Artificial intelligence is transforming almost every industry, and the legal profession is no exception.
At the University of Chicago Law School, faculty and administrators are integrating AI into the curriculum, preparing students for a technologically evolving profession while ensuring they master the timeless skills of research, analysis, and judgment.
“We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about AI at the law school,” said William HJ Hubbard, associate dean and Harry N. Wyatt Professor of Law. “Our goal is to find the right balance between encouraging students to explore these new tools that could be very useful, and not taking shortcuts that would be educationally useless. »
Hubbard, co-chair of the law school’s AI committee, observed that law firms, particularly larger ones, are embracing technology, making it imperative for students and new graduates to arrive at their door equipped with some level of AI proficiency.
“We want to equip them with all the legal research and analysis tools, and that now includes AI,” he said.
Last year, the law school added a new session to its fall orientation, “AI and the Legal Profession.”
Its goal is to explain to new students the law school’s policies regarding the use of AI and provide a general overview of how AI can support and hinder learning early in their legal education.
Hubbard, who is leading the session, said the key takeaways are: Generative AI is a useful and powerful tool that students will learn about as part of their legal education at law school; technology has its limits and risks; and AI does not fundamentally change the practice of law.
Last year, the law school also added several new upper-level electives focused on AI to encourage students to think critically about how these tools can be used.
The courses also draw students’ attention to the pitfalls of using AI as a legal expert, says Mark Templeton, clinical professor and director of the Abrams Environmental Law Clinic.
“We can’t outsource the expertise and knowledge to these AI models,” said Templeton, who co-chairs the law school’s AI committee with Hubbard. “These tools can generate what appears to be beautiful writing, but when you look closely, there are so many errors because the tools don’t understand the technical terms well enough. When you use AI, you have a duty to supervise it as you would a junior lawyer or paralegal. And to fulfill that duty, you must be the expert yourself.”
The law school is also in the process of developing AI modules that all first-year law students will be required to complete during their first term.
These modules, which will be launched to students in early 2026, aim to bring everyone to a minimum level of literacy using generative AI. They will be self-directed so that students who are more familiar with basic concepts can quickly move on to more advanced sections.
“There are a lot of generative AI tools out there right now,” Hubbard said. “With these modules, we also want to direct students to the right tools for legal work, ones that are both better suited to the needs of lawyers and less likely to cause confidentiality and privilege issues. These modules are intended to be building blocks for what we will continue to introduce to them during their time here.”
Integrate AI into courses
The law school’s Bigelow program, which teaches students legal research and writing during the 1L year, has also been revamped to take AI into account.
Students are asked not to use AI at all during the fall term while they learn the basics of legal research and writing. In winter, they are allowed to use AI tools, subject to certain guidelines and advice from professors on how to use them appropriately and effectively.
This progressive approach emphasizes the importance of developing foundational skills and then adding tools to support those skills. It also creates a supportive, low-risk environment for students to explore and practice using AI tools.
The law school’s AI policy was designed to be flexible in how AI is used in the classroom. This is why professors have taken many different approaches to using it – or not – in their teaching and courses.
In his clinic, Templeton has fully enabled AI, allowing students to use and explore the tools needed to conduct research, write exploratory questions, and even help write parts of dissertations.
However, it requires students to disclose when they used technology as part of their process so that he and they can examine and debate the quality of its output and improve their use of these technologies.
“There are many tools designed to make a lawyer’s job easier,” he said. “We use Lexis and Westlaw to help us cross-reference cases rather than shepardize them. We use electronic word processors, whereas before we used typewriters. So the question for me is: How can these new tools increase our ability to work more efficiently while still ensuring thoughtful, high-quality representation of our clients? I’m excited to explore that with students.”
Other teachers take a more restrictive approach. For example, Joan Neal, a professor of practice who teaches courses on transactional skills, strictly prohibits the use of AI in her upper-level contract drafting course. The reason, she says, is that it is a fundamental skills course.
“This is the first time they’ve drafted transactional documents,” said AI committee member Neal. “They do not yet have the basic knowledge to judge AI results and know whether they are good or not. It is extremely important – and ethically required – to first focus on learning how to write a contract the hard way to develop this judgment.”
Even if the students themselves don’t use AI, Neal still addresses the topic in his transactional courses. She spends a lot of time critically analyzing and discussing with students the pros and cons of AI, the ethical considerations its use raises, and how they might use it in practice after learning basic skills.
“It’s beneficial for them to understand what AI is good at and what it’s not good at, and not just completely bury their heads in the sand and ignore it,” she said.
Meanwhile, in his ethics course, Neal allows students to use AI in certain phases of the process of writing their final papers.
For example, they can use AI to help brainstorm topics or for additional help with research, but they are prohibited from using it to produce the body text of their articles. She asks students to reveal when they have used AI and briefly rate its usefulness, and she warns them that they are ultimately responsible for everything they submit.
“I think students are discovering that while AI can be helpful in some ways, it can be insufficient in many other ways,” she said. “Generative AI tends to give circular and generic answers to complex ethical questions. It is not (yet) effective in understanding the nuances of legal ethics rules.”
Neal hopes his policies will help students conclude that they must master the material on their own and that the tools are intended to complement, not replace, their own critical thinking.
The launch of the AI Lab
The AI Lab is one of the most innovative and practical AI learning opportunities the Law School has launched to date.
Launched this fall, the lab focuses on creating AI tools, not just learning how to use them.
Legal technology entrepreneur Kimball Dean Parker, JD’13, teaches the course. A Hubbard alumnus, Parker is the founder and CEO of SixFiftya technology company that helps businesses stay compliant with employment law through an automated legal document library and proprietary AI database.
The AI Lab follows a similar model, but instead focuses on tenants’ rights, with students creating a database of meticulously researched summaries of property rental laws nationwide. They learn to approach the project with an entrepreneurial spirit by discovering what goes into making a legal technology product.
Part of the job is determining the extent of the needs. To do this, students interviewed people to understand their questions on the topic and ensure that the tool they are creating is useful to general users.
The final product will be an AI chatbot, similar to ChatGPT but much more accurate and reliable due to the specialized tenant rights database it draws inspiration from. At the end of the course, this AI tool will be released to the public, giving it the potential to have a real impact on people’s lives. It would be aimed at users who need legal help but who, for financial or other reasons, do not have access to a lawyer.
“It’s unlike anything we’ve done before,” Hubbard said. “There are only a few intensive workshops like AI Lab in the entire country. »
“AI is like putty,” Parker said. “You have to play with it to understand it. The AI Lab is an opportunity for students to play in the AI sandbox, gaining hands-on experience with the defining technology of our time. Developing an understanding of the nature of the technology will make it easier for students to learn any similar tools they may encounter in the future, even if they don’t exist yet.”
Learning law in the age of AI
As AI continues to evolve, law school will adapt alongside it. However, it will do so without losing sight of its core mission: to prepare students to think critically, argue rigorously, and take ownership of their work.
“Our graduates are hired for their judgment and mastery of the law,” said Adam Chilton, dean of the law school and Howard G. Krane Professor of Law. “This mastery is not something you can entrust to just any technology or machine. The good judgment, intellectual robustness and reputation of a University of Chicago law graduate are priceless.”
With this in mind, it is also important to recognize that AI is part of the way law is practiced today and that students need to be prepared for it, Chilton continued.
“By thoughtfully integrating AI into the curriculum, the law school is ensuring that its graduates not only adapt to an evolving profession, but lead it,” he said.
—Adapted from an article originally published in UChicago Law Magazine.