What AI Skills Should Every Law Student Learn?

p strongLaw faculty increasingly favor making AI competence part of the core curriculum&mdashbut competence must mean verification, judgment and professional responsibility, not merely faster prompting./strong/p p Primary Research Group's survey of 114 law-school faculty found that 71.93% favored a required core course on artificial intelligence. An even larger 77.19% supported integrating AI into legal research and writing. Those results point toward a two-part model: foundational instruction for every student and repeated practice inside ordinary legal tasks./p p The need is not abstract. Faculty estimated that students used AI inappropriately in an average of 20.13% of their work, although estimates ranged as high as 90%. That wide spread suggests schools do not share a common picture of what misuse looks like&mdashor how consistently it is detected./p p A practical law-school AI curriculum should cover five capabilities: choosing an appropriate tool, protecting client and institutional information, checking authorities and quotations, documenting AI assistance, and exercising independent legal judgment. Research-and-writing courses are a natural testing ground because students can compare generated work with primary sources and receive feedback on both method and result./p p For deans and curriculum committees, the management challenge is sequencing. A required course can establish vocabulary, risks and ethical boundaries doctrinal clinics and writing courses can then assess performance in context. Employers are unlikely to value graduates who simply use AI more often. They will value graduates who can use it without compromising accuracy, confidentiality or accountability./p p  /p