AI in Legal Education: A New Era in Law Schools and Lawyers

While Artificial Intelligence keeps changing industries, legal education in India will soon be joining the same wagon. In a trend-setting webinar on July 5 organized by The Hindu, top legal minds, tech experts, and policy-makers discussed how AI needs to be ingrained in law schools and professional practice. The three broad categories of consideration: ethics, curriculum, and industry readiness.

India's courts are notoriously backed up, with cases piling up over years, and yes, decades. To attempt to address this, AI systems like Machine Learning (ML), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and Predictive Analytics are being implemented to pre-empt mundane work, enhance case tracking, and even aid in legal research and risk assessment.

But in order for law schools to effectively leverage this technology, they need to transform. Speakers at the webinar emphasized that it is only significant to educate future lawyers with digital literacy, legal analytics, and AI ethics within the legal context. Law students, they contended, are not just needed to be instructed on the technicalities of how AI tools function but also critically consider questions on bias in algorithms, data privacy, and the boundaries of automation in justice.

"AI can accelerate legal proceedings, but AI cannot replace human thought where human sympathy and subtlety are concerned," responded a panellist. A response came that AI had actually been used in foreign courts to determine risk at sentencing or locate similar precedents and that India had to play catch-up—morally.".

The reasoning also encompassed whether studying AI would fill the gap between theory and practice. As more law firms begin to use more AI-based research and documentation utilities, graduates who are trained for it will be able to do business on day one and be productive without any delay.

In brief, the webinar was a welcome reminder: AI is no enemy of the legal community—it is a tool that, if utilized in an ethical and effective manner, can expand access to justice. But before it can be, it needs to be educated about, debated, and de-mystified at Indian law schools.