As Shane Dizon noted in his earlier post, December is a time to mind your boundaries. As part of setting those boundaries, setting time aside to revamp your courses can fuel your inner creative educator.
This post shares a series of recent articles regarding incorporating AI into your syllabus or classroom.
If you have not already incorporated AI into your work, here are some questions to consider prior to the spring semester:
- How might you restrict the use of AI in your classroom?
- How and if you will use AI for your course? To grade? To generate hypotheticals? To assist in the creation of rubrics? Perhaps you will show illustrative examples of fact patterns through generative art?
- What methods might you use to teach responsible and ethical use of AI to future lawyers?
Regarding personally observed abuse of AI in academic and bar success courses:
- What might your approach be to a student that uses AI to generate essay responses in your course or in their commercial bar course (to presumably earn completion progress credit)?
While this blog does not have answers, it does have resources to consider this month:
- Lande, John, Solving Professors’ Dilemmas about Prohibiting or Promoting Student AI Use (December 01, 2025). University of Missouri School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2025-53, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5841522
- Lorteau, Steve and Sarro, Douglas, Artificial Intelligence in Legal Education: A Scoping Review (November 17, 2025). The Law Teacher [In Press], Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5762982
- Liu, Nathan, Artificial Intelligence in Legal Education: Current Practices, Debates, and Recommendations (November 05, 2025). JusGov Research Paper No. 2025-07, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5821163
- Sag, Matthew, AI Policies for Law Schools (October 17, 2025). Emory Legal Studies Research Paper No. 100, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5619534 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5619534
- Engle-Newman, Christopher, Assessing Law Student Learning in the Age of AI (September 05, 2025). U Denver Legal Studies Research Paper No. 25-24, 87 U. Pitt. L. Rev. XXX (2025), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5766523
- Lande, John, Getting Help from AI to Update Your Syllabus (Even If You Think It’s Just Fine) (July 09, 2025). University of Missouri School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2025-32, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5345304
I also hope to see many of you at NECASP in New York City on December 19th!
(Amy Vaughan-Thomas)
