Law & AI

This course introduces students to the legal, technical, and normative dimensions of artificial intelligence. AI systems, and especially the new generation of foundation models and GenAI, is reshaping labor markets, education, and research, and is bringing transformative change to legal practice, legal education, regulatory frameworks, across nearly every domain. The course is intended for any law student who wants to engage seriously with these developments, regardless of prior background in AI or technical training. The course begins with a unit on the historical and technical foundations of AI, including a high-level overview of prediction models and generative AI. We then move to a hands-on unit in which students work with real legal text data to build intuition for what these tools can and cannot do. We will then examine the major legal and normative challenges raised by AI, such as fairness and discrimination, intellectual property, privacy, explainability, AI safety, and environmental impact, together with AI’s impact on the legal profession itself. The final unit surveys emerging AI regulation in the United States and abroad, including the EU AI Act and the rapidly developing patchwork of US federal and state regulation. No prior coding or quantitative background is required. Some assignments include scaffolded Python exercises, but they are designed to be approachable for students with no programming experience, and Teaching Assistants will provide additional support in optional lab sessions.