so students will also receive training in using AI tools:
how can a law school both ban devices and also train students in AI use? it seems like here’s two streams of courses, one for legal principles (“core”, including courses on tort law, contracts, criminal law, etc) and one for research and writing skills (“LRW”). devices are banned in the first stream only. in the second, they’re piloting a structure where students will write without AI but use AI for all other parts of their coursework and study:
past first year, they are encouraging their teaching staff to be “creative” about “ai-resistant pedagogy”, i.e. discouraging AI use:
they are also adding a new requirement to their capstone project:
they acknowledge that this comes with tradeoffs: