Gen AI literacy for new associates is expected, not optional. Yet most law schools have not caught up, and students are arriving in practice without the foundational skills to use these tools safely and effectively. Closing that gap need not mean a new curriculum or a major investment. It can be done by coordinating what a school already has.
That is the argument in my new article, Closing the AI Readiness Gap: A Framework for Law Schools, forthcoming in Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research and Writing. The article offers a framework built on three co-equal questions: what students learn, when and where they learn it, and who coordinates the learning.
The case for urgency is well-documented. A recent survey of large law firms rated new associates’ gen AI proficiency at 3.62 out of 5, the lowest score among all technology skills measured. Nearly 70% of firms want law schools to require gen AI coursework. Yet only 3% do. Meanwhile, 77% of students encounter gen AI in their legal work before they graduate, and over 1,500 court filings containing hallucinated citations have already resulted in attorney sanctions.
What students learn is foundational gen AI literacy organized around three pillars: technical literacy (how large language models work, and why that matters for inputs and outputs), professional responsibility (the obligations under ABA Formal Opinion 512 and the Model Rules), and practical proficiency (hands-on experience using gen AI tools on legal tasks, with the critical evaluation that practice demands).
When and where they learn it is a sequence running from orientation through graduation, anchored in courses every student already takes. The 1L Legal Research and Writing course introduces all three pillars. The Professional Responsibility course deepens the ethical dimensions. Neither needs to be reinvented; gen AI literacy fits naturally into what both already teach.
Who coordinates is a coalition drawn from across the institution: LRW and PR faculty, clinical faculty, law librarians, IT, career services, and administration. Law librarians are well-positioned to anchor that coalition, given their cross-departmental reach and their existing expertise in source evaluation and information literacy.
The framework reflects the University of Wisconsin Law School’s experience building foundational gen AI literacy for all students, not just those who seek it out, so every graduate arrives in practice prepared. The full article is available now on SSRN as UW Law School Legal Studies Research Paper No. 1921.
Disclosure: This post was developed by the author with organizational and drafting assistance from Claude AI. All content was reviewed and refined for accuracy.