Incoming law students at the University of Chicago will be barred from using phones and laptops in required first-year courses in a bid to curb their AI usage under a new AI policy, the school unveiled Thursday.
The laptop and phone ban is part of a broader AI strategy the law school developed over the past year to ensure that “students actually learn to think critically, strategically, and independently without relying on AI,” before teaching them to use those tools later on, according to the new policy.
The AI policy appears to be among the most restrictive to be adopted by a U.S. law school. Chicago Law Dean Adam Chilton told Reuters he was unaware of any other school with a blanket first-year laptop and phone ban.
The University of California, Berkeley School of Law in May debuted rules that drastically limit how students may use AI. Critics have said Berkeley’s policy prohibits too many legitimate AI uses at a time when legal employers expect newly minted attorneys to know how to use the technology.
Chilton said it was important to prepare students for situations in the classroom and in practice when they must answer legal questions on the spot without consulting AI.
“AI is forcing us to ask ourselves, ‘What are the essentially human skills that we should be training that AI can’t replace?'” Chilton said in an interview.
In Chicago’s required first-year courses — including constitutional law, torts, and property — professors may appoint designated “scribes” who use electronic devices to take shared notes for the class under the new policy.
All exams in those courses will be administered in class, without access to the internet, electronic files or apps. The school said it is piloting the new rules for the upcoming academic year.
Chilton said he expects reaction from incoming students to be mixed, though he added that laptop bans previously imposed by individual Chicago professors have generally been well-received in the end by students who felt it improved their focus.
AI will be incorporated into the required first-year legal research and writing course but will first focus on writing without AI before layering writing using AI on top, according to the new policy.
Faculty will be able to experiment and develop their own AI policies for elective courses, though the phone and laptop ban and in-class testing will be the default.
Chicago will still teach students AI — it has added upper-level AI courses and started an AI lab where students learn to develop tools — but it must ensure that instruction doesn’t undermine foundational legal skills, Chilton said.
