Mississippi Law School Makes AI Training Mandatory for All Students
Mississippi College School of Law requires all first-year students to complete a course on artificial intelligence, making it the first law school in the Southeast to mandate such training for its entire student body.
The school held its first mandatory AI course last month as a two-day intensive with a hands-on final project. Dean John Anderson said the goal is to train students "to use the technology effectively, efficiently, and ethically and avoid a lot of the headlines that you've seen already where lawyers take shortcuts by using these technologies."
Why Law Schools Are Acting Now
Recent cases show why the training matters. A federal judge in Mississippi admitted his staff used AI to draft a court order containing significant errors. In another case, a judge fined a lawyer $20,000 for using AI in court filings. Some AI models have generated fabricated defendants, quotes, and case citations.
Anderson said the need for formal AI education became clear at a 2023 judicial conference when a presenter demonstrated how an AI model could review millions of documents and produce a draft in seconds - work that would normally require a team of lawyers.
What Students Learn
Oliver Roberts, editor-in-chief of AI at The National Law Review, designed and taught the course. It covers widely used legal tools like Westlaw's AI research program, the regulatory environment, and ethical considerations.
For their final project, students created legal app prototypes. Their work included jury selection tools designed to identify bias, legal memo drafting systems, and automation for time tracking. Roberts said the assignment was "purely the students getting creative, investigating shortcomings and inefficiencies in law and then actively developing solutions."
Roberts emphasized the value of learning AI regardless of one's position on the technology. "Whether you like AI or not, I believe you should be learning about it because you can strengthen your arguments for it or against it by learning the foundational concepts of it," he said.
Broader Institutional Push
The mandatory course is part of a larger effort. Last year, Mississippi College launched the Center for AI Policy and Technology Leadership, a partnership between its business and law schools that will produce academic papers, white papers, and training for students and working professionals.
The state is also seeing significant investment in AI infrastructure. Companies plan to spend over $60 billion building data centers in Mississippi.
For educators overseeing curriculum development, the Mississippi College approach offers a model: embedding practical AI literacy into core requirements rather than treating it as an elective. Learn more about AI for Legal professionals and AI for Education.
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