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AI and the Future of Law

Michael Madison
University of Pittsburgh School of Law

First posted: October 19, 2026 and updated afterward from time to time.

This is a page of links and references to ideas about intersections among artificial intelligence (AI), law, legal education, and law practice. With a bit of imagination on the reader’s part and a bit of guidance from an intellectual shepherd, many of the references generalize beyond law and beyond education to other contexts.

The page stands on its own, but it was conceived and is designed as a complement to a live presentation, or presentations, to relatively small groups. The primary, initial audience is a faculty: a faculty of a school, or of a department, in a university. Any organization might stand in place of a faculty: a company, a not-for-profit organization, a practice group, a team of executives or managers, and so on. The observation that motivated producing the page, and the presentation that it goes with, is this:

As the blend of panic and excitement that accompanied the public release of ChatGPT in November 2022 wears off and as AI – especially Generative AI – gets rooted in professional and organizational activities, organizations across a wide range of sectors, scales, and backgrounds are struggling to find effective ways to talk about what to do with AI and what to do about AI.

I may share my presentation(s) itself here in due course. To begin with, here are the references:

Some context, and about me

I have been writing and talking publicly about the future of legal education, online and in journals, almost as long as I have been a full-time law professor, and I have been a full-time law professor since 1998. I used to write and host guest authors at a blog called madisonian.net. That blog is still online, but it is inactive. Among other things, I used it to work out a lot of my thinking before capturing it in several unpublished papers that I later posted to SSRN, where the ideas could get a little more attention from the legal academy. 

I did publish some things.  In 2008, for example, I wrote up this explanation of why I abandoned classic law school exams. (I still do not use law school exams.) In 2016, I published this account of my leadership teaching. The course described in that article has evolved into a richer seminar teaching leadership to law students.

Eventually, I summarized my frustrations and my optimism about higher education and law in a series of online writings:

Of my writing about legal education, the “Invitation” is the least argumentative. It led to an online symposium (more than 60 contributions, available here) and to the Future Law Works convenings that I co-hosted with Dan Rodriguez (then Dean at Northwestern Law and former AALS president) and Hiram Chodosh (former Utah Law Dean and President (now Emeritus) of Claremont McKenna College).

Now, Generative AI is upon us (literally, to some), which raises the stakes.  What should law schools do, looking forward, not only with respect to Generative AI, but with respect to defining and implementing their purposes?  What should law professors and law school administrators do? What should our students do? 

And why?  Does a re-commitment to classic legal training and pedagogy require new, explicit justifications?  What might justify small or large new directions, institutionally or individually?

I have identified some relevant and useful readings below, which I offer as prompts for reflection and continued conversation. My own views align with those of some of the authors and institutions mentioned and not at all with others. Where I can, I have added some brief personal comments.

Readings: my perspectives on AI and legal education generally

Generative AI Guidelines and Policy (for my Fall 2026 courses)

Readings: about Generative AI and what it might do or not do to individuals and to society

The following references come to me primarily via Substack. Some reflect original research; some collect and comment on research and commentary by others.

Readings: about Generative AI, higher education, and legal education institutions

On institutions for teaching and learning:

On individual experiences with teaching and learning:

On research and scholarship: