First-year students at the University of Chicago Law School will be looking at casebooks instead of laptop screens. The school rolled out a new artificial intelligence strategy this week that bars 1Ls from using phones, laptops, or tablets during in-class sessions, a move administrators say is meant to protect core legal reasoning and ensure students can analyze cases on their own before they fold AI tools into their workflow.
The school is pitching the policy as one piece of a three-prong plan to "develop AI-resilient pedagogy and assessment," elevate "essential human" skills and teach responsible AI use, according to CBS Chicago. Professors will be allowed to name "classroom scribes" who can use devices for note-taking and can permit electronics for tech-dependent activities such as live polling, but for most first-year classes, screens will be off-limits.
Where the ban fits into the curriculum
The device rules layer onto broader curriculum changes the law school has been rolling out for months, including new AI modules for 1Ls and a retooled Bigelow legal research and writing sequence. The modules are designed to bring every first-year student to a minimum level of generative-AI literacy before supervised AI use is introduced later in the year, according to the University of Chicago Law School.
How it will work in class
In legal research and writing courses, students will draft without AI in the early stages, then be allowed to use AI tools for research, revision and oral-argument preparation. Faculty will review both the student writing and any AI assistance that was used. Professors may still designate classroom scribes to take notes on devices and can authorize electronics for interactive in-class polling, although administrators say the default for most 1L classes will be screen-free, CBS Chicago reports.
Why law schools are changing
As generative AI takes over more routine entry-level work, law schools are racing to rethink how they teach judgment and other skills that software cannot easily replace. A recent analysis from the Thomson Reuters Institute argues that mapping curricula, training faculty and building simulation-based teaching tools are among the concrete steps schools are pursuing.
Accommodations and classroom rules
UChicago's published guidance on generative AI and classroom electronics already forbids prompting AI tools during exams and allows device exceptions for students with documented ADA accommodations, so administrators say the new limits on devices will be applied in line with those standards. The law school's handbooks also require students to disclose any AI use in coursework and give instructors discretion over in-class electronics, according to policy pages on the University of Chicago Law School.
Bottom line
Students can expect more handwritten outlines and less screen-based multitasking in the first year, and law firms will likely note that elite programs are trying to preserve human judgment even as they teach supervised AI use. Other top schools have tightened AI rules as well, for example UC Berkeley has implemented strict limits on student AI use in coursework, underscoring that legal education is actively being reshaped, according to the SF Chronicle.
