Re-educating law schools

Reviewing documents and entering data into spreadsheets was part of the grind when Zeynab Ziaie Moayyed articled at a Bay Street firm more than 15 years ago.

It was the sort of repetitive work that has long been the training ground for new lawyers. While technology has steadily reshaped that rite-of-passage slog, generative artificial intelligence has brought a tectonic shift.

Entry-level tasks that once took weeks or months can now be done at relative warp speed.

Legal watchers differ on how they think AI will ultimately shape the profession, but they agree on one thing: how lawyers are educated, trained and licensed must change.

“The snowball has already started down the hill. It’s going to continue,” says Moayyed, an immigration lawyer with Visa Law Group PC in Toronto who frequently speaks on AI.

Going forward, new and practicing lawyers will need “the skillset to analyze and make decisions about technology—the risks as well as the potential.”

“There’s an ethical duty of technological competency,” she says.

Moayyed regularly tests new products—never using real client data—that purport to have increasingly sophisticated legal research capabilities with the help of AI.

Her experience?

“They’re not there yet,” she says. “They will potentially give you responses that, if you’re lucky, lead to an actual case,” but those references may be irrelevant or flawed.

"As a practitioner, I need to have the ability to make that assessment before I use that tool for any kind of actual legal work."

AI has been blamed in both Canada and the U.S. for incidents of hallucinations or bogus case law submissions.

Some clients concerned about privacy are directing law firms to avoid AI for their cases. Others are asking that it be used for maximum efficiency and lower costs.

Moayyed uses AI to help summarize documents without client information and generate internal paperwork such as standard operating procedures.

She thinks law schools, which have traditionally focused more on analytical skills, will need more practical components to explore AI.

“If you can do that in a safe space at a university setting, that’s much better than learning the same thing when you’re out practising.”

'We need to make a real, rapid shift'

Jordan Furlong of Law21, an Ottawa-based consultant who advises legal organizations in Canada and the U.S., is calling for a complete overhaul of the lawyer development system.

He says licensing graduates before they’re fully competent is a growing challenge as technology swallows more of the tasks new associates complete to learn on the job.

“It is an accelerant of a great deal of labour that lawyers have traditionally carried out on an hourly billed basis.”

It doesn’t help that AI is evolving so fast there’s no way of knowing its impact in one, two, or five years from now.

Furlong believes law schools, regulators, and legal firms should have collaborated long before now.

“I want them to put their heads together and think: We need to make a real, rapid shift on this," he says.

“What does a triage approach look like to reconfigure legal education towards the future?”

Building out the human side of being a lawyer—how to obtain and keep client trust, listen with empathy, and build rapport—is often “glossed over” in law schools. Those traits will be even more essential if AI curbs the need for documenting, editing and other skills.

“Client relationships are human relationships, with the added layer of your ethical and fiduciary obligations and your ability to provide assistance and counsel. That is how I see the lawyer of the very near future developing,” Furlong says.

“I think that’s better than all the hourly grunt writing work that I and so many other lawyers did. It gets us away from the books and towards people.”

He would also like to see more avenues to enter the profession, as “the institutional pathways have become overgrown, overlong and extraordinarily expensive."

While students will always need an educational foundation in legal principles, “nobody says it has to come from a law school."

Few first-year students able to use generative AI effectively

Benjamin Perrin, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s Peter A. Allard School of Law, leads the UBC AI & Criminal Justice Initiative. He says day one of orientation should outline law school policies limiting what students can and can’t do with AI, along with ethical and legal responsibilities.

He's been surprised by how few first-year students have shown up able to use generative AI effectively.

“There’s an assumption that the new crop of lawyers is going to be AI fluent, and they’re going to pull the firms along. I don’t think that’s the case at all. It’s an interesting disconnect.”

There’s still a crucial place for legal research and writing programs, but beyond that, Perrin says, “We need to look at mainstreaming AI issues, topics and tools throughout the curriculum.”

In February, Ohio’s Case Western Reserve University School of Law became the first in the United States to require all first-year law students to earn a certification in legal AI.

The program aims to provide hands-on experience with AI-powered legal tools while exploring the evolving regulatory landscape, ethical considerations, and the future of legal technology. It’s a recognition that AI is not going away, and schools will do students a disservice by avoiding the topic.

Canadian institutions have no similar requirements, but Queen’s University and Osgoode Hall Law School have optional courses. That said, panellists at a recent conference at Osgoode were clear that AI will harm, not help, Canada’s legal system if students don’t receive proper training and it’s not carefully regulated.

Although Perrin sees great opportunities for technology to increase efficiency and access to legal services, he’s wary of “de-skilling.” One example is the temptation to rely on case summaries rather than reading actual judgments full of vital nuance and reasoning.

“It could lead to, I’ll be quite frank, dumber lawyers.”

Smart practitioners will still read judgments and perhaps use a secure AI tool to create a first draft of an application or motion that can then be cross-referenced for accuracy.

“There is a sweet spot where lawyers who effectively use AI … can be tremendously more productive and get better results for clients,” Perrin says.

Don't be scared of technology

Lawyer Mark Doble is co-founder and CEO of Alexi, a litigation platform that offers specific tools for everything from evidence and document review to research and workflow management. The Toronto-based company’s North American clients include major firms such as Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP.

He agrees that lawyers who best use technology will deliver more effective and accessible solutions for their clients. However, he says there’s currently a vast need for legal help that is not being met.

That’s something that needs to change.

“You can develop an understanding of new technologies really quickly, and you can leverage the best aspects of technology without being scared or thrown off by some weakness that it has,” Doble says.

"In the end, people are going to be excited to engage their lawyer on some new challenge and task, as long as that lawyer is properly equipping themself with technology.”

However, as law schools, regulators, and firms grapple with technological advances and the issues they can bring, technology continues to race forward.

Doble is optimistic about the future, a feeling reinforced during a recent event where he met several second and third-year Osgoode students.

“I think there’s an incredible new crop of lawyers who will be educated and trained in this AI world,” he says.

“They’re going to do an incredible job for society and the legal system generally.”