First-year UNLV law students will be required to take a new class on artificial intelligence uses in legal practices starting this fall, the college announced Tuesday.
The course, titled “Introduction to the Responsible Use of AI,” will teach law students how and when AI can be used as a tool to enhance legal work without relying on the technology as a substitute for legal analysis, according to a news release from UNLV’s Boyd School of Law.
“Something that defines our law school is how committed we are to truly preparing our students to be effective lawyers,” said Joe Regalia, an assistant professor of law at UNLV who will co-teach the one-credit class. “If you take that commitment seriously, (AI) has to be part of our curriculum going forward.”
Regalia said he sees the new course as a big change to make in the mandatory law curriculum at UNLV, Nevada’s only law school. He added that UNLV will offer a more advanced class on AI use in legal settings for students further along in law school by spring 2027.
AI use is already widespread among UNLV law students, according to Dionne Stanfill, a former UNLV Student Bar Association president who graduated from the Boyd School of Law this month. She said she and others often use the technology to study and work through dense case briefings.
“I don’t know a single student who does not use AI,” Stanfill said.
Stanfill believes AI is a tool that can help lawyers become more efficient and said she sees the new UNLV class as the college acknowledging AI as a mainstay in the legal industry’s future.
“You’re going to be able to bill your clients less, and you’re going to have more clients,” Stanfill said. “It’s almost like, if you’re not using it, that’s poor practice.”
AI use in law ‘not a fad’
Lawyers and judges who spoke with the Las Vegas Review-Journal said they think the new class will be valuable for young law students, but they remained skeptical about AI’s uses in legal circles.
District Judge Tara Clark Newberry said she does not use AI, but called the class an excellent idea to prepare law students for a future in which the technology is more common.
“This is not a fad,” Clark Newberry said. “It’s going to become more and more prevalent, and so we need to have ethical and responsible ways of integrating it into the practice of law where we have adequate assurances as to the reliability.”
Clark Newberry said she mostly notices AI use in her courtroom in the form of hallucinated case citations, or citations for nonexistent cases, in legal filings. She added that those occurrences are rare, recalling only three instances in the past two years.
“There’s nothing inherently wrong with using AI. It’s whether the AI is getting it right and how reliable it is, and when there are errors, taking responsibility and accountability for that,” Clark Newberry said.
The idea of a law class on responsible AI use is a good one to District Judge Timothy Williams, but he said lawyers should set clear limits on what they use it for.
AI should be used only as a tool, he said, not as a replacement for a law student’s need to develop critical thinking skills.
“For younger lawyers, I think maybe it might be helpful to give them a general idea about a specific subject, but at the end of the day … they have to read the cases,” Williams said. “There’s no substitute for old-fashioned legal research and writing. There just isn’t, at least at this present time.”
Williams said he does not use AI — “it’d probably be a waste of time” to adopt it, he said — and hasn’t noticed much AI use in his courtroom.
But about once or twice a month, Williams said, he’ll receive an AI-generated complaint from a pro se litigant, or somebody who isn’t being assisted by an attorney. He said these complaints often lack key facts or even a basis for their claim, making the filing “woefully inadequate.”
“The law is just so exceedingly complex, and that’s where AI falls short right now,” Williams said. “Maybe it can point you in the right direction … maybe AI can give you some ideas or cite some cases for you, but you need to go out and check and confirm whether those sources are correct or not.”
He added: “AI is not a substitute for a good lawyer.”
‘It’s going to be like crack’
Mandatory classes on AI in law school appear to be a new practice that comes as an increasing number of legal professionals find themselves using the technology.
Reuters reported in September that at least eight law schools now incorporate AI training for first-year students, and a Northwestern University survey published this year found that over 60 percent of the more than 500 federal judges who responded said they use at least one AI tool in their work.
Among those in the legal industry using AI is Rob Murdock, who has practiced law since 1990. In the medical malpractice cases he often handles, Murdock said he uses AI to conduct extensive research on niche medical procedures and quickly summarize thousands of pages of medical records.
But Murdock said he takes AI’s output as a starting point rather than gospel because AI can overgeneralize facts and provide incorrect information. “We go back through the records one by one,” Murdock said. “I just find it’s a great way to start a case.”
Murdock said he believes AI will have long-lasting use in legal fields, but worries law students may abuse the technology if proper use is not reinforced throughout law school.
Robert Langford, a trial lawyer for 37 years, said he does not use AI because he prefers his traditional file-building process, as it helps him remember a case better. Still, Langford views UNLV’s new class as a necessary part of a modern legal ethics education due to its broad-reaching effects on legal practices.
“(AI is) going to be a big tool in the lawyer’s toolbox, but it’s subject to real abuse,” Langford said. “They need to start forearming these young lawyers that maybe AI isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be.”
Langford said he worries about AI creating fake evidence, such as manipulated photos, that could be submitted to the court with undetected alterations.
“It’s just as important to examine the ethics of what evidence you’re bringing into court and what the responsibility of the trial lawyer is in doing that,” Langford said. “The time to do that is now as we’re adopting all these AI tools.”
When it comes to a lawyer’s workload, Langford said he is skeptical about how much time AI truly saves. Despite his concerns, he acknowledged that AI is likely here to stay in legal circles.
“Sadly, it’s going to be like crack,” Langford said of AI use in the future of legal practice. “I think we’re going to be stupider as a result. The old man in me thinks that we’re one year closer to idiocracy every day that passes.”
Contact Spencer Levering at slevering@reviewjournal.com
or 702-383-0253.
