Daniel W. Linna Jr. of the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law: “I just had an article published in the University of Chicago Legal Forum on deepfakes, and, interestingly enough, no one asked me any questions about what I used or didn’t use.”
ABA Jnl
Now that artificial intelligence is actively used by many in academia—in the classroom, for syllabus development and in research—what is its proper role in legal scholarships while maintaining academic integrity?
It’s a question that’s largely left unanswered, says Nachman N. Gutowski, an assistant professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas William S. Boyd School of Law.
As new tools, such as ChatGPT’s Deep Research, are unveiled and scholars experiment with generative AI for research, drafting and writing, what scholarly authorship means is called into question, adds Gutowski, the author of a forthcoming article, titled “Disclosing the Machine: Trends, Policies, and Considerations of Artificial Intelligence Use in Law Review Authorship,” accepted by the Jacksonville University Law Review.
Law journals are the gatekeepers for legal scholarships, Gutowski says, but his research found that many law reviews have been slow to adapt to the influence of AI and don’t have policies about demanding disclosure about its use.
“Some of them are thinking about it. Some of them default to, ‘Well, we’ll catch you,’” and others simply don’t have a policy, he says.
‘We’re kind of in the Wild West’
In November 2024, he conducted, via email, a survey of ABA-accredited law schools and their journals and law reviews.
According to his forthcoming article, the majority of respondents agreed to participate only if their journal name remained anonymized and aggregated into the data, he says.
“Perhaps the most telling aspect of the survey was the overwhelming silence from so many law reviews, who chose not to respond to inquiries about their stance on AI,” according to the article. “This lack of engagement suggests a reluctance, or perhaps an inability, to confront the nuanced and evolving challenges posed by AI in scholarly work.”
Of those who answered, 68% of respondents said they do not have an AI policy addressing the use of AI at all, while 16% said they did, and another 16% said a policy is in development. Meanwhile, 56% did not require law review authors to disclose whether AI tools were used, according to the article.
Read full article at
https://www.abajournal.com/web/article/does-ai-have-a-role-in-legal-scholarship
