As the influence and reach of artificial intelligence (AI) tools continue to grow, three BC Law professors from the Law Practice group—Lis Keller, Maureen Van Neste, and Joan Blum—created an innovative pilot program to prepare law students to use AI applications in their classes. As a result, the trio received the 2025 Faculty Prize for Innovation in Pedagogy, an annual BC Law award that recognizes creative approaches to teaching methods and new topics.
In preparation for spring 2025 classes in which students would gain access to new AI-assisted research and drafting tools in Lexis (Protégé) and Westlaw (CoCounsel), the professors devised exercises designed to teach students methods for using the tools responsibly.
They did so at a crucial time.
“The use of generative AI tools in the legal space is not only increasing, but it is dynamic, with fierce competition among vendors to provide useful AI tools to lawyers,” said Van Neste. She stressed the continued importance of students gaining familiarity with enhancements to traditional platforms like Lexis and Westlaw, but added that there was more uncertainty around which precise products current students will be using when they are a few years into practice.
“What we do know is that the competent and ethical use of AI tools will be part of lawyers’ ethical obligations of competence and diligence on behalf of their clients,” Van Neste explained. “This is why it is so important that we equip students with the foundational skills to critically evaluate AI output.”
This is how the pilot’s practical training exercises were designed.
The trio assigned students to use AI to respond to a supervising attorney’s request to research a legal issue and draft an email response. In one hypothetical, students analyzed a state statute to test conventional research methods. In another, they were asked to research an employment issue related to the Americans with Disabilities Act, which required them to research and apply federal regulations, statutes, and cases using AI to perform the research and help draft a response. In all the 1L sections, students needed to analyze differences between using conventional and AI-assisted research methods to draw out important strengths and weaknesses of each.
After completing an assignment, students had to analyze the tools’ utility and accuracy. Many of them were left impressed by the speed with which AI could assemble quantities of information relevant to the case. However, the results would sometimes include irrelevant information or even offer a flawed analysis of the issue by missing key precedents, which students were able to discern thanks to their classroom work. At least one case of AI citing an incorrect case with a name very similar to one that should have been referenced, also arose.
The pilot program is already getting results in students’ summer firms and organizations, where they are introducing best practices to colleagues who may not have had a similar exposure to the tools the students acquired at BC Law. “My firm has been discussing implementing AI technology,” a 1L wrote in thanks to Blum recently. “Many attorneys have been impressed that I have used the tool in law school courses.”
“AI tools have boosted lawyer productivity dramatically, but they remain just that—tools that a lawyer must wield with the same competence and diligence as any other law practice technology,” Blum said, when asked about the team’s motivations and concerns in creating the initiative. “A lawyer must critically evaluate AI output using the knowledge, skill, and understanding gained from their legal education and law practice. In part, this means double-checking AI research with conventional methods and applying independent analysis to AI-assisted writing.”
Blum cited a quote from Professor Ethan Mollick of the University of Pennsylvania, which captures what she sees as the optimal approach to using AI in legal research: “Always generate your own ideas [first]…capture your unique perspective before AI’s suggestions can anchor you.” She stressed that AI can be a powerful assistant, but it is the lawyer who is ultimately responsible for representing the client.
The Law School’s Law Practice program is nationally recognized for its curriculum. Its six-member faculty includes Cheryl Bratt, Mary Ann Chirba, and Jeffrey Cohen, who have also received recognition within and outside the law school for their innovations in legal education. The Law Practice faculty collaborate closely to articulate course goals and outcomes and to design a program-wide curriculum that consists of two required courses for 1Ls. They teach foundational law practice skills through client-centered simulations, in both advisory and advocacy settings. Each professor creates his or her own simulations and sequence of classes to implement the shared curriculum. The Law Practice group plans to incorporate more extensive AI training in the coming year.