Andrew Perlman, dean of Suffolk University Law School, has launched a website cataloguing AI policies, teaching strategies, and curricular programmes from 128 of the 196 U.S. law schools.
The site, titled AI in Legal Education: Law School Policy Archive, organises entries into eight topic areas drawn directly from schools’ own published documents, including student handbooks, honour codes, and dean’s memoranda.
Each source is labelled by status, whether in effect, interim, pilot, proposed, guidance, or completed, giving readers a clear picture of where each institution stands.
Perlman, long one of legal education’s most prominent voices on innovation and technology, is transparent about the site’s scope and limitations, and about how he built it.
The site’s methodology section states that ChatGPT was used extensively to research and construct the archive, with the tool locating many public sources, organising them into topic categories, and helping draft summaries.
Perlman has not manually reviewed or independently confirmed every reference or summary, and readers are directed to consult the linked original sources for verification.
The full dataset, current as of 2 August 2026, is downloadable as a spreadsheet containing 279 topic records spanning eight subjects, and Perlman invites readers to submit policies, corrections, and omissions.
Among the eight subject areas, optional AI curriculum and opportunities is the most widely catalogued, covering 66 schools, while only three schools have rules specifically addressing the uploading of course materials to AI systems.
Those three schools are UC Berkeley, St. Mary’s, and Suffolk itself, where Perlman’s own July 27 memo proposes prohibiting students from uploading class recordings or other students’ identifiable contributions to third-party AI services without permission.
On submitted and graded work, the majority of the 58 catalogued schools prohibit AI by default unless an instructor expressly authorises it, typically in writing, with schools including Stanford, Northwestern, Virginia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin all requiring some version of instructor opt-in.
The same default prohibition applies to examinations, with nearly all 53 catalogued schools barring AI use during exams absent instructor permission, and Columbia’s rule stating that every word of an answer must be the student’s own.
UC Berkeley’s policy, which drew national attention for barring generative AI from nearly every stage of producing graded work, is notable for its breadth but not its basic structure, which mirrors the majority approach of prohibition unless otherwise authorised.
Even as law schools restrict AI use in assessments, mandatory AI instruction is expanding rapidly, with 26 schools now requiring AI curriculum or literacy training as part of their degree programmes.
Case Western Reserve requires all first-year students to complete its Introduction to AI and the Law certification, described by the school as the first required legal-AI certification of its kind nationally, launched in February 2025.
Mississippi College adopted the same certification requirement for its first-year students, while UC Law San Francisco will require every J.D. student starting with the Class of 2029 to complete an AI-enabled lawyering lab.
Texas maps AI learning objectives across all three years of its J.D. programme, and Ohio State runs a mandatory three-part AI workshop series for all first-year students.
Optional AI training is even more widespread, with 66 schools offering elective AI courses, certificates, concentrations, clinics, or labs, including Drake and Rutgers, which offer AI law certificates.
Assessment formats are also shifting, with the University of Texas reporting the near-elimination of take-home exams, a sharp increase in secure in-class exams, and growing interest in live presentations and oral exams.
Chicago is piloting device-free classrooms and no-access exam conditions across all of its required first-year courses for 2026-27, reflecting a broader institutional rethink of how student knowledge is evaluated in the AI era.
Twenty schools now require instructors to disclose their course-level AI policies in writing, typically in the syllabus, meaning law students must increasingly navigate a patchwork of instructor-by-instructor rules governing AI use.