Section: Features
79 results
Features Winter 2025
AI and the Evolution of Law and Legal Education
As society pieces together how artificial intelligence (AI) fits into the education puzzle, Professor Nicholson Price invites Michigan Law students to wrestle with questions of how the law shapes AI and how AI shapes the law.
Features Winter 2025
Michigan Law Students Get Hands-on with AI Tools
When 3L Ryan Distaso first came to Michigan Law, he was a self-described “AI Luddite” and possessed a healthy skepticism about artificial intelligence. Intent on demystifying the technology, Distaso turned to AI Sandbox, a Law School class taught by Patrick Barry, clinical assistant professor of law and director of digital academic initiatives.
Features Winter 2025
New Michigan Law Clinic to Explore if AI Tools Can Broaden Legal Access
Professors Bridgette Carr, ’02, and Vivek Sankaran, ’01, have dedicated their careers to finding ways to make the justice system accessible to people who have been left behind. Now, they’re looking to artificial intelligence (AI) as an ally in the effort.
Features Winter 2025
Michigan Law Mini-seminar Considers AI Doomerism and Technology Risk
Assistant Professor Salomé Viljoen’s mini-seminar, Does AI Pose an Existential Threat to Humanity?, opened with discussion about what AI technologists and philosophers call the alignment problem: Will AI develop in a way that conflicts with the continued existence of humanity?
Features Winter 2025
New Research from Michigan Law Professors Supports Real-World Value of AI for Lawyers
Most past empirical research has concluded that generative AI tools don’t offer much value in real-world lawyering. However, a new study by Professors J.J. Prescott, Patrick Barry, and their colleagues suggests that AI can help with particular legal tasks—in terms of speed, clarity, and, in some cases, accuracy and legal reasoning.
Features Winter 2025
Professor Patrick Barry Wants His Students to Become “Conspicuously Good” at AI
When he teaches about artificial intelligence and the legal profession, Professor Patrick Barry’s goal is for his students to become the go-to person in their office, their industry, or their network when someone needs help with an AI-related issue or wants to learn more about the latest AI innovation.
Features Winter 2025
AI and Legal Research in the Michigan Law Library
Christine Schauder, who joined Michigan Law in 2025 in the new role of head of emerging legal technologies in the Law Library, oversees the Law School’s Legal Tech Series, an ongoing program that offers training and resources for students to learn about new legal tools, including those powered by AI.
Features Winter 2025
Meet Dean Neel U. Sukhatme
On July 1, the Law School welcomed its 19th dean, Neel U. Sukhatme—the first fully external dean in Michigan Law’s 166-year history. Sukhatme is an interdisciplinary empirical scholar whose research focuses on crime, intellectual property, voting rights, and AI and the law, among other areas. He joined the Law School from Georgetown University Law Center, where in addition to his faculty titles, he served as associate dean for research and academic programs and co-directed the Georgetown Law and Economics Workshop series.
Features Winter 2025
“To Veronica, With Love, Ben”
In 2022, Eddie Mears, ’16, discovered a box of his late grandmother’s belongings in Flint, Michigan, that included a faded photograph of a young Chinese man standing beside her in front of the former Alpha Lambda Chinese fraternity in Ann Arbor. Mears’s quest to learn more took him on a multiyear, trans-Pacific sleuthing expedition.
Features Winter 2025
Dominic Akuritinga Ayine, LLM ’98, a Former Shepherd Who Now Shepherds Ghana’s Legal System
Dominic Akuritinga Ayine, LLM ’98, grew up in a small town on the savannah grasslands of northeast Ghana. As a shepherd in his youth, he did not consider formal education an option until an unexpected encounter led him to enter school at 11 years old. In the years since, Ayine has risen to the highest levels of the Ghanaian government, first as a member of parliament and now as attorney general and minister for justice.