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Rethinking legal education in the AI era

law.uchicago.edu

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Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#81

Post by rayiner »

w10-1 wrote: post #27
wxw wrote: post #2

I think this plan is really quite well-balanced and sane. Also kudos to UChicago Law School for including an actual implementation plan here, not just vague thoughts. Some bits I found interesting: [For required courses in year 1] > Across all 1L sections, we will prohibit the use of electronic devices such as laptops, tablets, and phones in the classroom. > Additionally, examinations will be in-class without access…

These are the right bits to call out. But the effect is to make success more dependent on networks. (If they are using AI as an excuse to make networks more relevant than skills, it relieves competitive pressure.) First, a main draw of law journals is the filing cabinet of past exams as remembered by past students, available only to journal members i.e., friends of connected people. Reducing one's ability to remember…

> Second, the "Socratic" Method for teaching law is nothing like it is in philosophy; it's more of a weird combination of hide-the-ball and distraction that again ensures people who can see through the clouds are using out-of-band information, and share it only with those they seek to enlist

How so? In my view, the socratic method is one of the few useful parts of law school. Most people, even quite smart people, think in a fuzzy way. Their ideas can seem superficially compelling in written form, but often fall apart when you start questioning their assumptions and chain of logical reasoning.

The biggest problem is that most law schools don’t use socratic method, because it’s a lot of work for teachers. Just cold calling a student and asking them to explain what happened in a case isn’t socratic method.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#82

Post by tossandthrow »

SoftTalker wrote: post #74
tossandthrow wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument that ownership and reputation generally ensures better answers than agents is absurd. It is entirely clear that is it not the case when I compare agent generated apps with what contracted software teams have produced. For medicine it is likely worse. Doctors do care, but they have to give an advice based on their 15 year old knowledge - they simply can't read through 83 papers in a quick session. I thin…

15 year old knowledge is fine in most cases. Human diseases and their treatments haven't really changed in that time, and those that have are pretty well known. You will get the "standard of care" as a starting point.

You are citing a legacy institutional system where updating a "standard of care" was a major institutional chance.

You likely have to change your idea about this. Heck, this view was wrong 6 months ago. Sticking with is becomes a hazard to patients.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#83

Post by rglullis »

rayiner wrote: post #80
rglullis wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I am not saying that a smart person will outperform a trained lawyer because of the AI tools. What I am saying is that going to schools no longer is the only way for smart people to be able to do the job of a lawyer.

Going to school was never the only way for smart people to be able to do the job of a lawyer. Law is like consulting and finance in that the “school” part is mostly filtering and socialization and signaling. The actual education is maybe like 1 year of the three years people spend in law school.

AFAIK you can only practice law if you actually went to a school. So there is that...

But maybe I was too subtle in my previous comment. I absolutely agree with you. What I am trying to say is that these schools trying to come up with policies about tests and applications in the age of AI have nothing to do with education. They are all just grasping at whatever straws to try to keep the idea that their institutions are somehow special.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#84

Post by dgellow »

rayiner wrote: post #76
dgellow wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how that's related. Apple has high margin on the hardware they sell, extremely optimized logistics, they offer a whole ecosystem of hardware and services. They are in a completely different line of business than AI vendors

You said: "AI companies would literally need the entire world as their TAM, using their services non stop to justify the valuations and level of expenditures we are seeing." You asserted that AI companies would need "the entire world as their TAM using their services non stop" to justify a few trillion in valuation. Yet Apple has a $5 trillion valuation just selling phones and computers, mostly to consumers and not b…

You're mixing up a few things. A company valuation alone is irrelevant, you have to take in account the way it relates to the underlying business. In the case of both google and apple their valuation is mostly based on the fact that they own entire ecosystems and have consistently generated significant profits over decades. That's not the case of AI vendors. Their valuation is based solely on the belief they will eventually develop an actual business model.

Apple and alphabet are both trading at something like 10x revenue, with very high operating margins.

On the other hand you have AI vendors: OpenAI $852 valuation is ~34x revenue, with $14B losses projected for 2026. Their infra commitment through 2030 is more than $600B (that's on the low end of numbers floating around).

Just for the infra expenditure, if we assume a conservative ROIC of 5%, 8% operating margin: they need an operating profit of $30B/y, and a revenue of $375B/y. That's 100% of the projected 2030 AI infra market.

Edit: actually, their 2026 losses seem to be even higher, the $14B number is from a January leak, but more recent projections are at >$22B losses for 2025

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#85

Post by dgellow »

tossandthrow wrote: post #71
dgellow wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that a layman has no way to know if what the llm told them is better than experts around them, or even just remotely correct. A wrong response and a correct, informative, helpful response look exactly the same, the LLM will express the same level of confidence and will defend them in both cases. So, on one hand you can get an expert take that might be wrong, but is linked to an actual person, with a re…

Your argument that ownership and reputation generally ensures better answers than agents is absurd. It is entirely clear that is it not the case when I compare agent generated apps with what contracted software teams have produced. For medicine it is likely worse. Doctors do care, but they have to give an advice based on their 15 year old knowledge - they simply can't read through 83 papers in a quick session. I thin…

> Your argument that ownership and reputation generally ensures better answers than agents is absurd.

That's not my argument... I didn't draw the conclusion that because of those 2 factors humans generally provide better answers. I personally have no idea if that's the case, and for sure wouldn't rely on my personal feelings to evaluate that

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#86

Post by lelanthran »

agentprose wrote: post #11

I recent beat an actual lawyer as a pro se plaintiff in a civil suit. It was all codex and claude, using the cli agents to write the "import docx" scripts that wrote all the filings, and scripts to assemble exhibits. I don't know how long the bars will be able to hold onto their monopoly powers when confronted with LLMs that are measurably superior.

> I recent beat an actual lawyer as a pro se plaintiff in a civil suit.

So? I beat actual lawyers in trials and hearings five times between 2008 and 2019. That last one was actually a team of attorney + advocate (senior bar member).

You could always "beat" them just by reading and preparing. Now, you+AI beat a lawyer. Tomorrow, do you really think that you+AI will beat lawyer+AI?

And once we stop getting well-trained lawyers (because everyone is just a meatbag accessory to an AI), whether you win or not is likely to be a coin toss.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#87

Post by lelanthran »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #15
agentprose wrote: post #11

I recent beat an actual lawyer as a pro se plaintiff in a civil suit. It was all codex and claude, using the cli agents to write the "import docx" scripts that wrote all the filings, and scripts to assemble exhibits. I don't know how long the bars will be able to hold onto their monopoly powers when confronted with LLMs that are measurably superior.

I've seen lawyers lose to non-lawyers who didn't use all that, just because the lawyers didn't do their work, thinking, no doubt, "I'm a lawyer I will just win", at any rate there is a well known aphorism that a lawyer who represents themselves has a fool for a client. finally, was this thing you beat the actual lawyer at in their specific specialty, since lawyers are often focused on particular aspects of the law?

> at any rate there is a well known aphorism that a lawyer who represents themselves has a fool for a client.

IME, many lawyers who represent others also have fools for clients.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#88

Post by tossandthrow »

dgellow wrote: post #85
tossandthrow wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument that ownership and reputation generally ensures better answers than agents is absurd. It is entirely clear that is it not the case when I compare agent generated apps with what contracted software teams have produced. For medicine it is likely worse. Doctors do care, but they have to give an advice based on their 15 year old knowledge - they simply can't read through 83 papers in a quick session. I thin…

> Your argument that ownership and reputation generally ensures better answers than agents is absurd. That's not my argument... I didn't draw the conclusion that because of those 2 factors humans generally provide better answers. I personally have no idea if that's the case, and for sure wouldn't rely on my personal feelings to evaluate that

You clearly appear to setup that argument

> So, on one hand you can get an expert take that might be wrong, but is linked to an actual person, with a reputation and some level of ownership.

Regardless, I agree.

The newest studies still works on llms that are two years old. It doesn't appear that proper medical harnesses with frontier models has been evaluated.

My slight intuition is that we will already now see results that are much better than average human doctors.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#89

Post by rayiner »

rglullis wrote: post #83
rayiner wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going to school was never the only way for smart people to be able to do the job of a lawyer. Law is like consulting and finance in that the “school” part is mostly filtering and socialization and signaling. The actual education is maybe like 1 year of the three years people spend in law school.

AFAIK you can only practice law if you actually went to a school. So there is that... But maybe I was too subtle in my previous comment. I absolutely agree with you. What I am trying to say is that these schools trying to come up with policies about tests and applications in the age of AI have nothing to do with education . They are all just grasping at whatever straws to try to keep the idea that their institutions…

You’re generally correct, but you can become a lawyer without going to law school in 4 states. But this is a relatively modern requirement. ABA lobbying encouraged the policy in 1920 and most states adopted it by the 1940s and 1950s.

Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era

#90

Post by duped »

uneoneuno wrote: post #59
agentprose wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case, the defendant was indeed breaking the law, but it was a "new" law untested by case law, so it was somewhat risky how a judge would interpret it. The counsel of record for the defendant was bringing "recycled briefs" energy, possibly out of overconfidence.

It is clear by how you're talking you may not be a 'lawyer' but your exposure to building and handling your case (very cool with AI I agree) has clearly elevated your lawfare knowledge above average levels.

Please don't make the word "lawfare" a thing. It was invented by a criminal to argue that being investigated for his crimes was somehow corrupt.
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