Law schools are embracing AI in the classroom, equipping future lawyers with the courses and skills to spearhead what could be a technological revolution in law.
And as those AI-savvy graduates enter the workforce, they’re introducing cutting-edge AI techniques to their more experienced colleagues.
Alex Crowley, an IP associate at Baker McKenzie who graduated from Northwestern Law School in 2021, took an AI legal reasoning course as a student that he says is now integral to his daily practice.
“My AI-related coursework in law school gave me a solid foundation in AI and its applications,” Crowley said he developed a “deep understanding” of both the potential and challenges associated with the technology.
Crowley regularly uses AI tools specifically designed for legal work to perform research and create summaries of cases and statutes.
He has also leveraged his AI know-how into a leadership role in AI implementation at the firm. He guides his colleagues on the use of various AI tools and explores ways to enhance their work through AI.
For example, Crowley said, he helped lead development of custom AI-powered solutions for clients that accelerate global incident responses.
“We owe it to our clients to understand how AI works, the opportunities it presents, and the risks associated with its use,” Crowley said. “Starting to develop this understanding in law school will yield lawyers better prepared to provide practical advice to clients regarding AI and deliver more value to clients via use of available tools like AI.”
Expanding Tech Offerings
Northwestern, Crowley’s alma mater, started integrating AI into its law program in 2016, with at least six courses focused solely on AI—including a new course this semester that teaches students how to leverage AI in litigation.
“Students have come back and said ‘This is really important, and I understand how machine learning systems work, and I understand the different copyright issues,’ for example,” said Dan Linna, director of law and technology initiatives at Northwestern University’s law and engineering schools.
Linna, who also serves on Illinois’ Supreme Court AI Task Force, even offered a course in 2018—a course that Crowley took—teaching students to design and build AI applications for law using user-friendly tools.
And Northwestern isn’t an outlier.
The American Bar Association reported in its first “AI in Legal Education Survey” in June that more than half of the 29 law schools it surveyed between December 2023 and February 2024 offer dedicated courses on AI. Eighty three percent of those schools provide curricular options like clinics to help students learn to use AI tools effectively.
Recent graduate Jared Bauman was part of an initial cohort of students who participated in Vanderbilt Law School’s newly launched AI Law Lab, a collection of courses, modules and seminars designed to prep future lawyers for AI’s integration into law services.
Students learn the basics of large language models and various generative AI tools, as well as some tools specific to the legal profession.
“It was a really fascinating class to take,” said Bauman, now an associate at Holtzman Vogel focusing on litigation and election law. “We learned about AI’s capabilities and how law firms are using different AI products, but also about the wrong ways to use it and the responsible ways to use it.”
Bauman recalls studying a case in which a New York lawyer who used ChatGPT to write a brief cited a non-existent case. That case served as a cautionary tale for the students.
“We learned why that happened and how we could avoid it in our legal careers,” said Bauman.
Powering Coursework
Michelle Zhang, a Georgetown University Law Center student, applied her AI course knowledge during a summer internship with a tech firm in Taiwan, bridging classroom learning with real-world experience abroad.
“I used AI to translate all these documents that we needed translated from Thai to English, and that worked much better than Google Translate,” she said. Zhang noted that her AI expertise, gained through her coursework, was a key factor in the company’s decision to hire her, as they were eager to leverage her unique skill set.
Another Georgetown Law student has taken the intersection of a legal education and AI to another level with an app that helps law students effectively incorporate AI into their studies.
Brian Rhindress drew on his coursework in AI, including using large language models for case summarization and briefing, to create StudyZap, an “AI-powered study companion.”
Rhindress said his app enables an AI assistant to convert uploaded cases and lectures into interactive study tools that are accessible by text or voice.
“AI gives you the ability to learn actively in a really personalized way,” said Rhindress. “And it’s just not sort of passively filling your mind with reading, but you’re really deeply, actively engaging with the material.”
Georgetown’s curriculum offers at least 17 courses addressing various aspects of AI, from legal writing to clinical practice.
Despite its clear embrace of AI education, Daniel Wilf-Townsend, associate professor and chairman of the school’s AI task force, offered a measured perspective.
“We’re still in the early days of seeing how AI tools can and can’t be used productively in the legal context,” he said.
Nevertheless, Wilf-Townsend said, AI tools and concepts are becoming essential for future legal professionals, so it’s crucial that students build the skills that will be useful for them going forward.
“AI may become the friend of lawyers, or it may be that if quality doesn’t continue to improve, there are hurdles that you know that prevent it from being a daily tool that people use in the law,” Wilf-Townsend. “I could imagine either of those paths developing.”
—With assistance from MP McQueen
To contact the reporter on this story: Stefan Sykes at stefanasykes@gmail.com
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