Paul L. Caron
Dean
Pepperdine Caruso
School of Law
Legal Ed Tech
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UC Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Policy
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…
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AI and Legal Education
A thoughtful piece by Dean Danielle Conway (Penn State Dickinson Law), Dean Richard Moberly (Univ. of Nebraska College of Law) and AALS Executive Director Kellye Testy in Bloomberg Law. A small excerpt: AI adoption has serious risks, including lack of transparency, the importance of disclosure, and disparate economic impact. But the truth, and the landscape…
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“Claude for Legal” and Conventional Legal Education
Anthropic’s brand new “Claude for Legal” suite of AI tools for law and lawyers accelerates – dramatically – the pace of AI technology deployment in and around law schools. Seth Chandler (University of Houston) has a characteristically thorough (and completely geeked out) review of how law students and law professors (especially clinicians) will find abundant…
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Robots to Train Lawyers in EQ at Perkins Coie
Today’s sign of the apocalypse: “Perkins Coie Turns to AI Avatars to Train Lawyers on Soft Skills,” from Law.com. From the story: Perkins Coie’s London office is beta testing a new training program using generative artificial intelligence-powered avatars developed in partnership with AI training platform Levra. The avatars are designed to help lawyers of all…
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Sympathy for the Devil
Building on Jeremy Paul’s post on a recent paper testing the effect of AI use on law student learning, titled (the post, by Jeremy) “Is AI the Devil?”: One practitioner posted this thoughtful reflection on the paper and on what its findings imply when lessons on AI-in-law-school are transposed into rough and tumble of law…
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Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Tax Law
Bloomberg Law, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Tax Law: A 3-part series: Don’t Trust AI, Always Verify. Tax Law Still Needs Humans—Pt. 1: Generative artificial intelligence is now embedded in tax practice, and that trend is unlikely to reverse. What has changed is the risk profile. Large language models generate fluent legal analysis through…
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National Evidence on the Effects of School Phone Bans
Hunt Alcott (Stanford) and many co-authors have a new NBER working paper on restricting school phone use, “The Effects of School Phone Bans: National Evidence from Lockable Pouches.” (A topic I am interested in, as someone who restricts electronics use in the classroom.) Here is the abstract: Schools across the U.S. have sharply restricted student…
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“Worldwide Tally” of Legal Decisions Involving AI Hallucinations
Damien Charlotin, from Science Po Law School and HEC Paris, has “a database [that] tracks legal decisions in cases where generative AI produced hallucinated content – typically fake citations, but also other types of AI-generated arguments.” You can find the database at this link. The database was recently highlighted in a story by NPR. Last year…
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Inaugural Conference: Energy Innovation and Emerging Technologies
Registration is open for the inaugural conference of the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law Energy Innovation Lab: Energy Innovation and Emerging Technologies on April 17, 2026. It is free to attend. Register here for in person or virtual attendance. This full-day event will provide CLE credit and features 70+ speakers, including current and former…
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Muller: AI Is Not Yet Disrupting the Robust Job Market for Law School Graduates
Derek Muller (Notre Dame), AI and the Law Firm Summer Associate: A Tale of Two Futures: In May 2025, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, suggested that artificial intelligence could wipe out half of all entry level white-collar jobs—including in law—in the next 1 to 5 years. Every few months, this claim finds new virality on social media…
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California Could be First State to Require Law Schools to Teach AI
Reuters, California Could be First State to Make Law Schools Teach AI: California-accredited law schools could soon be required to train students on artificial intelligence technology and how to use AI tools responsibly. The State Bar of California’s Committee of Bar Examiners on Friday discussed adding “the competent use, capabilities, and limitations of technology and…
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New Landscape for Student Loans
Long before the federal government took over student loans, the nonprofit organization now known as AccessLex Institute®, has been active in helping students finance their legal education. One tool AccessLex provides free of charge is a Student Loan Calculator, which helps students evaluate borrowing options and potential repayment plans. Now that calculator has been updated…
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Dorna Moini: The Legal Profession Has a 1-2 Year Window
Dorna Moini, Lecturer in Law at USC Gould School of Law, teaching the “Legal Innovations Lab” there, and CEO of Gavel, a legaltech company, on Substack: “The legal profession has a 1–2 year window. Most lawyers will miss it. AI won’t replace lawyers, but one lawyer with AI will.” If you want to know what’s…
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The Trend Away From Lawyers’ Serving Organizational Clients
Jordan Furlong on Substack, “The coming revival of the PeopleLaw sector: Generative AI will inadvertently reduce the legal profession’s disproportionate focus on organizational clients — and could end up redirecting lawyers to meet the legal needs of everyday people.” This is a typically Furlong-esque thoughtful speculation about the legal profession, lawyers, and (implicitly, in this…
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Abramowitz on Lawyer Value in an AI World
No scan of legal futurology is complete without keeping up with Zack Abramowitz, a lawyer, entrepreneur, investor, and advisor who posts essays and podcasts about legaltech at “Legally Disrupted” on Substack and at “Killer Whale Strategies.” His writing and speaking can come across as “over the top,” especially in the context of the legal profession’s…
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Automating Legal Education
Continuing with my relying on Substack for many of the most interesting and up-to-date takes on the future of legal education, Dave Hoffman (Penn) writes: I have had approximately 5,000 conversations about the essay in the last week or so, with partners, associates, faculty colleagues and students. No one feels good about what it portends.…
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Stanford Law Hires ED for AI Initiative
“Stanford Law School has appointed Irene Liu as the executive director of the Stanford Law School AI Initiative, co-chaired by Nathaniel Persily, the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, and Professor of Law Julian Nyarko. The AI Initiative advances interdisciplinary research, teaching, and engagement with industry leaders and policymakers. It brings together faculty,…
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Bloomberg Law: ABA Highlights AI’s Challenges
From Bloomberg Law about how AI has become “an integral part of everyday legal work:” The legal field is no longer just watching artificial intelligence from the sidelines. Eighteen months ago, concerns about AI errors and confidentiality were common, but now AI is changing the profession’s core systems. The American Bar Association’s Task Force on…
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Leiter: Will AI Soon Cause a Massive Contraction in Law Schools?
Brian Leiter (Chicago), AI Developer Warns the AI Jobs Apocalypse Is Closer Than We Realize: [A]n excerpt [from Matt Shumer (CEO, Otherside AI), Something Big Is Happening]: [O]n February 5th, two major AI labs released new models on the same day: GPT-5.3 Codex from OpenAI, and Opus 4.6 from Anthropic (the makers of Claude, one…
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AI Resources for Law Professors
Having written several posts here at TaxProf Blog about Generative AI in the hands of law professors, I am reminded to note that the AALS announced a new AI-themed partnership with West Academic. As usual, I have a comment, after the jump. But first:
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Rodriguez on Priorities in Legal Education
Dan Rodriguez (Northwestern Law, where he is the former Dean; and a former president of AALS) has a new essay up at Substack, titled “Law Schools’ Attention Spans Remain Short.” An excerpt follows, and (below the fold) a brief comment from me. He begins: “NYTimes Elizabeth Olson, who has been writing about law schools for…
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Critiquing AI-Generated Legal Scholarship
My posts on law professors’ using Generative AI to compose law review articles (first one here, second one here) continue to generate interesting responses. Which, of course, is part of my goal: I blog to learn. Today’s addition: Michael L. Smith (Oklahoma Law), “Generative AI and the Purpose of Legal Scholarship” (forthcoming, U. Mass. L.…
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ChatGPT Generates a Novel Tax Strategy
Artificial intelligence can now generate tax minimization strategies when fed only the text of tax authorities — without any internal IRS data and without any laborious hand coding of tax code sections.
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NY Times: Interest in Law School Is Surging. Federal Student Loan Changes and AI Make the Payoff Less Certain.
The number of applicants has risen more than 40 percent over the last two years, despite new limits on student loans and uncertainty over how artificial intelligence will affect legal work.
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From the Bookshelves: The Proving Ground by Michael Connelly (2025)
I love legal thrillers. If you do too and need a distraction, check out The Proving Ground by Michael Connelly (2025). Very enjoyable! Here is the publisher’s description: “From #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly, the Lincoln Lawyer is back with a case against an AI company whose product may have been responsible for the murder…