The University of Toronto’s Jackman Faculty of Law has announced a framework for laptop-free classrooms. The framework is not a blanket ban. Reporting on an e-mail to students elaborates:
The framework we have adopted is intended to support students in classes where instructors have chosen to go laptop-free, to set expectations and provide consistency.
This policy arrives soon after the University of Chicago Law School’s headline-grabbing laptop ban for 1Ls as part of a broader effort at AI-resilient pedagogy. (Since then, the University of Georgia also has implemented laptop-free 1L classrooms alongside a nuanced AI policy.) Coverage, how Toronto’s optional ban connects to AI, and a bit of (negative) student feedback, below the fold.
U of T Law’s concern isn’t solely AI’s effect on the classroom environment. According to local reporting on the new framework:
Our primary concern here is not that students are distracted by technology, but rather that the very act of type-writing comprehensive notes during class does not allow students to think deeply about the class material or to engage in discussion and argument.
This approach has support in the learning-science literature and long predates the widespread use of AI. And, for U of T Law’s framework, the twist is that AI may bridge gaps for students:
Each laptop-free classroom will either provide AI-generated notes, a roster of rotating student typing note-takers, or class slides, speaker notes, or a similar record of the material covered in class.
If AI plays a role in pushing laptops out of law school classrooms, AI also provides a tool to create resources that may replace some of what’s lost with the removal of in-class laptops. For me, this direction seems promising and a natural evolution of class-recording and transcript services that became prominent in the COVID-19 pandemic.
The student reception to U of T Law’s new framework was negative, however. In a survey by U of T’s Students’ Law Society in which more than one-third of current law students participated, 76% indicated that “they disagreed that the policy will benefit their education.” Moreover:
Another 77 per cent of those surveyed feel the measures for laptop-free classes will be ineffective, while roughly 54 per cent think it will be very ineffective.
Narrative responses indicate that students preferred to rely on established classroom habits and had concerns about accommodations—a common theme in the pro-laptop literature. This pushback from students isn’t particularly surprising, and it continues a conversation worth having about technology in law school classrooms.
The more important survey, of course, will need to happen several years from now, after this cohort of students has taken its education into legal practice. Those outcomes-oriented data would inform whether laptop-free classrooms should be normative, rather than experimental.
Related TaxProf Blog coverage:
- Chicago Law Bans Laptops in 1L Classes to Address AI (July 11, 2026)
- NY Times: UC-Berkeley Law School Cracks Down on AI (May 31, 2026)
- Should Law Schools Ban iPhones etc. from Classrooms? (Feb. 28, 2026)
- Yamamoto on Banning Laptops in the Classroom: Is It Worth the Hassles? (Jan. 2, 2008)
