US Law Schools Rethink AI Rules As Technology Reshapes Legal Education

US law students returning to campus this autumn have encountered sharply different approaches to artificial intelligence, with some schools restricting laptops and phones in class while others require students to use AI in certain courses, Reuters reported.

 

Some students are facing both approaches simultaneously as law schools seek to balance traditional legal education with training in a technology that is rapidly transforming the legal profession.

 

At least a dozen US law schools introduced new or revised AI policies over the summer, setting out when and how students may use the technology in their studies or requiring them to take courses covering AI.

 

The moves come amid a wider push across higher education to respond to AI, including the opportunities it presents and the risks it poses to student learning. A report on AI and education from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last month said the ease of obtaining answers from chatbots can induce "cognitive surrender".

 

“It certainly is a time of fundamental questioning of what we do and how we do it,” said University of Georgia law dean Usha Rodrigues, whose school released a new AI policy in August that includes a default ban on devices in the classroom and requires students to take at least one AI-related technology course.

 

The “analog classroom” policy was partly prompted by stories of students consulting AI during the traditional law school practice of professors cold-calling students in class, Rodrigues said.

 

“It's not really about getting the right answer,” she said of the Socratic method long used in law schools. “It’s about being on the spot, thinking on your feet, sometimes getting it right, sometimes getting it wrong, and listening to your colleagues and their answers and evaluating them critically.”

 

The stakes are especially high for law schools because lawyers have professional and ethical obligations relating to their competence. They may defend clients in death penalty cases or represent corporations in billion-dollar litigation or deals, while confidentiality rules also affect how they can use AI.

 

The University of California, Berkeley School of Law in May unveiled a particularly restrictive AI policy that bars students from using AI to brainstorm a paper topic, summarise a legal rule for use in a paper, correct grammatical mistakes or identify repetitive passages.

 

The law school also offers a range of AI courses, but its student-run campus club, AI at Berkeley Law, said in a statement to Reuters that the default rules run counter to the school's positioning as a leader in technology and law, and make some students "recoil".

 

“There’s a difference between outsourcing legal reasoning to AI and using AI as a tool within a legal workflow, and legal education should teach that distinction rather than avoid it,” the group said.

 

Berkeley Law professor Colleen Chien, who serves on the school's AI Leadership Committee, told Reuters that faculty members are free to deviate from the default policy if doing so serves their teaching and learning goals. "The policy is the starting point of a conversation, it's not the end of it," Chien said.

 

Similar AI clubs have emerged at other law schools, reflecting students' concerns that the technology will be necessary for their careers as law firms race to incorporate AI into legal practice. Law firms and other employers now expect law school graduates to have a basic familiarity with AI, University of Texas law dean Bobby Chesney said during a recent webinar on AI in law schools.

 

A New Reality

 

Suffolk University Law School dean Andrew Perlman used ChatGPT to compile publicly available law school AI policies and in August released an online database containing information from 180 law schools.

 

A growing number of law schools now require students to receive instruction on AI during orientation, in mandatory first-year courses or through standalone AI classes. At least 36 have some form of mandated AI instruction, according to the database.

 

“I think what's happened over the last few years is an acceptance and an expectation that AI is here to stay,” Perlman said.

 

The University of Chicago Law School in July became the first to ban laptops and phones from required first-year classes to ensure that “students actually learn to think critically, strategically, and independently without relying on AI”, before teaching them to use those tools later on, according to the school's new policy.

 

Columbia Law School’s new AI policy, released in August, allows students to use AI to “test arguments, solicit criticism, and explore alternative articulations” as well as correct spelling and grammar in their written work. But that work must be “student generated” and reflect “ideas, arguments, analysis, and expression that are the product of the student's own intellectual creativity and judgment.”

 

The University of Michigan takes a middle ground by allowing students to use AI to brainstorm and research papers but not to draft, edit or revise their work.

 

Avyay Casheekar, president of Michigan Law's AI Law and Policy Society, said the school's policy is a "safe position" that appears to be in line with those of other law schools. But he worried both that over-reliance on AI could stunt learning and that excessive caution could stymie "inventive" uses of the technology.

 

Nearly all schools ban AI use in exams, said University of Houston law professor Seth Chandler, who writes a blog about AI in legal education. Once-common take-home exams have given way to in-class tests using software that blocks internet access on students’ laptops, preventing AI use, he said.

 

“Faculty do not want students taking exams with AI in front of them, except maybe in some unusual cases,” Chandler said. “The legal material needs to be in your brain at the time that you are assessed.”