Charleston School of Law Dean of Information Resources Katie Brown joins us on the latest Charleston Law Podcast. She introduces two new generative AI courses being offered this summer.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer a technology on the horizon; it is here and having a major influence on the legal industry, its ethical duties, and the business of law. Dean Brown shares how Charleston Law is preparing law students to be practice-ready on Day One.
Charleston Law: This is Charleston School of Law podcast. We hope you’ll join us online at charlestonlaw.edu/podcast or subscribe to our Spotify or iTunes channel to listen to our full podcast archive. It is my honor to have Katie Brown, the Associate Dean for Information Resources at Charleston School of Law. Katie, welcome to the show …
Katie Brown: Thanks for having me. I’m really excited to chat today.
Charleston Law: I love talking to you because we just geek out on stuff. So, let’s talk about, um, legal technology and AI. Yeah. We have two courses we are offering this summer, and when they came across my email in my inbox, I immediately reached out and said, “Want to do a podcast?” And you’re like, “Slow your roll, Strubel.” So, tell me about the two courses we’re offering this summer and how they might be distinct from any other AI courses that you might see in a law setting.
Katie Brown: This is not the first time that we have taught these sorts of legal technology generative AI courses, but how these ones are different than the ones that we previously have had is a number of law schools that are sort of teaching, and we’re in the same boat, that are teaching these sorts of generative AI classes; they’ve all been very theory-based. Mm-hmm. So, it’s mostly been, “Hey, let’s talk about, um, generative AI and legal ethics.” But it’s not getting into the weeds with it. Let’s start playing with them. Let’s start drafting prompts. Let’s get into these materials, evaluate the results we get back, and see how we could refine the prompt to improve them. So, you know, one of the courses is really about generative AI for legal research and resources. And so that one is a tool-based, very practical, hands-on.
Both of these courses will be in June. So instead of us just sitting for, you know, 90 minutes in a classroom, we’re there for a longer period of time- Okay … so that we can really get in and play with the tools and spend some time in there and really get that hands-on experience with them. They’re going to be working with, you know, Cocounsel, Protege, they’re going to be working with, you know, even some of the free tools. So, we’re going to be, you know, working with, like, Claude and ChatGPT and some of these free resources because, you know, there is a lot of data out there that solo and smalls are using- Okay … those free resources. Yeah. It’s just as important that our students learn how to use those as it is for them to learn how to use some of the fee-based tools. Yeah. So, you know, it’s going to be a fun and interesting class.
Charleston Law: You mentioned in the description that there are no textbooks for this.
Katie Brown: Well, and it’s one of those things, with this one especially, you’ve got to think about from that practical point of view, we’re going to talk obviously about ethics and how it correlates to the day-to-day functionality of being a lawyer. By the time a textbook is published and released to students, those tools have changed. So, what are we going to use? We’re going to be looking at practitioner resources. We’re going to look at the materials provided by the specific vendors. Right. We are going to, you know- The, some of the resources that we’re going to be using, there’s a new partnership that we have with a company called Luminos, and we’re going to be working directly with them. So, you know, we’re going to be working directly with some of these companies. Um, so how- So how- It’s real hands-on.
Charleston Law: How much knowledge base do students have when you talk to them? How are they using it at this point?
Katie Brown: It’s really interesting because when I talk to the students, there are two different ways that they seem to be using it. From they’ve- they’re using it in their day-to-day life. There are students who will use it to help them with their schedule. They put it all down, drop it into whatever generative AI tool they use, and it gets planned out for them. Some of them use it for recipes, but others use it to help with multiple-choice questions. If they’ll, instead of, they’ll go use study aids, and they drop in some content or drop in a case, and to make sure that they understand it, they’ll say, ” You know, whatever tool, “Draft these multiple-choice questions.” Or they’ll say, you know, “Here are four cases: Draft a short essay question I can write and practice with. Some are using it to study for law school and to find new and creative ways to use it, too.
Charleston Law: Learning the skills to prompt it to ask very specific questions is probably one of the things you’re teaching in classes?
Katie Brown: Yes, 100%. We’re going to discuss the prompt because I always talk about it in all of the training. I do a number of CLE trainings for attorneys- Hmm … and every time I’m working with the students, and we talk about any type of prompting, um, it’s- We have the power, right? None of these tools can truly think. Right. I mean, who knows what will happen in the future? They’re gatherers. Yeah. Um, but we do have the power of the prompt. Okay. And even with agentic AI, which is sort of the more advanced, right, generative AI tools, people are still drafting the code- Yes … that tells it to go off and do its stuff during the day. Right. We still have all that power. We’re the ones who are going to draft those prompts, and we’re going to work on teaching the students how to draft the prompts so … you can use these really nice multi-stage prompts to get templates back. That’s always something with all the courses I teach, which tend to be more practical, skills-based courses. My whole goal is that, if one of these students gets a job, as you know, while they’re in school as a part-time employee, extern, or intern, can they take these skills to that job? Mm-hmm. Or once they graduate, is this a skill that they could take to that first job, or if they want to put out their own shingle- Yeah … are these skills that they could use? And so that’s what I- the way I’m always thinking about it. Can we- how could this relate to practice?
Charleston Law: How important is AI development and knowledge in law school for their resumes? Are law firms adopting and developing AI at a rapid pace now?
Katie Brown: Some of it also depends on the firms. Firm size. Sometimes innovation. I know we have some larger firms that went in really early. I mean, I was being asked to go and talk to some firms about generative AI when ChatGPT dropped. Right. And before e- we even had these legal generative AI tools. I did a solo and small firm training not that long ago here on campus, and we had some solos who really were just starting to get their feet wet with it, and we were talking about, you know, basics of billing and some things. So, we’ve got the full gamut of sort of where folks are. But I do think, and this is, and I will honestly say this is my personal opinion, but I think that with generative AI, it’s, it’s like email, it’s like cloud. Every single law firm is going to be doing it. It’s just a matter of when, and I do feel like firms that don’t do it soon will miss the boat. Yes. Um, and I think that you’re going to ha- You know, maybe not everybody in the firm needs to be an expert. But you do need to have someone with that level of expertise. Maybe that’s the newest person in. So, maybe you’re looking to hire someone with that skill set, and that’s where I feel like our responsibility lies.
Charleston Law: Using Generative AI: Legal Research, Ethics, and Professional, uh, Practice, one of the things noted was that worldwide, 1,300 court filings have cited “AI hallucinations,” many of which stem from a lack of training in properly using and evaluating generative AI tools. What are AI hallucinations?
Katie Brown: This is one of the other things I was mentioning with this generative AI class: the evaluation of outcomes. That’s really important in context to hallucinations, because hallucinations are what you will have, in a legal context, and you’ll get a result. So, you’ll ask it to draft a brief, a filing, or something similar, and it provides a document that includes citations to nonexistent cases. It’s your responsibility, especially if you’re filing something with the court. Part of the professional responsibility rules is that you have a duty of candor to the court. That’s one of the rules you need to follow. And so, when you file something with the court, you say that it is 100% accurate, and that means you have vetted it, and it doesn’t even matter if you didn’t write it. Say you’re extern drafted this. If you are the one signing off on it and filing it under your name, it is your responsibility. Mm-hmm. It is under your name. It is under the firm. It is the reputation of the firm and yourself. So you want to make sure that- That is completely vetted. Any type of outcome that would be a result of these generative AI tools.
[The transcript has been gently edited to improve clarity and structure]
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