Rethinking legal education in the AI era
law.uchicago.edu
Rethinking legal education in the AI era
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Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era
#2I 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 to the internet, electronic files, or apps. And most of all, we will continue our longstanding tradition of emphasizing the Socratic Method as part of these courses.
> Throughout the year, students will write without AI, while also using AI for research, revision, iterating on drafts, and preparation for oral argument. Students and their instructors will review together both their writing and their use of AI.
> For these courses, the use of the Socratic Method, no-device policies, and in-class, no-access exams will remain, but as default rules rather than required policies.
> In all elective courses, we will encourage instructors to experiment with pedagogy.
> We will be adding one additional requirement, which is that all students will be required to engage in an oral discussion of their SRP with their supervising professor, in an in-person setting.Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era
#3This is exactly why all these people talking about a “bubble” I think are misguided.
Are expectations way too high in the near term for tech companies and all of the crap that they’re talking? 100% totally agree. But this is “just another an AI cycle” and if you’re a practitioner it does look different than the previous ones.
However this kind of statement was not released for crypto, or for the Internet. Those were massively impactful technologies.
What you are actively seeing happening now are institutions saying “we have to change the way that we practice” “the way that we did business before is no longer as applicable as it’s going to be changing very rapidly in the future and we’re going to have to deal with that.”
That is not coming from investors or technology companies. That is coming from people who are utilizing this stuff and being impacted by it
So it is absolutely the case that there’s going to be some kind of financial changes but just like every other AI cycle we are left with a aggressively more capable technology that is more pervasive.
Everybody needs to be taking that seriously.
Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era
#4This is exactly why all these people talking about a “bubble” I think are misguided. Are expectations way too high in the near term for tech companies and all of the crap that they’re talking? 100% totally agree. But this is “just another an AI cycle” and if you’re a practitioner it does look different than the previous ones. However this kind of statement was not released for crypto, or for the Internet. Those were…
AI is a real thing and it's the most significant development in the legal sector since the Internet. Saturday morning, I spent a couple of hours getting my arms around some discovery, which before would've taken me the whole day. Even if it never gets any better it's a huge step forward. It's not only going to change legal education, it's going to change what the pipeline looks like in law firms. Similarly to the changes I expect to see in any kind of white collar job where AI replaces a lot of the data analysis/data transformation work, leaving people to do more human interaction.
Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era
#5This is exactly why all these people talking about a “bubble” I think are misguided. Are expectations way too high in the near term for tech companies and all of the crap that they’re talking? 100% totally agree. But this is “just another an AI cycle” and if you’re a practitioner it does look different than the previous ones. However this kind of statement was not released for crypto, or for the Internet. Those were…
> However this kind of statement was not released for crypto, or for the Internet. Those were massively impactful technologies.
How has crypto been massively impactful?
Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era
#6This is exactly why all these people talking about a “bubble” I think are misguided. Are expectations way too high in the near term for tech companies and all of the crap that they’re talking? 100% totally agree. But this is “just another an AI cycle” and if you’re a practitioner it does look different than the previous ones. However this kind of statement was not released for crypto, or for the Internet. Those were…
AI is a real thing and it's the most significant development in the legal sector since the Internet. Saturday morning, I spent a couple of hours getting my arms around some discovery, which before would've taken me the whole day. Even if it never gets any better it's a huge step forward. It's not only going to change legal education, it's going to change what the pipeline looks like in law firms. Similarly to the cha…
Indeed - it helps people become much more efficient. When it comes to law, that includes criminals as well. Whatever gains in efficiency happen on one side, they happen on the other too. Yes, everyone loves to say how they coded a cool side project in a day instead of a week, but what of the situation where AI is placed in a situation with two sides going against each other. The same old fight, but with better weapons.
Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era
#7This is exactly why all these people talking about a “bubble” I think are misguided. Are expectations way too high in the near term for tech companies and all of the crap that they’re talking? 100% totally agree. But this is “just another an AI cycle” and if you’re a practitioner it does look different than the previous ones. However this kind of statement was not released for crypto, or for the Internet. Those were…
The bubble is about the market you wally not about whether statistical models are useful.
I wish people would stop being so dense.
Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era
#8This is exactly why all these people talking about a “bubble” I think are misguided. Are expectations way too high in the near term for tech companies and all of the crap that they’re talking? 100% totally agree. But this is “just another an AI cycle” and if you’re a practitioner it does look different than the previous ones. However this kind of statement was not released for crypto, or for the Internet. Those were…
AI is a real thing and it's the most significant development in the legal sector since the Internet. Saturday morning, I spent a couple of hours getting my arms around some discovery, which before would've taken me the whole day. Even if it never gets any better it's a huge step forward. It's not only going to change legal education, it's going to change what the pipeline looks like in law firms. Similarly to the cha…
> Similarly to the changes I expect to see in any kind of white collar job where AI replaces a lot of the data analysis/data transformation work, leaving people to do more human interaction.
Taking law as the example, I'm not sure I agree.
Legal is largely a distress purchase. Very few clients actually want to spend time interacting with outside corporate counsel, a divorce lawyer, a personal injury lawyer, etc.
The real value of an attorney is accountability. A person with a license and reputation who is on the hook for the advice they provide. But accountability is only worth buying if the judgment behind it is sound, and that judgment takes years to build.
The problem is that much of what makes a "good" lawyer comes from years of doing unglamorous work as a junior, financed by clients. If AI reduces the ability of firms to subsidize training the next generation of lawyers, you get fewer "good" lawyers and the whole market keeps eroding.
From what I've seen, the top AI models can now produce contracts that are on par with what I would have had to pay thousands of dollars for a decade ago, and the agents/chatbots are capable of collaborating with you to address fairly complex issues. If you have the money, you still run everything by a real attorney of course for the accountability piece, but the future is not bright for contract attorneys because people know even they're probably using AI to do half their work.
Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era
#9This is exactly why all these people talking about a “bubble” I think are misguided. Are expectations way too high in the near term for tech companies and all of the crap that they’re talking? 100% totally agree. But this is “just another an AI cycle” and if you’re a practitioner it does look different than the previous ones. However this kind of statement was not released for crypto, or for the Internet. Those were…
> However this kind of statement was not released for crypto, or for the Internet. Those were massively impactful technologies. How has crypto been massively impactful?
The only way crypto touches lawyers that I can think of is smart contracts, and that's been.. minimally impactful at most.
Re: Rethinking legal education in the AI era
#10I think more universities will follow. Every prof I speak to has noticed shorter attention spans, low effort LLM writing, and inability to assess competence.