AI Fluency Is Legal Education's New Differentiator

The team at Harvey is proud to work with more than 100 law schools globally. As AI transforms the business and practice of law, we see an opportunity and an obligation to help educators prepare the next generation of lawyers. Employers increasingly expect graduates to use AI in practice, while educators rightly insist that students develop independent judgment and analytical skills. These aims belong together: using AI well requires students to question its output, test its limits, and decide when to set it aside. That fluency takes guided practice alongside a rigorous legal education. Working hand in hand with educators, we aim to help students build the skills necessary for today’s and tomorrow's legal industry.

The Need for Adaptation is Evident

For most of my career, I’ve worked closely with senior legal leaders at the intersection of technology and the delivery of legal work. We’ve talked about the future of the profession, the challenges and opportunities we are facing, and how technology can help lawyers thrive and deliver more client value. There has always been discussion of how the profession must adapt to new technology, but the urgency and prominence of these issues has accelerated noticeably in the last 12 months. This shift has been coupled with a growing recognition of the need for incoming lawyers who can use AI thoughtfully and responsibly from their first day.

Many firms are investing heavily in AI and anticipate that digitally native graduates will arrive fluent and excited to use these tools. But that influx of AI-fluent talent is taking longer to deliver than many presumed. Even when first-years show up ready to work in an AI-enabled practice, many are still inexperienced with the leading tools, as they haven’t yet had sufficient experience using them to deliver legal work. In these circumstances, the burden of AI training is increasingly shifted to employers, delaying the ability of young lawyers to deliver value on client work and forcing tenured employees to become trainers. Increasing law student exposure to AI during legal education benefits future associates by making them more marketable to employers of all kinds and more immediately productive. It benefits employers when new hires deliver more value more quickly. And it benefits the schools themselves by strengthening their relationships with potential employers, and giving prospective students more confidence in their post-graduation prospects.

AI fluency means something specific here. It means knowing when AI can improve the work, how to prompt effectively and interrogate its output, how to fold it into legal reasoning, where it tends to fail, and when to set it aside entirely. That's a professional skill, and like every professional skill, it takes practice. Students who get reps practicing how to work with AI in school will be able to work more effectively and efficiently when they start their legal careers.

The core tension is easy to state. The profession's expectations of a first-year lawyer are changing more rapidly than law schools are adapting their curricula and policies. Navigating the challenges of permitting and enabling the use of AI responsibly during legal education must be aligned with evolving employer requirements and expectations.

Judgment and fluency, together

I hear a second concern just as often, sometimes in the same conversation. Professors and senior partners worry that young lawyers who lean too heavily on AI won't build the analytical foundation and judgment they'll need to become great lawyers.

Both worries are legitimate, and they point to the same growing necessity. Legal education needs to produce lawyers who can think critically and use AI fluently. The two skills reinforce each other. A lawyer with calibrated judgment gets far more out of AI, and a lawyer who uses AI well has more time and more capacity to develop and exercise that judgment. Learning to use AI well must involve learning how to judge and validate the quality, reliability, accuracy, and appropriateness of the output.

Schools are already finding ways to build both. The University of Chicago Law School draws clear lines around when technology stays out of 1L classrooms, and in other courses it provides Harvey access alongside required training. Others are building AI readiness alongside the core curriculum. Pepperdine's P(AI)R for Lawyering, an optional credential students can earn over all three years, gives them hands-on experience with Harvey alongside other leading AI tools. DePaul is building an AI bootcamp that takes students through the fundamentals and their professional duties to critically evaluate what these tools produce. Some faculty are using handwritten, closed-book exams to test reasoning on its own. Many professors are now allowing AI use in the preparation of coursework, but require students to explain the logic and reasoning behind their arguments to confirm they’ve developed an appropriate understanding. Clinics offer a natural place for students to thoughtfully use AI on real matters under close supervision in a secure environment, where they can build both their legal judgment and AI fluency at the same time. At Harvey, we've built training that treats AI as a thought partner and an on-demand tutor, designed to push a student's thinking further and make them defend their conclusions.

A new axis of competition, and opportunity

Our ecosystem’s natural tendency to compete gives us strong reasons for optimism. Law schools have long competed on reputation, selectivity, faculty, clerkships, clinics, and employment outcomes. AI fluency adds a new variable: how prepared are your graduates for the way their employers actually work? How well-equipped are they to support their employers through a period of disruption and change? Will junior lawyers see opportunities to exercise elevated judgment and deliver highly impactful work, earlier in their careers than ever before?

Picture a firm over several recruiting cycles. Associates from one school consistently arrive ready to work confidently in an AI-enabled environment. Associates from another need months to ramp-up. The firm will notice, and its recruiting will follow.

Timing matters, too. On-campus interviewing keeps moving earlier. As highly selective employers increasingly prioritize AI fluency, formally or informally, students who have built that fluency and are able to talk about it in interviews will have a considerable advantage in what looks to be an increasingly competitive environment. That underscores the benefit of meaningful exposure to legal AI early in law school, well ahead of on-campus interviewing, which has moved earlier and earlier into the fall term.

This may open a door for schools outside the traditional elite. A school that moves aggressively could produce graduates better prepared for modern practice than a higher-ranked peer that waits. Firms will notice that as well.

I also want to be clear about where the expertise sits. Faculty are the experts in legal education, and curriculum changes take time for good reasons. We don't pretend to be education experts. What we can do is move quickly alongside the schools that want to move, and make the work easier for them. This fall, that includes:

• Well over 100 student ambassadors across our 100+ partner schools, with live training from Harvey's legal engineers and sessions with our executives.
• A campus team that visits schools when invited, sits down with faculty, librarians, and career services, and works one-on-one with professors to turn a class exercise in advanced legal reasoning into an AI-powered workshop.

Students are already distinguishing themselves

Students have real agency here. They should stay focused on what, and how, instructors are teaching. They can also distinguish themselves by showing intellectual curiosity and the ambition to look ahead. They should seek out the tools they’ll be expected to use in practice, and earn the Preparing for Legal Work certification through Harvey Academy. The opportunity is clear.

Legal Employers will shape the market

Law firms, in-house legal teams, government agencies, and public interest organizations all have a stake in how new lawyers learn to use AI. If they want AI-native junior lawyers, they're best positioned to define what good looks like and send clear signals to students and schools. A few questions I'd love to see legal employers answer publicly:

• What new capabilities do employers expect from an incoming associate?
• How should junior lawyers balance AI-enabled productivity with building the judgment they'll need later in their careers?
• How should students demonstrate AI fluency during recruiting?
• How are you adapting your recruiting process to ensure that you are able to identify and prioritize AI fluency?
• Where can you partner directly with schools, clinics, and students to build the pipeline?

The ecosystem must work together

Each part of the system has an important role to play here. Firms understand the capabilities they increasingly need. Law schools know how to teach students how to “think like a lawyer.” Students can see that the workplace they're entering is changing, and need to bring the curiosity and confidence required to press through a period of rapid change and shifting expectations.

Harvey sits across all three. We work with more than 100 law schools and roughly 3,500 law firms and legal teams, and academic users run more than a million queries on Harvey every week. That vantage point shows us the gap clearly, and it gives us a responsibility to help close it.

Here's what acting on it looks like right now:

• Students: Focus on your core legal education, and develop the skills and judgment to be a great lawyer. Supplement this with foundational AI skills, building real fluency on Harvey and through Harvey Academy, so you stand out in recruiting and arrive ready to excel in using AI to work effectively and with sound judgment.
• Schools: Continue to prepare graduates for the full range of legal practice by helping them understand when AI is appropriate, protect confidential information, verify and improve AI-generated work, and take responsibility for their conclusions. Treat preparation for AI-enabled practice as an admissions and career-outcomes advantage.
• Legal employers: Recruit lawyers who pair strong legal reasoning with the skill to use AI effectively and responsibly, and tell students and your law school partners how your expectations are evolving.

We intend to work intensively with schools, employers, and students to get there. We are committed to promoting a thriving legal profession, and to supporting the remarkable students and lawyers who will drive it to an even brighter future.