Plagiarism Issues Prompt UC Berkeley Law School to Ban AI

Source Domain: www.govtech.com

(TNS) — Artificial intelligence, a growing nightmare for the legal profession, is about to be banned for most purposes at UC Berkeley’s law school.

In a policy announced Thursday, and effective this summer, the law school will prohibit its 1,120 students from using artificial intelligence in preparing class assignments and in all exams — except for courses designed to teach students how to use AI, ethically and legally, while practicing law. Those courses are generally for students who are nearing graduation.

Exceptions will also be made for teachers who want to give their students more leeway in using the technology. But it will generally be barred for end-of-term exams.

Students will also be prohibited, the university announced, from using AI devices “for aid in conceptualizing, outlining, drafting, revising, translating, or editing any work submitted for credit.”

The current policy, in effect since 2024, restricts AI at the law school but allows students to use the technology for a few specified purposes, like correcting their grammar in research papers. Teachers say that students are still turning in papers citing cases the teachers had never heard of, evidently the product of AI.

Or a student asked to solve a legal problem will report that “I found the solution, in a chat with AI,” when “what really happened is that AI found the solution in existing (cases) and presented it to the student as a new idea,” said Chris Hoofnagle, a Berkeley law professor. “That’s actually plagiarism.”

AI use has been rapidly expanding in the legal profession, where a worldwide survey recently found that 80 percent of large law firms said they were using or exploring use of the technology. And its misuse has also been widespread — another report found nearly 1,400 cases, including 957 in the United States, in which courts have found that artificial intelligence was used to cite…

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