With the advent of AI, some classrooms are starting to look a little more traditional.
The University of Chicago Law School is requiring first-year students to keep their laptops closed during class this fall as part of a broader strategy to ensure students learn to think independently as artificial intelligence becomes more prevalent in the legal profession.
The move comes as universities across the country grapple with how generative AI will reshape higher education. Business Insider reported earlier this month that Brown University recently announced it had disciplined dozens of students after administrators uncovered what it called a widespread AI-powered cheating scandal, highlighting how technology has made traditional take-home assignments and remote assessments difficult.
Rather than trying to ban AI completely, Chicago Law says it is redesigning curricula to separate the skills students should develop themselves and the skills they should embrace AI.
“We need to make sure that students are learning to think for themselves,” Adam Chilton, dean of the University of Chicago Law School, told Business Insider. At the same time, he said, “We can’t naively pretend that we can turn off AI, or that students won’t use it, or that they don’t need to know about it.”
The school’s new strategies include first-year classes without laptops, proctored in-person exams that prevent students from accessing outside materials, and oral defense of major research papers to allow students to explain and defend their work. We are also expanding our AI instruction by integrating technology into our legal writing courses, adding AI-focused classes, and providing students with access to legal AI tools like Harvey and Legora.
Chilton said educators are “feeling a little bit asleep at the wheel” by continuing to assign take-home tasks that can be completed using AI “without thinking for yourself, without learning on your own.”
He said reports of AI fraud at schools such as Brown University and Harvard University have heightened concerns that students will be able to advance in their education without developing rigorous reasoning skills.
The challenge, he said, is that AI has become integral to legal practice. Law firms increasingly expect new employees to use technology efficiently and responsibly, making a complete ban unrealistic.
Instead, Chicago’s approach is to create what Chilton called “space for both of these learning modes.” First, teach students how to think without AI, then teach them how to use AI ethically once they have the basic skills.