As in many fields, AI is already transforming the legal professions and legal education, with the potential to do so even further. AI’s potential to replace humans in relation to specific professional tasks (such as contract drafting and the preparation of documents), raises the question of what legal education is for now, and will be for in the future. Drawing upon research conducted with law firms within the United Kingdom, this paper considers what makes humans different to (and even better than) AI, and how legal education might help students to optimise those differences to their advantage in their future professional lives. Although focused on legal education, the paper has the potential to be of interest to people working across a range of disciplines.
Lydia Bleasdale: I am a Professor of Legal Education at the School of Law, University of Leeds. I have expertise across student wellbeing and belonging, and am the co-founder of a large international network of legal educators (Connecting Legal Education). I am particularly interested in how we can help students to become the types of people they want to be during their time at University and beyond, including exploring how ‘who’ they want to be relates to ‘what’ they want to be.