New law course connects AI and the legal profession - The University of Tulsa
Close Menu
Close Menu

New law course connects AI and the legal profession

Artificial intelligence programs are quickly changing many fields, and the legal profession is not immune. At The University of Tulsa, a new class is focusing on the intersection of law and AI.

Mwafulirwa

Mbilike Mwafulirwa, a practicing attorney and AI scholar in Tulsa and UTulsa College of Law faculty member, is teaching the class this spring.

Mwafulirwa (L.L.M. ’10, J.D. ’12) said he was always fascinated with automation and the intersection of law and technology. Eventually, he started publishing peer-reviewed scholarly articles on artificial intelligence and giving lectures on how AI-powered tools like Alexa, Siri, and self-driving cars factor into the existing legal landscape. As ChatGPT and other generative AI tools grew in popularity, he incorporated those tools into his lectures and publications.

“My thought process was, if the best and the finest in the legal profession are asking me to come and share my insights on this topic, I think it feels wrong not to share it with our UTulsa students, who are near and dear to my heart,” Mwafulirwa said.

Besides giving students a solid legal foundation in traditional courses, UTulsa Law offers cutting-edge insights on critical and emerging topics. This new course covers the legal framework behind artificial intelligence and uses tools like generative AI as study cases.

“The course also aims to immerse the students” into AI and realign “their perspective so that they embrace the technology as an important component of the modern lawyer, as something that is crucial in their toolkit as practicing lawyers when they finish at UTulsa,” he added.

On a practical level, Mwafulirwa shared how AI helped him in a recent case to analyze and develop counterarguments to a long and complex scientific paper that was central to the issues. After vetting the AI outputs, he used the information learned to assist in effectively advocating for a far more superior position for his client.

“If I didn’t have this tool, I would have probably been sweating over lunch trying to read a 40-page article to find the needle in the haystack,” he said. “With enough experience in prompting and knowing what to look for, we leveled the playing field in an instant.”

Teaching and learning about these advances keeps UTulsa students on the frontlines of new technology and adaptation, he added.

“We are primed and prepared for the big stage,” Mwafulirwa said of the College of Law, “and I think part of that is to have our students on the cutting edge – not just in legal knowledge, but also in the accessible tools that are open to the profession.”

Siever

Trent Siever is a third-year law student enrolled in the course. “I wanted to take this class because AI is the future and will especially be relevant to the practice of law,” he said. “While other classes have been incorporating some aspects of AI into the coursework, I wanted to take a class solely devoted to learning about AI and how it is being used.”

He said he hopes to learn more about the legal implications of how AI is being used in different industries. “Also, I thought that it would be fun to learn more about how AI is being used in the legal profession as a practical tool,” he said, adding that generally, AI is prohibited on writing assignments for plagiarism purposes.

“The use of AI in the legal profession will bring change like power tools did for carpenters. It takes good carpentry skills to effectively use hand tools and power tools, but one is much faster and can produce a more refined product than the other. The same skills that make someone a great legal writer and researcher will make them even better with AI,” Siever said. “All of that to say, I think the future of the legal profession involves a constructive approach to learning how to use and implement AI in an ethical way.”