Faculty do not want law students to rely on AI to generate answers during class discussions.
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Even as the legal profession uses generative artificial intelligence, some of the country’s top law schools limit its use.
In May, the University of California, Berkeley School of Law announced that starting this summer, students will be prohibited from using AI in “conceptualizing, outlining, drafting, revising, translating, or editing work submitted for credit” by default this summer in order to “ensure our students the best possible legal education by enabling them to perform activities essential to excelling in the practice of law.” Last month, the dean of the University of Texas Law School at Austin urged faculty to “make intensive use of class time to engage students in sustained and intense dialogue” by ensuring that students “are not distracted by (let alone relying on) what is happening on their screen.”
And late last week, the University of Chicago Law School announced that it will ban laptops, tablets and phones in the classroom for first-year law students starting this fall, as part of its broader strategy to adapt legal education to the AI age. The ban is intended to prevent generative AI from undermining the Socratic method, long a hallmark of legal education; Instead of spending class time lecturing, law professors ask students questions about legal theories and principles.
“We believe this type of exchange should occur without the mediation of machines,” said Adam Chilton, dean of UChicago Law Inside Higher Ed. “There have already been discussions about whether or not laptops are useful in the classroom because they can be distracting to both the student using them and the students around them, but these concerns are only heightened in the age of AI. You don’t want students to just type the case name into Claude or ChatGPT, ask there for a summary and the questions their professor is likely to ask, and then just read those answers when you call them.”
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No “robots arguing in court”
Because the ability to engage in live discourse and debate without the help of large language models is perhaps the most AI-safe skill that aspiring lawyers can develop, especially as more law firms rely on generative AI rather than junior lawyers to review and summarize legal documents.
In addition to banning phones, laptops and tablets in the classroom, UChicago Law School is also adding an in-person oral exam component to the extensive research work that all students must complete to receive their law degree.
“[These restrictions] “Force students to think independently, answer a question on the fly, listen to arguments, respond to arguments and think about their own reasons,” Chilton said. “That’s exactly the kind of skill [lawyers] Needed during a stressful meeting with a client, negotiation, hearing or court proceeding.”
And Chilton predicts that AI will not replace oral arguments by human lawyers any time soon.
“I don’t think robots will argue for us in court,” Chilton said. “It will still be people standing in front of a judge and jury and making oral arguments.”
But Chicago Law is also balancing its new AI restrictions with the reality that “AI tools are already widely available to our students and our graduates are expected to be ready to use them in the practice of law,” according to a memo announcing the policy changes. According to a recent report from the American Bar Association, 58 percent of lawyers have integrated generative AI into everyday tasks such as drafting correspondence and conducting general research, while 54 percent use it for brainstorming and 47 percent use it for document summarization.
While first-year legal research and writing students are required to write without AI, they can use it to assist with research, revisions and preparation for oral arguments – and a professor will provide feedback on both. According to the memo, this approach will allow students to “develop their own writing skills independent of generative AI tools while also developing their ability to monitor the AI and critique its results.”
And like many other law schools across the country, UChicago Law will continue to offer electives that examine the responsible, effective and ethical use of AI in the legal profession.
That’s also the goal of the new AI restrictions at UC Berkeley’s law school, which offers numerous courses on the intersection of AI and law and allows instructors to deviate from the standard AI ban “for courses intentionally designed to teach AI fluency (or for other courses where the instructor decides that a particular rule is pedagogically appropriate),” the policy notice says.
“We are in no way hostile to AI. We recognize its importance,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of Berkeley Law In Higher Ed. “But if a student submits work for a grade, it should be the student’s work and not the AI, unless the professor wants to apply a different rule.”
He added that the policy is also about holding future lawyers accountable, especially since numerous practicing lawyers have been penalized for filing court briefs that contain AI-generated errors.
“When students are taught about AI from the beginning of their law school, they are reminded that AI sometimes hallucinates, cites cases and gets things wrong,” Chemerinsky said. “We teach students that they are responsible for the work they submit. When you file a brief in court, you are responsible for it.”
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-innovation/artificial-intelligence/2026/07/14/ai-proof-lawyers-some-law-schools-restrict
