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Rethinking legal Education in the Age of AI

Texas is pioneering a practical approach to legal education amidst the rapid advancements of artificial intelligence (AI). The guiding principle? Innovate with caution, prioritize ethics, and instill in every aspiring lawyer the reminder that true competence stems from integrity, not merely efficiency.

The Rapid Rise of Generative AI in legal Practice

Generative AI has infiltrated legal practice at a pace unmatched by any previous technology. Law schools across the nation are striving to understand how to adopt these sophisticated tools responsibly. At SMU Dedman School of Law, the primary focus is not on hastily integrating new tools, but on imparting the vital lesson that technology should enhance, rather than replace, professional judgment.

Balancing Experimentation with Rigor

Much like other law schools, SMU is navigating the delicate balance between experimentation with AI tools and maintaining academic rigor. The overarching goal is not merely to transform students into AI operators but to cultivate evaluators—future lawyers who can identify pitfalls, biases, and overreliance on technology before these issues escalate into malpractice.

Institutional Support for AI Exploration

Across SMU, professors now have licensed access to ChatGPT Enterprise, facilitating secure, institution-wide experimentation with AI. SMU Law has also joined the Harvey AI Project, which collaborates with prominent law schools and the Harvey AI legal research platform to explore how generative tools can be responsibly integrated into legal education and practice.

This partnership empowers faculty and students to engage with AI in authentic professional scenarios, bolstered by privacy safeguards and advanced technical training. In alignment with this initiative, SMU requires faculty to adopt one of three AI-use policies for every syllabus:

• Ban generative AI entirely
• Allow structured use with specific requirements for attribution and confidentiality
• Develop a customized policy tailored to the specific class

This transparency has sparked critical discussions in every classroom about defining responsible AI use—a crucial lesson for future legal practitioners.

Diverse Course Offerings Exploring AI’s Impact

At SMU, various courses investigate AI from multiple perspectives within the legal framework. For example, "Artificial Intelligence and the Law" analyzes how regulatory and governance frameworks shape the development and deployment of AI systems.

Other courses focus on practical applications of AI, illustrating how these tools can enhance legal research and drafting, aid in pre-litigation assessments, and transform discovery and due diligence processes. The program in legal Analysis, Writing, and Research deliberately sequences its instruction—first covering traditional research methods, and then incorporating guided AI integration during a spring prep-to-practice event featuring demonstrations from law firms that utilize AI in document review and transactional work. This structure reinforces the principle that technology should complement, not supplant, vital analytical skills.

Addressing Ethical Considerations in AI Use

As the legal profession grapples with these challenges, regulators are also adapting to the evolving landscape. In February 2025, the State Bar of Texas issued Ethics Opinion 705, offering detailed guidance on lawyers’ use of generative AI. The opinion delineates how existing ethical rules apply to this rapidly evolving technology:

• Competence (Rule 1.01): Lawyers are required to grasp how AI functions before incorporating it into their practice. They are not obligated to use AI but should not abandon tools that could save clients time and resources.
• Confidentiality (Rule 1.05): Attorneys must be cautious not to disclose client information to public or “self-learning” AI systems without proper safeguards and client consent.
• Supervision and Candor (Rules 5.03, 3.03): Lawyers maintain full responsibility for verifying AI-generated outputs and cannot simply rely on unverified results.
• Fees: While lawyers can charge for the time spent refining and verifying AI-generated results, they cannot bill clients for time “saved” through AI use, as that efficiency ultimately belongs to the client.

The ethical message is unambiguous: the convenience offered by technology should not diminish ethical obligations.

Educating Future Lawyers on Ethical AI Use

This ethical framework informs my approach to teaching Professional Responsibility. Mishandling AI—such as depending on hallucinated outcomes or compromising client confidentiality—breaches duties of diligence and transparency. Conversely, a refusal to leverage AI when it could enhance accuracy and reduce costs presents significant concerns regarding competency and fairness. Consequently, understanding when AI serves a client’s best interests is now integral to legal competence.

Texas’ cautious yet progressive methodology—which harmonizes innovation with ethical safeguards—reflects the broader trend within law schools. By rooting AI instruction in ethical and governance principles, institutions are positioning themselves as leaders in the responsible adoption of these technologies rather than rushing toward blind acceleration. SMU’s model of transparency, attribution, and accountability aligns with the expectations lawyers will face in practice, emphasizing client-facing ethics: clear disclosures, informed consent, and responsibility for every action taken.

The Role of AI legalese decoder in legal Education

In such a rapidly changing environment, tools like the AI legalese decoder can play a pivotal role. This platform demystifies complex legal language, ensuring that students not only comprehend the law but can also use AI to make informed decisions. By incorporating AI legalese decoder into the curriculum, we can elevate students’ ability to critically analyze legal documents and interpretations, further preparing them for the ever-evolving landscape of legal practice.

Emphasizing Critical Thinking, Not Just Automation

At SMU, our aspiration is to guide students in honing their critical thinking skills rather than merely optimizing prompts. The reliability of technology ultimately depends on the lawyer who scrutinizes it. As we look to the future, the essence of legal practice will increasingly hinge not on increasing automation but on the discernment required to verify, contextualize, and act ethically in a landscape of perpetual change.

Thus, our foundation focuses on core principles: establishing an understanding of precedent, authority, and legal reasoning before integrating AI into the learning process. The discipline of verification—checking sources, confirming citations, and cultivating skepticism towards unverified data—remains the attorney’s best defense against potential errors.

Adapting to a Dynamic Landscape

AI technology will undoubtedly evolve faster than any curriculum can adapt, yet the enduring principles of professional judgment are timeless. As emphasized in Ethics Opinion 705, competence, confidentiality, and integrity are responsibilities that cannot be relinquished to algorithms. The optimal preparation for the next generation of lawyers lies in teaching them to critically evaluate technology before deployment and to recognize that the most potent tool in the law is still human judgment.

Columnist Carliss Chatman is a professor at SMU Dedman School of Law. She contributes insights on corporate governance, contract law, race, and economic justice to Bloomberg Law’s Good Counsel column.

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