Maryland law schools are wrestling with how to handle artificial intelligence in the classroom, and faculty and students remain divided on whether the technology helps or hinders legal education.
A UNESCO survey published in September found that two-thirds of responding higher education institutions have or are already developing AI guidance. Policies at law schools vary widely across the country, with some banning AI outright and others encouraging its use in specific situations.
Two approaches at UMD
At the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, professors have landed on opposite sides of the debate. Donald Tobin, the Gordon, Wolf & Carney Professor of Law, co-authored a July article in Jurist criticizing a new policy that prohibits AI use at UC Berkeley School of Law.
"AI is here to stay, and AI is going to be an essential tool," Tobin wrote. "To try to close your eyes and say … 'We're going to pretend it's not here so we can maintain our pedagogy the exact same way we've been doing for the last 100 years,' I think, is a huge mistake."
Law professor Andrew Blair-Stanek takes the opposite approach. He has prohibited AI in his classes, though he acknowledged there is "no reliable way" to enforce a full ban. His goal is to push students to work through problems on their own.
"I want them to actually learn and answer questions without the help of any sort of AI," he said. "I think that it's almost stealing some of their own learning experiences."
Students split on AI's value
Students are just as divided. UMD rising second-year law student Abigail Fry said she avoids AI entirely, pointing to cases where the technology "hallucinated" legal citations and cases.
"As a student, my opinion is that what you're going to do now is building the foundation of what you're going to do in your future practice," she said. "Seeing situations like those, I don't want to rely on AI until maybe the technology is more reliable and less scary."
Samuel Irwin, who co-authored the Jurist article with Tobin, said AI has practical uses for law students, including organizing notes and checking spelling and grammar when professors allow it. "It can make you more prepared in a course," he said. "It can really help with … tedious tasks that don't require a whole lot of thinking."
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Teaching critical judgment
Michele Gilman, the Venable Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore, said students lack the experience to evaluate AI output on their own. "I can look at AI outputs and make very considered judgments about what is acceptable," she said. "My students don't have that experience or perspective."
Tobin addresses this by asking students to analyze a large language model's response to a prompt and identify three things the engine got wrong. "How do we teach them to be critical of the product they get? That's my first goal," he said. "The second goal is to help them think about what AI is good at and not good at."
Multiple professors warned against using AI for legal writing. The technology's tendency to fabricate citations makes it risky for drafting court documents or memos, they said.
Preparing for firm expectations
The legal industry has started integrating AI into daily practice, which puts pressure on schools to prepare students for what awaits them. "There's a real tension here because on the one hand, students do need to learn how to use AI effectively. Their future employers expect that, and the law profession expects that," Gilman said. "At the same time, if students are over-reliant on AI, they will not learn how to be lawyers."
Katherine Sylva, a UMD Class of 2025 alumna preparing for a career in technology law, said AI was frequently "villainized" during her time in school. She now wishes she had more exposure before entering the workforce. "Going into firms, a lot of them are expecting you to use AI," she said. "Becoming comfortable with those AI tools before being in a firm environment, I think, would have been nice."
Gilman called the effort to find the right balance "a work in progress." She said nothing in her nearly 30 years of teaching compares to the shift generative AI has brought. "We're all learning about how to use AI effectively and ethically, but we haven't solved it yet."
Why this matters for legal professionals
Law firms increasingly expect new hires to arrive with working knowledge of AI tools, not just familiarity with legal doctrine. Attorneys who understand where AI produces reliable results - and where it fabricates citations or misreads precedent - will have a clear advantage. Those who avoid the technology entirely risk falling behind colleagues who use it to handle document review, note organization, and initial research. Training resources like AI for Legal can help practicing lawyers and students build those skills before firm expectations force the issue.
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