Sydney Law School is embedding the learning of critical AI fluency across its LLB and JD programs through a staged, curriculum-wide approach.
The School is taking a considered approach to embracing generative artificial intelligence (AI) in legal education. Rather than relying on a default ban, the School's AI@Sydney Law program is progressively embedding opportunities to build AI literacy across the core Bachelor of Laws (LLB) and Juris Doctor (JD) curriculum, as well as providing opportunities for deeper study in the regulation and governance of AI. This will help students develop the critical fluency they will need to live, lead and work well with and around AI throughout their careers.
"We are not treating AI as a stand-alone topic, a passing trend, or a singular behemoth," said Professor Fleur Johns, Dean of Sydney Law School.
"Instead, we are advancing a staged, considered program of work focused on adapting our core curriculum and ways of teaching. AI@Sydney Law will expand on, not supplant, the essentials of deep legal knowledge, alongside strong capabilities for legal reasoning and sound, context-attentive human judgement."
AI@Sydney Law is grounded in the view that outstanding legal education depends on the acquisition of integrated, adaptable legal knowledge and problem-solving abilities, as well as excellent capacities for empathic human judgement and the navigation of complexity. The program flows from the School's renewed commitment to student flourishing and graduate thriving in the face of change, set out in the Strategic Vision released earlier this year.
We are not treating AI as a stand-alone topic, a passing trend, or a singular behemoth. Instead, we are advancing a staged, considered program of work focused on adapting our core curriculum and ways of teaching.
Professor Fleur Johns
Dean of Sydney Law School
For students, this means gaining equitable access to, and learning to use, a range of legal AI tools already in professional use, questioning and comparing them and, at times, not relying on them at all. Key skills will continue to be assured through secure assessments at critical points in every program, supported by the University of Sydney’s two-lane assessment approach and wrap-around careers support.
“AI is diffusing rapidly across society and the economy, which means that no matter where their careers take them, our graduates need to be able to engage critically with the technology. Some students will want deeper specialist subjects in technology regulation, but embedding critical AI literacy across the curriculum means students meet AI in the context of real legal problems, whether in contracts, ethics or administrative decision-making, and keep building their judgement as the technology changes. That is a far more durable way to prepare lawyers than teaching AI as a stand-alone topic,” said Professor Kimberlee Weatherall
Over the next two years, modules and tasks that build students’ critical AI literacy are being introduced in staged, contextually rich ways across core subjects such as Lawyers, Justice and Ethics, Contracts, Civil Dispute Resolution, and Administrative Law. The work will later extend into postgraduate coursework, so Masters students can also learn to work critically with AI beyond specialist Law and Technology units.
Teaching staff are being supported to build use of AI tools or critical reflection on AI-related legal and societal change into their units in ways suited to each subject, encouraging students to explore these tools’ strengths and limitations, and understand the professional risks they raise. All students have also been given free educational licences to legal AI tools already widely used in legal practice, with accompanying guidance.
“Students can expect AI to show up in their core subjects in ways that make sense for the subject, not as an add-on. In class, they’ll be asked to compare different tools, test what they can and can’t do, and think hard about the professional risks of relying on them. Our aim is for every student to leave a unit better able to judge when AI helps, when it doesn’t, and when human judgement has to lead,” said Dr Sergio Sulmicelli.
Alongside AI literacy, the School is expanding opportunities for students to build higher-order human skills through clinical and experiential learning, and through on-your-feet thinking and dialogue in class without AI support.
“Our cohort is going to enter a profession that is changing quickly, and we want to be ready for it. Being invited to explore AI tools in our core subjects, with guidance, means we can learn their strengths and limits in their practical applications while we build the foundations of legal reasoning and judgement. Seeing the way these tools are changing the practice of law is crucial to preparing graduates," said Mounica Akula, President, Sydney University Law Society.
Sydney Law School is well placed to deliver on these ambitions. Our researchers are working on the cutting edge of the encounter between law and technology, in the Automated Decision-making and Society research node and Sydney's cross-disciplinary Centre for AI Trust & Governance.
Student feedback is shaping AI@Sydney Law and further opportunities to contribute will follow.
Find out more about the University of Sydney’s approach to AI, and how we are embracing emerging technology in higher education.