Guarding intelligence
What AI means for the next generation of lawyers
Imagine you invent a machine that can make any meal the user can think of ... but there is a risk that the meal will be poisonous, even though it looks perfectly edible. What would you do with such a machine? Would you abandon it as too risky? Would you keep working on it to ensure all the meals are safe to consume? Would you only grant access to people who have been trained to use it properly? Or would you give the machine away to anyone who wants it, and hope for the best?
That last option seems rather reckless. But that is what has happened with Generative AI. Gen AI is a prediction machine, one that makes not perfect looking food but accurate looking knowledge — and if it isn’t used correctly that knowledge may be false and even dangerous. This flawed prediction machine has been given away, for free, to anyone with Internet access. No training. No guardrails.
Gen AI now sits on the desk of almost every lawyer, judge, and law student. And when used incorrectly it is producing false and even dangerous legal knowledge.
We’ve already seen the headlines: lawyers accused of submitting court documents containing Gen AI‑hallucinated case citations. Students submitting work that contains similarly Gen AI-fabricated sources. And now, even judges accused of misusing Gen AI in their judgements.
Why AI matters for future lawyers
If you’re thinking about enrolling in a Juris Doctor or Bachelor of Laws and becoming a lawyer, you will be entering the profession at a time of significant transition. In just three years, the use of Gen AI in the legal services sector has gone from novelty to necessity.
According to some sources, 98% of legal professionals in Australia now use Gen AI in some capacity.
Legal research, legal drafting, and legal analysis are being transformed by Gen AI tools. AI is making legal services more accessible, more affordable and more responsive to client needs and preferences. Law firms are seeking to hire graduates who can use the Gen AI tools and who can critically evaluate their outputs, rather than blindly trust them.
Gen AI isn’t replacing lawyers, but it is reshaping what lawyers do. And the use of these comes with significant risks for the unwary.
What it means for law students
The traditional approach to studying law meant long lectures or video recordings, dense readings, and minimal feedback. AI is beginning to change all of that, shifting the study of law from passive to more interactive learning.
Students can now load a case or a statute into an AI tool and ask follow‑up questions to gain a deeper understanding of the material. AI tools can generate instant summaries, mind maps and mock quizzes. Students can work with an AI agent to test their understanding, receive detailed feedback on their work, and request examples, analogies or simplifications to help them understand complex concepts.
AI tools can even simulate trial proceedings, client interviews and negotiations to develop students’ practical legal skills.
In this new world, learning the law becomes increasingly interactive and personalised, with AI able to provide immediate clarification, guidance and feedback when students need it.
Why AI matters for future lawyers
If you’re thinking about enrolling in a Juris Doctor or Bachelor of Laws and becoming a lawyer, you will be entering the profession at a time of significant transition. In just three years, the use of Gen AI in the legal services sector has gone from novelty to necessity.
According to some sources, 98% of legal professionals in Australia now use Gen AI in some capacity.
Legal research, legal drafting, and legal analysis are being transformed by Gen AI tools. AI is making legal services more accessible, more affordable and more responsive to client needs and preferences. Law firms are seeking to hire graduates who can use the Gen AI tools and who can critically evaluate their outputs, rather than blindly trust them.
Gen AI isn’t replacing lawyers, but it is reshaping what lawyers do. And the use of these comes with significant risks for the unwary.
What it means for law students
The traditional approach to studying law meant long lectures or video recordings, dense readings, and minimal feedback. AI is beginning to change all of that, shifting the study of law from passive to more interactive learning.
Students can now load a case or a statute into an AI tool and ask follow‑up questions to gain a deeper understanding of the material. AI tools can generate instant summaries, mind maps and mock quizzes. Students can work with an AI agent to test their understanding, receive detailed feedback on their work, and request examples, analogies or simplifications to help them understand complex concepts.
AI tools can even simulate trial proceedings, client interviews and negotiations to develop students’ practical legal skills.
In this new world, learning the law becomes increasingly interactive and personalised, with AI able to provide immediate clarification, guidance and feedback when students need it.
Professor Nick James.
Professor Nick James.
What future lawyers need to know
As AI becomes more embedded in and essential to legal work, legal employers are placing increasing emphasis on practical capabilities that complement rather than compete with these tools. The best lawyers of the future will balance their digital and human skills. They will be technologically empowered, ethically grounded, critically minded and creatively human.
Lawyers will need to understand when AI can enhance their work and when tasks require human reasoning, judgment and interpretation. This includes the ability to assess the reliability of AI‑generated material, recognise its limitations and appreciate the short and long-term consequences of delegating a task to AI tools.
Because AI can summarise and organise large volumes of legal information, success as a legal practitioner will no longer depend on the ability to recall doctrine. AI can do that. Those who will thrive in legal practice will be able to think critically, analyse complex issues, communicate clearly and apply legal principles in context. Ethical awareness will be critical, particularly when navigating questions of accuracy, confidentiality and fairness. The ability to cultivate and maintain genuine human connections with clients will be essential.
Developing these abilities begins at law school. Students will prepare themselves for the profession by building their digital literacy, experimenting with the tools available, and reflecting on how AI can support their learning without replacing the critical and human skills they need to successfully practise law.
Bond Law’s approach to AI
At Bond, AI is transforming what we teach our law students, how we teach them, and how we assess them.
Academics are using AI to design more engaging and interactive learning resources, including realistic simulations and authentic assessment tasks.
We are developing our students’ digital literacy by teaching them how to use AI tools correctly and ethically.
Our students are learning how AI is transforming legal practice as well as the law itself. And they are learning to appreciate the dangers associated with using AI.
The real risks of AI
The risk of artificial intelligence use compromising academic integrity is well known. It is much easier today for students to use AI to do their work for them, and AI detection tools often fail to catch it.
There is also the risk of AI generating legal information that appears authoritative but is entirely inaccurate.
There is the risk of excessive AI using dulling a student’s critical thinking skills and cognitive development. If learners rely on AI to complete every task, they risk weakening the skills that will make them employable in the first place.
Access to AI tools is uneven: paid legal models tend to be far more reliable than free ones, creating inequity among students, between law schools and between law firms.
For the next generation of lawyers, the challenge is to navigate all these risks with an understanding of AI’s capabilities, and an attitude of cautious optimism.
What the future holds
In the next few years, we will continue to see AI rewriting the rulebook for lawyers. The hallucinations generated by AI will become less common, thanks to the increasing use of domain-specific legal AI. Autonomous AI agents will handle more and more routine legal tasks for lawyers.
In the classroom, AI tutors will become more common, and multi-modal tools will replace text-only systems. Hyper-personalised learning will become the norm, delivering real-time customised learning experiences and personalised feedback to each student. Simulations will bring the classroom closer to authentic legal practice than ever before.
The powerful, extraordinary, potentially dangerous machine is already a reality.
The question is: will it make law students better lawyers or worse learners?
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