Last last week, just before the Memorial Day weekend, news broke that the faculty of the UC Berkeley School of Law have adopted an “Artificial Intelligence Policy” applicable to Berkeley Law students – but not to the faculty itself.
The policy itself is here. In a nutshell, the policy established a “students may not use AI in connection with work submitted for credit” default, with individual faculty members permitted to set different rules regarding AI use.
Reaction across social media has been swift – and mixed, including comments and conversations through X, BlueSky, LinkedIn, Reddit, and Substack. I have seen contributions from law faculty, lawyers and legaltech professionals, and current law students. I have not seen any public comments from Berkeley Law students. Just about everyone seems to agree that enforcing the policy will be difficult if not impossible.
A perhaps representative sympathetic view comes from Above the Law, under the headline “UC Berkeley Cracks Down On AI Use With New Policy: Pedagogy ain’t dead yet!“
A far less charitable view appears via Seth Chandler’s newsletter (TaxProf Blog readers will note my frequent references to Seth, at Houston Law), under the headline “Law schools should not adopt Berkeley’s awful new anti-AI policy.“
