op Law Schools Ban AI to Train Courtroom-Ready Lawyers

As artificial intelligence reshapes the legal industry, some of the country’s most prestigious law schools are moving in the opposite direction — restricting AI use in the classroom to protect the critical-thinking skills future lawyers will need.

Chicago Leads the Charge

The University of Chicago Law School announced it will ban laptops, phones, and tablets for first-year students starting this fall. The policy is meant to safeguard the Socratic method, where professors question students on legal theory rather than lecture them. Dean Adam Chilton said the school doesn’t want students feeding case names into AI chatbots to generate likely exam questions and canned answers ahead of time. The school is also adding an in-person oral exam alongside its existing research paper requirement, arguing that live, high-pressure argument is a skill AI cannot replicate — since human lawyers, not machines, ultimately face judges and juries.

Other Schools Follow Suit

Chicago isn’t alone. UC Berkeley’s law school announced in May that it would prohibit AI use in conceptualizing, outlining, drafting, revising, translating, or editing any coursework submitted for credit, framing the move as essential to preserving educational quality. Meanwhile, the University of Texas at Austin’s law school dean instructed faculty in June to use class time for sustained, rigorous dialogue, and to keep students from being distracted by whatever might be on their screens.

The shift comes even as AI startups like Harvey and Crosby automate growing portions of legal work. Rather than resist AI’s influence on the profession broadly, these schools are betting that oral advocacy and independent reasoning remain the parts of lawyering technology can’t take over.