Testing the Frontier: Generative AI in Legal Education and Beyond
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King's College London
United Kingdom -
King's College London United Kingdom
Abstract
Unlike previous AI applications in law, which focused on search and prediction, generative AI (GenAI) has the capacity to produce, on some level, coherent legal writing. It is this capacity that is driving legal educators to fundamentally reconsider approaches to academic integrity and pedagogical practice. This study investigated how legal education can productively integrate GenAI into higher education settings while maintaining academic integrity, specifically examining: (1) how students critically evaluate AI-generated legal content; (2) what limitations they identify; and (3) how collaborative approaches can develop effective guidelines for responsible GenAI use in legal curricula. We employed a novel three-stage intervention, using metacognitive modelling and collaborative co-creation, involving over 125 law students from King’s College London. Data were collected through workshop observations, student evaluations of AI outputs, collaborative guideline development and follow-up interviews. Students consistently demonstrated sophisticated critical evaluation of AI-generated legal content, identifying significant limitations including superficial analysis, a lack of argumentative coherence, citation inadequacies and absence of nuanced understanding. Most notably, students strongly preferred content that demonstrated originality and critical thinking – precisely where AI systems under-performed. Exposure to AI limitations fostered responsible usage attitudes and enhanced students’ confidence in their own analytical capabilities. Our findings demonstrate that critical engagement with AI tools enhances rather than diminishes academic standards. The co-created guidelines offer a transferable model centred on fostering a ‘culture of trust’ rather than prohibition. This transferable approach prepares future legal professionals for an AI-augmented workplace while preserving core values of legal education: critical thinking, ethical reasoning and intellectual rigour.
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Author Biographies
Cari Hyde-Vaamonde is an experienced lawyer and court advocate fascinated by the potential for code and AI to reform how law and justice function. Following a scholarship from the Inner Temple Society, she was called to the Bar in 2006. After practising as a lawyer in diverse fields including technology, and specialising in court advocacy, she became increasingly interested in systematic analysis and research. Her focus on research in the field culminated in a UKRI 4-year award to research the impacts of AI in justice settings at King's College London. She is module convener for AI, Law and Society (LLM) at King’s College London and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Embedded in the Alan Turing Institute for the academic year 2022-2023 she is co-convener for the Innovations In Judging Collaborative Research Network for the Law and Society Association.
Anat Keller is a Reader in Law at the Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London, having joined in April 2016 and previously taught at UCL (2007-2016). She holds a PhD from the Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary University of London, an LLM from the London School of Economics and first-class degrees in Management and Law (magna cum laude). Dr Keller is a qualified solicitor of England and Wales and serves as a Chief Examiner of the University of London. Her monograph 'Legal Foundations of Macroprudential Policy: An Interdisciplinary Approach' was published in 2020 (Cambridge: Intersentia). She is also a Research Fellow at the Centre for Data Analytics for Finance and Macroeconomics at King's Business School and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
