The University of Chicago Law School today released an AI Strategy Statement that reflects a new vision for legal education in the age of artificial intelligence. The strategy statement, titled “Rethinking Legal Education in the AI Era,” focuses on strengthening both fundamental legal skills such as critical thinking and practical AI skills that the legal profession now requires.
This AI approach, effective in the fall quarter, is part of the law school’s ongoing efforts to thoughtfully integrate AI into its curriculum. It aligns with UChicago’s broader goal of ensuring students learn to think “with, without and about AI.”
“The law school is proud to have a unique focus on producing graduates prepared to be outstanding lawyers,” said Dean Adam Chilton. “We have always been willing to innovate our curriculum to ensure that this is always the case. This moment is no different.”
The strategy builds on curricular changes the law school has implemented since 2024, including creating AI modules for 1Ls, integrating AI tools into clinics, launching the innovative AI Lab, and providing a framework for when AI should and should not be used in the legal research and writing program.
But a lot has changed in a very short period of time, said William Hubbard, Clifton R. Musser Professor of Law and Economics and chair of the Law School’s AI Committee. The legal profession has already been transformed by AI and will continue to do so, Hubbard noted. “We’re not talking about the future tense here anymore.”
“AI is part of our world whether we like it or not, and this new path forward celebrates all of the best aspects of a UChicago law education.” Clinical Professor Mark Templeton
AI has also become much more powerful and accurate, Hubbard continued. “It is no longer practical to base policy around what you can and can’t use AI for as we move toward a world where everything we do has AI integrated.”
Clinical Professor Mark Templeton, who has served on the AI committee since its inception, emphasized that the new vision offers a unique UChicago path forward.
“This is really about how we maintain and implement our core values in a changing technological world,” he explained. “AI is part of our world whether we like it or not, and this new path forward celebrates all of the best aspects of a UChicago law education: including rigorous intellectual research, critical thinking, ethical reflection, effective communication, sound judgment and empathy for the clients our students will serve in their future careers.”
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Core elements of the new AI strategy
The Law School’s new vision takes a realistic and nuanced approach to AI, guided by three overarching themes:
• Developing AI-resilient pedagogy and assessment;
• Improve the “essential human” skills that characterize excellent lawyers; And
• Teaching the responsible, effective and ethical use of AI
The concept of “AI resilience” is important, Hubbard noted. “The goal is to engage students in using AI in a way that enhances learning rather than hinders it.”
A key part of the new strategy is removing AI at critical points in the learning process, such as when students are taking exams or learning basic concepts in the classroom. For example, the Law School will implement a blanket ban on electronic devices in all core 1st grade classes, with some limited exceptions.
The relationship between AI and school is very different from the relationship between AI and work, Hubbard said. “The idea that AI creates shortcuts, saves time and eliminates effort; these are all things that could be very useful in a professional context where you want to maximize efficiency. But in an educational context they are very, very harmful when it comes to doing things the hard way – because that’s how you learn.”
The no-device rule is not entirely new to law school. A number of faculty members have implemented this practice in their classrooms over the years, and many – both faculty and students – have reported positive effects on the quality of discussion and learning when the environment is free of distractions, not just from AI, but from technology in general.
As part of the new strategy, senior level writing requirements for large-scale research papers (SRPs) will also change. All students are required to participate in an oral discussion about their SRP topic, whether as a presentation in class or one-on-one with their professor.
The goal is to ensure students do this “Learning the important and fundamental concepts of law, learning to think for yourself, and learning to think rigorously and creatively,” said Dean Chilton.
Other elements of the strategy include the use of technology. Students have the opportunity – and are expected – to learn how to use AI effectively and ethically.
The law school’s clinics play an important role in introducing students to ethical, real-world uses of AI in law. Many clinics – such as the Criminal Juvenile Justice Clinic, which uses JusticeTextand the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, which uses VisaLaw.AI–have already introduced AI tools specifically for their areas of activity. The Law School will continue to expand access to new AI tools so that clinical students can continue to benefit from these unique hands-on training opportunities.
Templeton, who uses AI in some of his work with the Abrams Environmental Law Clinic, said that AI tools can be very helpful, but that it is not enough to obtain AI tools and simply make them available to students. Collaboration and practical guidance are essential to their effectiveness because “As with many other tools, one must truly understand their capabilities and how to use them, particularly by critically reviewing their results.” The new strategy recognizes this, he added.
Hubbard agreed that well-used AI can be a boon to student learning in other settings, too. “If you want to use AI as a learning partner, if you want to use AI to take your notes from class and then create questions to quiz you on the material, that’s great,” he said. “It’s not a shortcut. There are ways in which the use of AI can strengthen the learning process, and that’s what we’re trying to move toward.”
Professor Hubbard highlights five things that make UChicago Law’s AI strategy unique.
An intentional, iterative process
Developing the new strategic statement was a highly collaborative process in which UChicago Law alumni played a central role. The statement is the result of months of discussions and feedback from alumni, leading lawyers, and business and technology experts to understand the real changes AI is bringing to the way law is practiced.
As part of this effort, the law school has established a new AI Advisory Board comprised of 15 alumni from leading law firms and AI technology companies. Input was also obtained from focus groups with junior staff, students, and UChicago leadership.
A recurring theme that emerged from these discussions pleasantly surprised Hubbard. He had worried that different interest groups might give conflicting advice, but that wasn’t the case. “They all said the same thing: You can’t let AI interfere with the learning process that students go through in law school,” he said.
“The law school continues to place rigorous analysis and the development of judgment at the heart of its curriculum, complemented but not replaced by artificial intelligence. This is exactly what success in the profession requires.” Dave Gordon, 1998, partner at Sidley
Dave Gordon, ’98, partner at Sidley and one of the members of the AI Council, emphasized this point.
“The law school continues to place rigorous analysis and the development of judgment at the heart of its curriculum, complemented but not replaced by artificial intelligence,” Gordon said. “That’s exactly what success in your career requires.”
Chilton emphasized that alumni partnerships are an important resource for the law school as it continues to evaluate and adapt its approach to AI. Whether it’s providing insights into new developments, helping the law school gain access to new AI tools for students, or visiting the law school to give lunch lectures, “The alumni community serves as a bridge for us to all developments in the practice of law,” he said.
“How AI shows up in practice will vary from company to company and practice area to practice area,” Chilton continued. “Although we have many conversations, there is still more to know.”
A commitment to excellence and innovation
The Law School’s AI Strategy Statement reflects the Law School’s historic commitment to excellence and innovation. From maintaining a strict curve grading system when peer schools moved away from it to redesigning the 1L curriculum years ago to include transactional law courses, this new strategy is another example of UChicago Law’s willingness to think outside the box.
“I think it’s extremely healthy to see this level of engagement and experimentation in legal education,” Chilton said. “I’m excited to see how our faculty will rethink the way they teach seminars, how they run their clinics, and how they encourage lecture attendance in different ways. The amount of pedagogical innovation taking place in such a short period of time has the faculty—and me—excited about this moment for legal education.”
Dean Adam Chilton discusses UChicago Law’s approach to AI.
For Hubbard, the technological innovations of AI and the law school’s new strategy for addressing them evoke a very different feeling. They forced him to think about what it means to be human. “I think it challenges the legal profession as a collective body to think about this question,” he said.
And what does it mean for? Lawyers To be human when much of what they do can now be done by machines?
The answer, Hubbard concluded, lies in the work itself.
A lot of legal work is not just about getting something done, but about… Person “Getting something done,” Hubbard explained. “I teach civil procedure and we talk about the legal process by which an injured person seeks redress against another person. This is not an automated process; it is a process that must involve each of them and treat each of them as human beings.”
He continued: “So when we talk about highlighting the essential human as one of the three core components of our vision, that is very intentional. AI is an amazing tool and we are using it. But our students are people, and the customers they will have are people.”
Learn more about AI at the Law School and read the full AI strategy statement at law.uchicago.edu/ai-hub.
https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/uchicago-law-unveils-new-ai-strategy-statement
