Leading law schools are tightening AI rules and bringing back device-free classrooms, oral discussions and independent writing to ensure future lawyers can use AI without becoming dependent on it.
By The Grey Ghost
WHAT’S HAPPENING
Some of America’s leading law schools are changing how students learn and are evaluated as generative AI becomes increasingly capable of researching, drafting and analyzing legal material.
The University of Chicago Law School is introducing a new strategy designed to teach students how to work with, without and about AI.
Beginning this fall, the school plans to generally prohibit electronic devices in required first-year classes, remove AI from critical testing situations and require students completing substantial research papers to discuss their work orally with a professor or in class. (University of Chicago Law School)
Chicago is not abandoning AI. The school also operates an AI Lab, incorporates AI into some clinics and expects students to learn how to use the technology responsibly.
UC Berkeley School of Law has taken a stricter default approach. Its policy prohibits students from using AI to conceptualize, outline, draft, revise or edit work submitted for credit and bans AI entirely during exams, although individual professors can authorize exceptions. (UC Berkeley Law)
At the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, Dean Bobby Chesney has encouraged faculty to make greater use of classroom discussion and Socratic teaching while limiting students’ reliance on screens during those conversations. (Inside Higher Ed)
WHY IT MATTERS
The issue is no longer whether future lawyers will use AI.
They almost certainly will.
The question is whether students can develop the judgment and reasoning necessary to recognize when AI is wrong, incomplete or inappropriate.
Legal work requires more than producing an answer.
Lawyers must question assumptions, defend arguments, react to opposing positions, assess credibility and communicate under pressure.
Those skills are difficult to measure if AI is doing too much of the work behind the scenes.
That is why some law schools are beginning to separate learning to use AI from learning to think without it.
WHO BENEFITS
Students could graduate with both traditional legal reasoning skills and practical experience using AI.
Law firms and clients may benefit from lawyers who understand AI’s capabilities without automatically trusting its output.
Professors also gain clearer ways to determine whether students actually understand the material they submit.
AI companies could ultimately benefit as well if professional users are trained to use their systems more effectively and verify their work rather than treating AI-generated answers as authoritative.
WHO LOSES
Students accustomed to using AI for brainstorming, drafting and revision may face stricter limits during parts of their education.
Law schools also face a difficult balancing act.
Restrict AI too aggressively and graduates could enter the profession without enough experience using tools that law firms increasingly expect them to understand.
Allow too much AI and schools risk evaluating the performance of the technology rather than the ability of the student.
Neither extreme solves the problem.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
Expect more universities and professional schools to experiment with the same basic formula:
Teach AI — but create places where students still have to perform without it.
That could mean more oral examinations, handwritten or supervised tests, device-free discussions, live presentations and assignments requiring students to explain or defend their reasoning.
The University of Chicago describes its approach as AI-resilient education, rather than an attempt to eliminate AI from law school. (University of Chicago Law School)
That distinction may become increasingly important across education.
The goal is not to produce lawyers who never use artificial intelligence.
It is to produce lawyers who know what to do when the AI isn’t there — or when the AI is wrong.
