Effective Summer 2026

Purpose

Future lawyers may need to use artificial intelligence (“AI”) fluently. But the current state of the technology requires that AI use be coupled with the cognitive skills necessary to strategically deploy the technology, to critically assess its work product, and to uphold ethical obligations to clients and to the legal system. In short, thinking remains the sine qua non of good lawyering (and of a quality legal education). This policy seeks to ensure that our courses focus on requisite cognitive skills by default. It provides students with the opportunity to develop the skills they need to conceptualize, outline, draft, revise, and edit their work by forbidding the use of AI for these purposes in connection with work submitted for credit. It also forbids using AI to translate work for credit, thus providing students with the opportunity to develop and exercise their own fluency with legal English. And it prohibits AI use for any purpose in any exam situation. Activities violating the rule include (but are not limited to):

• Asking an AI tool to brainstorm a paper topic or thesis (prohibited conceptualizing)
• Asking an AI tool to propose an organizational structure for a paper (prohibited outlining)
• Asking an AI tool to compose a paragraph summarizing a legal rule for use in a paper (prohibited drafting)
• Asking an AI tool to identify repetitive passages in a paper that should be cut (prohibited revising)
• Asking an AI tool to polish a paper by correcting grammatical mistakes (prohibited editing)
• Asking AI to generate an exam outline, elements of which are then used on the exam (prohibited exam use)
• Asking AI to translate a paper originally written in another language into English (prohibited translating)

Instructors may deviate from the default rule for courses designed intentionally to teach AI fluency (or for other courses for which the instructor decides a distinct rule is pedagogically appropriate).

The purposes of this policy are (1) to ensure the best legal education possible for our students by equipping them to perform activities constitutive of excellent lawyering, such as mastering primary texts, using legal reasoning to apply legal authorities to novel legal questions, and independently developing creative solutions; and (2) to promote fairness and administrability.

Rule

The use of AI is prohibited for aid in conceptualizing, outlining, drafting, revising, translating, or editing any work submitted for credit. AI use is prohibited for any use for any purpose in any exam situation. Students may not upload course materials—including assignments, readings, slides, class recordings, or other class content—into generative AI systems. AI can be used for research on papers ONLY for the limited purpose of identifying sources, such as cases, statutes, or secondary sources. Students are responsible for the accuracy of their research and all other aspects of their submitted work. Citations to sources that do not exist will raise a presumption of prohibited AI use.

Instructors have the discretion to deviate from this default rule, provided that they do so in writing and with appropriate notice and require students to disclose any authorized AI use. If a student has a question about whether a particular use of AI violates this default rule or an instructor’s alternative rule, they must ask their instructor and receive clarification in writing before engaging in the use.