This tab gives a quick look at how AI and Generative AI are being used in law school and legal practice, with helpful resources to explore further.
Key AI technologies used in law include:
Natural Language Processing (NLP): Enables machines to understand and generate human language, useful in legal research and contract analysis.
Machine Learning (ML): Allows systems to learn from legal data and improve predictions, such as in litigation analytics.
Large Language Models (LLMs): Such as ChatGPT or Claude, which can generate, summarize, and explain legal texts with varying degrees of accuracy.
ChatGPT Goes to Law School, Jonathan H. Choi, Kristin E. Hickman, Amy Monahan, & Daniel Schwarcz, Journal of Legal Education (forthcoming, 2023)
This study evaluates how well ChatGPT can perform on law school exams without human help. Using real exams from the University of Minnesota Law School, the AI was tested on 95 multiple-choice and 12 essay questions and graded blindly through standard procedures. ChatGPT earned an average grade equivalent to a C+, passing all four courses. The paper discusses the implications for legal education and practice, and offers example prompts and guidance on using ChatGPT for legal writing support.
This piece offers actionable and detailed advice for lawyers and law students on harnessing the power of AI large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-4, Bing Chat, and Bard for legal research and writing.
Should Law Students Be Using AI — Even on Exams? by Professor Robert Diab, March 26, 2025
In this article, Professor Robert Diab explores the ongoing debate over permitting law students to use AI tools during exams. Critics argue that AI use compromises the assessment of a student’s individual comprehension and analytical skills, particularly in foundational legal subjects. Conversely, a more practical view acknowledges AI’s increasing relevance in legal practice and supports its inclusion in exams to better mirror real-world conditions. Diab proposes a middle ground: instead of banning AI, legal education should evolve to evaluate students on how effectively they use these tools—focusing on their skill in crafting precise prompts and critically assessing AI-generated responses.
AI is Coming for our Classrooms! A Survival Guide for the AI Apocalypse, RIPS Law Librarian Blog, Julie Tedjeske Crane, January 8, 2024. This article examines the role of artificial intelligence in legal education, emphasizing that AI should be seen as an opportunity rather than a threat. The author advocates for integrating AI and technology into law school curricula to better prepare students for the modern legal market. Key points include the potential of AI to enhance legal training, the importance of ethical considerations, and the necessity for future lawyers to understand AI’s implications in practice. The article concludes that embracing AI is crucial to ensuring law students are equipped for the evolving legal landscape.
The article examines why ChatGPT struggles with formatting legal citations in accordance with The Bluebook. It points out key limitations, including the AI's inability to consistently apply required formatting styles like italics and small caps, as well as its frequent mistakes in generating, abbreviating, or structuring citations accurately. These shortcomings make it unreliable for precise legal citation work.
ChatGPT, Professor of Law,Tammy Pettinato Oltz, 2023 U. Ill. J.L. Tech. & Pol'y 208 (2023)
In this paper, the author tests ChatGPT’s ability to assist law professors with common tasks by running four service-related and three teaching-related prompts through the free version of the model. ChatGPT performed excellently on service-related tasks and moderately on teaching-related tasks. The paper concludes that ChatGPT can generate near-complete solutions for routine tasks and serve as a useful starting point for more complex tasks.
The Ultimate Study Partner: Using A Custom Chatbot To Optimize Student Studying During Law School, Sean A. Harrington, SSRN (draft working paper), Jun. 7, 2023
This article examines how artificial intelligence can enhance law students' study experiences by supplementing traditional teaching methods. The author explores various AI applications, such as Large Language Models, that can turn static study materials into interactive learning tools. Students can upload documents like outlines, lecture notes, and textbooks into AI systems to generate summaries, practice questions, essays, and even visual aids for memorization. The article highlights AI’s potential in creating personalized study outlines, simplifying legal texts, converting materials into audio or visual formats, and automating spaced-repetition flashcards. The author argues that AI can help law students gain deeper insights, identify knowledge gaps, and improve memorization and application skills, positioning AI as an "ultimate study partner" that enhances legal education.
AI In Law School: A Leap into The Unknown, Law360, Daniel Connolly, August 2, 2023
The narrative highlights a divide in legal academia over the use of AI. During a comedy event at the University of Memphis Law School, skepticism—particularly toward ChatGPT—was expressed through humor. Law student Tiffany Odom-Rodriquez raised concerns that AI could encourage plagiarism and weaken core legal skills. While some institutions, such as Arizona State University, support the use of AI in law school applications, others like the University of Michigan discourage it. Although AI's ability to handle routine tasks is appreciated by some, a recent survey shows that only 9% of law students currently use generative AI, and just 25% intend to in the future, reflecting ongoing worries about its accuracy and possible effects on legal careers.
Learning the Law with AI: Why Law School Students Are Tentative about Using ChatGPT, Sarah Wellen, LawNext, June 2nd, 2023
A LexisNexis survey reveals that many lawyers are already integrating generative AI into their work, using it for research (59%), improving efficiency (54%), drafting documents (45%), and writing emails (34%). In contrast, law students remain wary. Only 9% currently use generative AI, and just 25% plan to adopt it in the future. Their concerns center on AI’s potential to generate inaccurate or outdated information, which could undermine the reliability of legal research. Students also worry about academic integrity, fearing that AI could facilitate plagiarism or cheating. Additionally, they argue that AI lacks the capacity to grasp nuanced legal reasoning, which could hinder the development of essential critical thinking skills. The growing use of AI in routine legal work also sparks anxiety over job prospects for entry-level lawyers.
ChatGPT Is an OK Law Student. Can It Be an OK Lawyer?, Bloomberg Law, January 27, 2023
This Bloomberg Law opinion piece explores the potential impact of ChatGPT on the legal profession. It notes that ChatGPT scored around the level of a C+ student on four law exams at the University of Minnesota Law School, while performing better on a business exam at Wharton. While the article concedes that ChatGPT is unlikely to replace human lawyers, it highlights possible benefits, including lower costs, faster service, and greater access to legal assistance. At the same time, it raises important concerns about ethical implications, quality control, and liability associated with relying on AI for legal work.
Legal Scholarship Through the Lens of Generative AI, Darkly
by Andrew Martineau and Loren Turner, March 25, 2025 (SSRN)
This article explores GPT-4's engagement with law review articles, highlighting its limitations in independently summarizing content but demonstrating improved accuracy when given the full text. Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) may enhance AI reliability through more automated methods, though issues like algorithmic bias, intellectual property rights, and the broader effects on legal scholarship remain significant. Law librarians need to thoughtfully evaluate these concerns when managing how institutional research is accessed and utilized by AI technologies.
ChatGPT and the future of legal education and practice, Marjan Ajevski, , Kim Barker, Andrew Gilbert, Liz Hardie, & Francine Ryan, The Law Teacher (2023)
The launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 marked a significant moment in AI development, prompting wide interest in its potential impact on legal education and practice. This article explores how law schools can adapt assessments to challenge generative AI while also educating students on its workplace applications. It emphasizes the need for legal educators to navigate the complexities of open-source AI and recognize its potential influence on both education and practice, urging the integration of AI technology into teaching methods.
AI Now
by Rachelle Holmes Perkins, May 24, 2024 (SSRN)
This Article argues that every law professor bears an unavoidable responsibility to understand generative artificial intelligence. This duty arises from the essential role faculty members play across three interconnected areas: teaching, scholarship, and institutional governance. No member of the law faculty is exempt—whether their focus is on instruction, research, clinical work, or administration, their responsibilities inevitably touch at least one of these domains. This obligation does not depend on a professor’s personal interest in using AI in their own work. Rather, it reflects the pressing and multifaceted influence that law professors have on shaping both future legal professionals and the broader structure of the legal system.
Language Models, Plagiarism, and Legal Writing
by Michael L. Smith, August 16, 2023 (SSRN)
The author contends that "those urging the incorporation of language models into legal writing education leave out a key technique employed by lawyers across the country: plagiarism. Attorneys have copied from each other, secondary sources, and themselves for decades. While a few brave souls have begun to urge that law schools inform students of this reality and teach them to plagiarize effectively, most schools continue to unequivocally condemn the practice...(but) continued condemnation of plagiarism is inconsistent with calls to adopt language models, as the same justifications for incorporating language models into legal writing pedagogy apply with equal or greater force to incorporating plagiarism into legal writing education as well."
How to Use Large Language Models for Empirical Legal Research
by Jonathan H. Choi, August 13, 2023 (SSRN)
This Article showcases how large language models (LLMs) can be applied to the analysis of legal documents, offering guidance on best practices while examining both their capabilities and limitations in empirical legal research. In a straightforward classification task involving Supreme Court opinions, the study finds that GPT-4 matches human coder performance and significantly outperforms earlier NLP classifiers. Notably, its accuracy shows no meaningful gains from supervised training, fine-tuning, or tailored prompting.
Re-Evaluating GPT-4's Bar Exam Performance
by Eric Martínez, May 8, 2023 (SSRN)
This paper examines the methodological difficulties in substantiating GPT-4's widely cited claim of scoring in the 90th percentile on the bar exam. It presents four sets of findings indicating that, while GPT-4 represents a significant advancement over GPT-3.5, OpenAI’s reported UBE percentile scores appear to be overstated.
Scholarly Articles
Generative AI, Plagiarism, and Copyright Infringement in Legal Documents
by Amy Cyphert, August 28, 2024 (SSRN)
Lawyers are increasingly using generative AI in their legal practice, especially for drafting motions and other documents they file with courts. As they use this new technology, many questions arise, especially surrounding lawyers’ ethical duties with respect to the use of generative AI. The focus of this article is on two intriguing intellectual property questions that emerge when lawyers choose to use large language models like ChatGPT. First, might these lawyers be engaging in actionable, discipline-worthy plagiarism? Second, could these lawyers potentially be liable for copyright violations?
AI Tools for Lawyers: A Practical Guide, by Daniel Schwarcz & Jonathan H. Choi, 108 Minn. L. Rev. Headnotes (forthcoming, 2023)
This piece provides practical, in-depth guidance for lawyers and law students on effectively using AI large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4, Bing Chat, and Bard to support legal research and writing. It outlines how these tools can enhance efficiency, assist with drafting, and streamline information gathering, while also emphasizing the importance of critical oversight to address issues like accuracy, bias, and ethical use.
AI, Lawyers, and the Courts
by Megan Boyd, June 18, 2024 (SSRN)
This article explores generative AI (GenAI) and demonstrates how various GenAI programs, including those designed for lawyers, work. It goes on to outline benefits of and problems with GenAI, discusses the ways courts have attempted to regulate GenAI usage, and recommends an approach to GenAI rules that helps ensure compliance with ethical and other obligations while encouraging the development and use of GenAI programs that have the power to transform law practice.
The Legal Ethics of Generative AI
by Andrew M. Perlman, Feb. 22, 2024 (SSRN)
The legal profession is notoriously conservative when it comes to change. From email to outsourcing, lawyers have been slow to embrace new methods and quick to point out potential problems, especially ethics-related concerns. The legal profession’s approach to generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) is following a similar pattern. But the author closes with the following proposition: the careful use of generative AI is not only consistent with lawyers’ ethical duties, but the duty of competence may eventually require lawyers’ use of generative AI. The technology is likely to become so important to the delivery of legal services that lawyers who fail to use it will be considered as incompetent as lawyers today who do not know how to use computers, email, or online legal research tools.
Lawyering in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
by Jonathan H. Choi, Amy Monahan, and Daniel Schwarcz, Nov. 9, 2023 (SSRN)
A summary of the first randomized controlled trial of AI assistance’s effect on human legal analysis, conducted by three law professors. The authors found mixed results for the improvement of quality of work but universal increases in efficiency, and said that the results suggest generative AI may have an equalizing effect on the legal profession.
Artificial Intelligence and the Practice of Law Part 1: Lawyers Must be Professional and Responsible Supervisors of AI
by Michael D. Murray, July 19, 2023 (SSRN)
This article discusses the benefits and challenges of using AI systems to assist lawyers in legal practice. It argues that at present AI systems are not a threat to take over lawyers’ jobs, but rather a powerful tool that can enhance the efficiency and quality of lawyers’ work. However, it also warns that AI systems are not infallible and require professional and responsible supervision by lawyers. The article provides some best practices and recommendations for lawyers to ensure the accuracy and reliability of AI-generated legal work.
ChatGPT And Legal Writing: A Perfect Union?
by Joseph Regalia, March 2, 2023 (SSRN)
Suggestions for using ChatGPT in legal writing.
Can ChatGPT Think Like a Lawyer?
by Lea Bishop, Jan. 2023 (SSRN)
The author prompts ChatGPT to answer questions about "thinking like a lawyer," IRAC, and how to paraphrase legal language. The paper makes an analogy between legal writing and solving a math problem.
Citing Generative AI Use
Best Practices for Disclosure and Citation When Using Artificial Intelligence Tools, Mark L. Shope, 112 Geo. L. J. Online 1 (2023)
Incorporating Chatbot Citations into Bluebook Formatting Guidelines, Proposal by Gabriel H. Teninbaum, Assistant Dean for Innovation, Strategic Initiatives & Distance Education, and Professor of Legal Writing, Suffolk University Law School, written using ChatGPT.
Chicago Manual of Style Guidance on Citing Generative AI Content
Modern Language Association (MLA) Guidance on Citing Generative AI Content
Some courts now have rules about using generative AI in legal documents. They may ban it, ask you to say if you used it, or make you confirm the information is correct. Before filing anything, check the court’s rules to be sure you’re following them.
Lexis+ Protégé is the latest version of Lexis+ AI Protégé is capable of handling more complex tasks than its previous versions. It offers four core features—Ask, Draft, Summarize, and Documents—each designed to support a range of legal research activities, from case law analysis to document review. Users can seamlessly switch between features to streamline and enhance their research workflows. A Lexis account is required to access these tools.
Westlaw Precision, Generative AI. Westlaw currently offers students, faculty, and staff access to its GenAI tools, AI Assisted Research and CoCounsel.
AI Assisted Research is a feature of CoCounsel that uses LLM's which allow you to perform legal research quickly and easily. This AI tool leverages Westlaw’s extensive knowledge base to help you locate both primary and secondary legal sources. Simply ask a legal research question—or craft a more targeted prompt—and the system will generate a detailed response within seconds. Each response includes a general summary of the consulted primary and secondary sources, along with direct links to specific citations for further reference.
CoCounsel is another AI tool that can perform a variety of tasks to support your legal research needs. In addition to AI-Assisted Research, CoCounsel provides tools for document summarization, analysis, review, and drafting. These features can significantly accelerate your workflow and support a wide range of legal research and writing tasks, enhancing both efficiency and accuracy in your projects.
A Westlaw account is required to access both Al and CoCounsel.
Bloomberg Law recently launched two GenAI tools that are currently available to students, faculty and staff. The database also has other valuable AI tools to assist you with drafting documents.
Draft Analyzer: Uses GenAI to analyze and make recommendations for drafts of merger agreements. The tool also features Clause Adviser, which enables instant evaluation of clause favorability and allows you to quickly revise clause language to favor a specific party.
Brief Analyzer: This is another valuable practitioner tool designed for brief analysis. By simply uploading a document, the tool generates a detailed report outlining the cited authorities and key arguments within the brief, along with a list of suggested content for further review.
A Bloomberg account is required to access these tools.
Claude 3 Opus is the most advanced model in Anthropic's Claude 3 series, establishing new standards across a broad spectrum of cognitive tasks.
Copilot | LawDroid , Free for student and faculty use when using an .edu email address to sign up.
New GPT-Based Chat App from LawDroid Is A Lawyer’s ‘Copilot’ for Research, Drafting, Brainstorming and More, by Bob Ambrogi, LawSites, Jan. 25, 2023
The Use of Large Language Models in LegalTech
by Nicola Shaver, LegalTech Hub, Feb. 18, 2023
LegalTech’s AI Race: A Sign of What’s to Come, by Nicole L. Black, LLRX | Law and Technology Resources for Legal Professionals, July 7, 2023.