Columbia Law School has released a new artificial intelligence policy ahead of the school year’s autumn start, telling students it supports them using the new technology to research, learn and understand legal concepts.
But the school made clear students are not to write their legal analysis, form arguments, or take exams — unless they tell their professors they employed it in their studies.
In the new guidance, Dean Daniel Abebe was clear that Columbia Law is not endorsing “unrestricted use” of AI. Instead, the school said it wanted to encourage students to think critically about the new tech and learn how to use it to their advantage so all enrolled would be ready to mesh with the way the firms they’d graduate into would inevitably be using the technology when they got out of school.
The policy seemed to spring from a sense that AI wasn’t going away – and is already being incorporated into legal practice – so there’s no reason to fight it.
“As AI transforms the study and practice of law, the challenge before us is not whether to engage with AI, but how to do so in a way that advances the Law School’s academic and educational purpose: teaching our students how to think critically and rigorously, and helping them develop the judgment, discipline, and technological fluency that modern legal practice increasingly demands,” Abebe wrote in a statement, adding that he believed the policy “reflected” these commitments.
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Columbia Law School releases new AI policy saying students can use the tech, with guardrails
