How Law Students Can Build AI Skills for Modern Legal Practice

For generations, the transition from law school to legal practice followed a familiar path. Students learned how to analyze legal issues in the classroom, developed foundational research and writing skills, and then spent their early years in practice building judgment through repetition. Drafting documents, reviewing contracts, researching precedents, and supporting client matters were not simply tasks to complete. They were how lawyers learned to become lawyers.

That pathway is beginning to change.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming part of everyday legal practice, helping lawyers review documents, analyze information, draft work product, and complete routine tasks more efficiently. As firms adopt these tools, they are also rethinking how associates are trained, supervised, and developed. Work that once took hours may take minutes. Tasks that traditionally occupied much of a junior lawyer's time are becoming more streamlined. At the same time, associates are gaining exposure to higher-value work earlier in their careers.

For law students, this shift represents both a challenge and an opportunity.

The challenge is that the profession students are preparing to enter may look different from the one their professors, mentors, and recruiters entered themselves. The opportunity is that firms are actively looking for lawyers who can thrive in this new environment.

Importantly, firms are not looking for AI engineers. They are not expecting incoming associates to write code, build models, or arrive with technical expertise.

They are looking for future lawyers who understand how to work effectively in an AI-enabled profession. As John Cahill, Associate at Wilson Elser, explained during Harvey's Inside the Firm webinar: "What we look for is somebody's willingness to test the product out."

Grace Fish, who leads Harvey's Law School Program and regularly speaks with recruiting teams, partners, innovation leaders, and professional development professionals across the legal industry, hears a similar message consistently. “The firms investing most heavily in AI are often the same firms looking for students who are curious, adaptable, and willing to experiment with new ways of working. They do not expect mastery before graduation. They are looking for future lawyers who demonstrate the mindset required to learn and evolve alongside the profession.”

What Firms are Looking for Right Now

The conversation around AI often focuses on technology. Inside law firms, however, the conversation is increasingly focused on people.

The firms moving fastest on AI adoption consistently emphasize that successful lawyers are distinguished less by their technical expertise and more by how they approach learning, problem-solving, and professional development.

Curiosity sits at the center of that discussion.

As new tools become part of legal workflows, firms need lawyers who are willing to explore them thoughtfully, understand their strengths and limitations, and identify opportunities to improve how work gets done.

That curiosity must be paired with critical thinking. AI can produce polished work product, but polished and correct are not always the same thing. Lawyers remain responsible for evaluating the quality of legal analysis, identifying risks, and ensuring the final product meets professional standards. As Cahill explained, "Critical thinking remains one of the most important skills."

This emphasis on judgment surfaced repeatedly throughout the webinar discussions. Lauren Hakala, Global Head of Learning and Development at Reed Smith, described AI as changing workflows without changing accountability: "You are the human in the loop. Whether the human does it or the AI does the first draft, you must understand the content and it's your name on the work."

That responsibility cannot be delegated.

The lawyers who stand out in an AI-enabled environment will not necessarily be those who generate the most output. They will be the ones who know how to evaluate it, improve it, and take ownership of the final result.

This is why many firms place relatively little emphasis on whether students have mastered prompting techniques or developed advanced technical skills. They understand those capabilities can be taught. Judgment, adaptability, communication, and intellectual curiosity are harder to develop and ultimately more valuable.

How AI is Changing the Early-Career Lawyer Experience

One of the most persistent misconceptions about AI is that it is replacing junior legal work. In reality, the tasks themselves remain remarkably familiar. Lawyers still need to review documents, conduct research, analyze contracts, prepare drafts, and communicate recommendations to clients and colleagues. What is changing is how efficiently those tasks can be completed.

Historically, junior lawyers developed expertise through repetition. Reviewing hundreds of contracts, researching dozens of similar issues, and drafting multiple versions of the same type of document gradually built professional judgment.

As AI accelerates some of those workflows, firms are increasingly asking how that judgment will be developed in the future. Lauren Hakala has described this challenge as a shift away from "accidental learning." Many of the activities that traditionally helped associates develop expertise were not intentionally designed as training exercises. Lawyers learned because they repeatedly performed the work. As some of that work becomes more efficient, firms are becoming more deliberate about creating opportunities for development, mentorship, coaching, and feedback.

For students entering the profession, this may ultimately prove beneficial.

Rather than spending years focused primarily on routine work, associates may gain earlier exposure to strategic thinking, client communication, and business considerations. They may find themselves participating in substantive discussions sooner and contributing to matters in more meaningful ways earlier in their careers. That possibility is one reason many legal leaders view AI not as a threat to associate development, but as an opportunity to rethink it.

The Human Skills Becoming More Valuable

As AI becomes more capable, a surprising trend is emerging across the legal industry: many of the most important skills are becoming even more human. Clients hire lawyers for expertise, but they also hire them for judgment, trust, communication, and strategic guidance. Technology can support those outcomes. It cannot replace them.

This reality explains why client communication remains one of the most valuable skills lawyers can develop. Clients need advisors who understand their business objectives, explain risks clearly, and help them make informed decisions.

The same principle applies to trust. Strong client relationships are built through credibility, responsiveness, empathy, and professional judgment. Those qualities remain deeply human and continue to differentiate exceptional lawyers from average ones. Chris Cain, Partner at Foley & Lardner and Chair of the firm's AI Steering Committee, framed it even more broadly: "This is a human-driven, people business."

The rise of AI is also elevating the importance of editing and review. As AI becomes increasingly capable of producing first drafts, lawyers must become stronger editors. Rather than focusing exclusively on generating content, they must learn how to evaluate reasoning, identify weaknesses, improve arguments, and verify accuracy. A single verification mistake can undermine trust with a client, colleague, or court. Learning how to critically review AI-generated work is quickly becoming an essential professional skill.

This is one reason students should not underestimate the value of their own experience experimenting with AI today.

Many law students are already incorporating AI into research, writing, and study workflows. While firms have invested heavily in AI adoption, they are still learning what best practices look like across different practice areas and workflows. Students who are thoughtfully exploring these tools may have insights that prove valuable sooner than they realize.

Andrea Carolina Vargas Cendale, an LLM student at Northwestern Law and a Harvey Law School Ambassador, described how she uses AI when incorporating feedback from professors and mentors: "When I get feedback from professors or mentors, I run the redlines through Harvey and ask for a change map that preserves my voice while strengthening the structure. I challenge the proposed edits rather than accepting them blindly, which pushes me to refine the work and constantly question whether there's a better way to approach it."

What stands out in this example is not the technology itself, but the process of critical evaluation.

Five Practical Ways to Build AI Fluency Before Graduation

Developing AI fluency does not require technical expertise. In many ways, it involves strengthening the same habits that have always made lawyers successful.

1. Experiment With AI Tools Responsibly

The best way to understand AI's strengths and limitations is to use it thoughtfully. Students with access to Harvey through their law school can begin building practical familiarity through the Preparing for Legal Work course, which introduces AI concepts and workflows in a legal context. The objective is not simply to learn a tool, but to understand how AI fits into professional legal work.

2. Develop Strong Verification Habits

Every lawyer who uses AI must learn how to evaluate output critically. Reviewing, fact-checking, validating sources, and identifying errors are core professional responsibilities. Building those habits early will serve students throughout their careers.

3. Learn How Better Inputs Produce Better Outputs

AI systems perform best when they are given context, structure, and clear instructions. Students do not need to become prompt engineering experts, but they should understand how to frame questions, provide relevant information, and refine responses through iteration. As Cahill noted, "The more thought you put into it, the better output you're going to receive."

4. Strengthen Your Editing Skills

The future lawyer's role increasingly involves improving, refining, and validating work product. Editing is becoming a more important professional skill, not a less important one. As Chris Cain observed, "Editing becomes increasingly critical."

5. Stay Curious About How the Profession is Evolving

Perhaps the most valuable habit is maintaining an ongoing interest in how legal work is changing. Talk with practicing lawyers about their workflows. Follow conversations around legal innovation. Read about how firms are approaching AI adoption. Ask questions during networking conversations and interviews. Many students are surprised to discover how differently firms are approaching these issues.

Those conversations can help students identify organizations that align with their own approach to innovation and professional development.

A Defining Opportunity for the Next Generation of Lawyers

The legal profession is entering a period of significant transformation, but the long-term implications are often more positive than the headlines suggest. AI is not eliminating the need for lawyers. It is changing how lawyers spend their time.

As routine tasks become more efficient, future associates may reach substantive work faster, gain strategic exposure earlier, and develop commercial awareness sooner than previous generations.

Lauren Hakala believes that shift will ultimately benefit many young lawyers, noting, "The job is going to be better." She continued: "You're going to be doing more substantive and commercially relevant work earlier on."

For students preparing to enter the profession, that possibility should be viewed as an opportunity.

The lawyers who thrive in the coming decade will not be defined by their ability to use a particular technology. They will be defined by their ability to combine judgment, adaptability, communication, and critical thinking with a practical understanding of how technology can support legal work. Those have always been the qualities that distinguish great lawyers, AI simply makes them more important.

Continue Building Your AI Fluency

For a deeper look at how firms are rethinking associate training, supervision, and professional development in an AI-enabled profession, download our guide, AI Fluency and the Future of Associate Development at Law Firms.

Students with access to Harvey through their law school can also explore the Preparing for Legal Work course, designed to help future lawyers build practical AI fluency before entering practice.

For students and legal professionals who do not have access to Harvey, the AI for Legal Basics course provides a tool-agnostic introduction to AI literacy, legal use cases, responsible adoption, and professional judgment in AI-assisted legal work.