The Law School Deans Driving AI Innovation in Legal Education — from natlawreview.com by Shivani Vedhere, AI & the Law Newsletter; via Colin S. Levy

Artificial intelligence is no longer a peripheral issue for legal education. It is quickly becoming one of the central questions facing law schools: how to prepare future lawyers for a profession in which AI will affect research, client counseling, litigation strategy, access to justice, and the business of law.

For decades, law schools treated legal technology as an elective or a niche interest for students already inclined toward innovation. That era is ending. Law firms are adopting AI tools at scale and even investing in developing their own tools. Clients are asking harder questions about efficiency, cost, and competence. Courts are sanctioning lawyers and litigants for AI-generated hallucinations, with the number of identified cases in the United States now exceeding 1,000. Students entering the profession will be expected to keep up with this rapidly changing landscape.

The most forward-looking law schools are responding accordingly. That transformation is being driven in large part by a group of innovative law school deans who are treating AI not as a passing trend, but as a structural change in legal education.

These initiatives signal a broader shift in legal academia where law schools are no longer merely debating whether AI belongs in the curriculum. The more pressing question is how deeply, how early, and how responsibly AI should be integrated into legal education.

 

A Comprehensive Report on Teens, Tweens, and AI — from commonsensemedia.org

To find out what that actually looks like day-to-day, we surveyed more than a thousand 9- to 17-year-olds across the country. We asked them how they use AI, how often, and for what.

The Common Sense Media Census: AI Use by Tweens and Teens (2026) is the first in a series we’ll repeat every year to learn how this generation’s relationship with AI evolves over time.

A few things stood out:

  • Kids are using AI for many things. It’s not just a homework helper anymore. For some kids, AI has become a confidant, even though our research is clear that AI companionship is not safe for anyone under 18.
  • Guardrails are thin to nonexistent. Schools are talking about rules more than safety. Three-quarters of kids say their school has discussed what they can and cannot use AI for, but just over half have been taught how to use AI safely.
  • Just like we saw with smartphones and social media, the conversation is once again lagging behind the technology. Nearly half of kids have never had a conversation with their parents about AI safety.
 

Anthropic, NVIDIA Move AI Agents Deeper into Scientific Workflows — from campustechnology.com by John K. Waters

Key Takeaways

  • Anthropic’s Claude Science beta and NVIDIA’s BioNeMo Agent Toolkit show AI agents moving beyond general productivity into specialized scientific research workflows.
  • The companies are emphasizing auditability and reproducibility, including preserved code, environments, message history, reviewer agents, and integration with existing research tools.
  • For enterprises and research teams, the key test will be whether agentic AI can produce traceable, reliable results while keeping humans in control of sensitive data, compute, and scientific judgment.
 

NotebookLM’s 60-second videos turned my doomscrolling curse into something useful — from digitaltrends.com by Shimul Sood

Google has announced Short Video Overviews for NotebookLM, a feature that turns dense documents and complicated sources into 60-second vertical videos that explain key ideas. Instead of staring at pages of notes, you get a quick visual walkthrough of the concept you’re trying to understand.


 

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Entry-Level Work: A Framework for Safeguarding and Reinventing Early Career Pathways — from the World Economic Forum (weforum.org) and PwC

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping how organizations hire, develop and advance talent, and this is most visible at entry-level. Globally, more than one in three young workers are employed in occupations with medium to high exposure to AI-driven task change. How these roles evolve will have significant implications for organizational performance, workforce participation and economic mobility.

 

Stanford Online Launches Immersive Learning Studio — from campustechnology.com by Matt Jones

Key Takeaways

  • Stanford Online celebrated its 30th anniversary by launching a new immersive learning studio that combines VR, AR, and AI technologies to create more engaging and personalized educational experiences.
  • The studio provides faculty with advanced production tools — including a 4K LED wall, cinematic cameras, AI-enabled workflows, and extensive editing and storage infrastructure — to develop innovative learning content at scale.
  • University leaders see the studio as a major step toward expanding faculty-led, research-based education globally, leveraging AI and immersive technologies to reach learners in ways previously not possible.
 

The Current State of Play: AI in Higher Education and the Road Ahead — from er.educause.edu by Tanya Gamby, David Kil, Rachel Koblic, Paul LeBlanc, Mihnea Moldoveanu and George Siemens

The conventional explanation for this strategic vacuum points to the speed of technological change; it is moving too fast for institutions built for deliberation. That is true. . . and incomplete. The deeper issue is cultural. In fairness to higher education, many industries are struggling to keep up with the pace of AI advances. Higher education, however, moves even more slowly and is not built for the kind of transformational speed now underway. Getting institutional stakeholders to engage, rethink the work, and move faster may be the central challenge facing presidents and chancellors today, and that’s saying a lot in such volatile times.

From DSC:
I highlighted this paragraph because it hits upon the key item involved here — culture. “The deeper issue is cultural.” I think that’s a very true statement.

Part of the culture and setup of many institutions includes giving faculty members full rein of their classes and their departments. Faculty members have a great deal of leeway and power in how they do things. So trying to get X faculty members to get on board — including the Department Chairs — is not an easy task. 

Another part of culture involves being willing — or not — to change in the first place. Some institutions are like Google and are used to making changes and being more innovative. But those institutions are not the norm, at least in my experience. And this doesn’t even address another topic the article mentioned — the pace of these changes. As the authors point out, most institutions of traditional higher education are not equipped to deal with the current pace of change (nor are most of our other types of institutions and our corporations as well). 

I’m going to end this posting with another brief excerpt from the article:

Institutions rooted in human relationships, committed to truth-seeking, and oriented toward the full development of persons play a central role. AI cannot manufacture the experience of mattering to another human being. It cannot model intellectual courage or ethical discernment. It cannot build the kind of community in which students discover who they are and what they believe.

These are not small things. They are, in fact, the things most worth doing. At their best, colleges and universities are not only preparing better workers but shaping individuals and strengthening society.

 

From DSC:
I used to be able to bring up Firefly on the web and use it “free” of charge — I didn’t have to go purchase tokens or credits. (I was actually paying for the Adobe Creative Cloud Pro suite of tools…so it wasn’t really free.)

But the other day I was trying to figure out what the latest pricing is at Adobe with that suite of tools and the use of credits for AI-based features. They say Adobe Creative Cloud Pro users get 4000 credits a month. Well, I have that suite and I’m still getting prompted to purchase credits. Firefly for individuals runs from $9.99 (2,000 credits/month) to $139.91 per month (50,000 credits per month). Not inexpensive, right? Below are other items along these lines.


The Era of Affordable AI Is Over. What Comes Next? — from builtin.com by Ameya Kanitkar
AI providers are shifting to usage-based billing for their services. AI fluency is more important now than ever to make the most of your tools to avoid unnecessary spending.

Summary: The era of cheap, flat-rate AI is ending as providers shift to usage-based billing. Every prompt now carries a direct cost, turning casual use into major budget risks, as seen when Uber depleted its 2026 AI budget in four months. Leaders must now track real-time value and token efficiency.

For a brief window, companies had access to the most transformative technology in a generation at the cost of a streaming subscription. Tools like ChatGPT put AI within reach of anyone with a browser and time for experimentation, while GitHub Copilot came in at just $10 a month, with token costs remaining relatively low. In the beginning, experimentation felt cost-effective, easy and relatively low-risk. 

But that era is ending, and the bill is coming due faster than a lot of enterprise leaders anticipated. 


The Fable of AI in Education — from downes.ca by Stephen Downes
Marc Watkins, Rhetorica, Jun 17, 2026

Tokenomics will be a hot topic of discussion on university campuses because, as Marc Watkins notes in this article, there is no realistic path forward to providing all students with access to advanced AI.


From this posting on LinkedIn.com from Dr. Nick Jackson:

And now there is a third layer emerging. Institutions are waking up to a systems-level question they are likely not remotely prepared for. Who pays for AI? How are budgets managed when there are unclear token consumption pricing models? How is AI procured? Who decides what tools get used and by whom and who gets access and at what level?

.


 

From DSC:
Following are several companies that are using AI to connect people to work. That’s a significant piece of my Learning from the Living [AI-Based Class] Room vision.

These companies were listed on an article entitled,
Can AI be an effective career coach?
— from achievepartners.com and Ryan Craig


FutureFit AI
Bridge the gap between talent, training, and employment at scale

AI-powered workforce technology connecting people to careers, employers to talent, and workforce partners to tools for integrated and intelligent workforce systems.

PathPilot AI

Empowering every job seeker with personalized AI coaching. Helping organizations scale career services and improve outcomes.

Empower Students with Career-Ready Skills
Help students discover career pathways, develop essential skills, and connect with opportunities. PathPilot provides personalized guidance that scales across your entire institution.

  • AI-powered career exploration and pathway planning
  • Skills assessment aligned with NACE competencies
  • Resume builder and interview preparation tools
  • Job matching with local and national employers
  • Institutional analytics and outcome tracking
  • Integration with existing career services systems

Pathific — Design your future
The all-in-one platform that connects your strengths to programs, careers, and real salary outcomes — powered by AI.

High school, post-secondary, newcomer to Canada, or career change — Pathific meets you where you are.

Your all-in-one career compass
Quality career guidance shouldn’t depend on where you go to school, when you start your journey, or where you come from. Using the latest AI and comprehensive Canadian data, we built a platform that gives everyone clear, data-driven pathways to their future. No more one-size-fits-all advice. No more guessing. Just your strengths, connected to real data.

OpportuNext

See Where Your Skills Can Take You | Find new career path opportunities with one simple search.

OpportuNext from Signal49 Research is a free-to-use career tool created in partnership with the Future Skills Centre. Using big data, it matches a person’s skills with viable career paths — often including some you have not considered.

 

The unbundling of lawyer institutions — from jordanfurlong.substack.com by Jordan Furlong
AI will strip law firms and law schools of their commodity features. Their future depends on whether they can rebuild around their highest-value functions and their trust-bearing core.

Two very different articles — one from a law professor, one from a legal technology analyst — crossed my desk last month. They each say something really important about law schools and law firms, respectively. But taken together, they point us towards what I think is an even more profound reality about lawyer institutions in the post-AI world.

At his eponymous Substack, Professor Michael Plaxton’s “To Our Next Law Dean” is really addressed to every dean of every law school, asking: After AI, how will you justify our existence? His concern is that AI is rapidly learning to perform many of the tasks law schools train students to do, and to deliver much of the general legal knowledge law schools provide at scale, including research, writing, analysis, and explanation.

At Legal Technology Hub, Nikki Shaver’s “Law Firms Want to Change; They Just Can’t” asks whether law firms are capable of managing the transition to a post-AI legal market.

Law schools and law firms are the legal profession’s most important institutions. But they were built for a world in which legal intelligence was scarce, and that world is rapidly passing away.

 


Also related/see:


Affordable & Accessible: The Democratization of Legal Tech (Tyler Foreman VP of AI – Rocket Lawyer) — from tlpodcast.com with Tyler Foreman & Chad Main
Tyler Foreman, the Vice President of AI at Rocket Lawyer, joins the show to discuss the intersection of artificial intelligence and the legal industry.

The conversation focuses on how modern generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) act as a legal operating system to simplify contract reviews, document drafting, and client intake, while maintaining essential connections to human attorneys.

 

Two years ago, AI broke assessment. Now, it’s helping us to reinvent it. — from linkedin.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman


Also from Dr. Hardman, see:


A new study shows AI helped deliver 1.5 years of maths progress in 8 weeks — here’s how. — from linkedin.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman

…a new study shows AI helped deliver 1.5 years of maths progress in 8 weeks — here’s how.

Google DeepMind just shared the results of a randomised trial involving 1,763 students. Half used Gemini’s “Guided Learning” to learn maths; half didn’t.

The result: the group working with AI gained the equivalent of 1.2 to 1.7 years of extra progress compared to those who didn’t.

It’s tempting to read this as “Gemini’s Guided Learning mode works!” But the key point here is that Gemini didn’t work alone….

Look closer, and what made the difference wasn’t just the tech — it was a great teacher making expert use of it.

 
 

Why Students Aren’t All In on AI—And What They Want From Colleges — from insidehighered.com by  Colleen Flaherty
New Student Voice data reveal students are embracing AI as a learning tool while worrying about dependence, career disruption and inconsistent institutional responses.

Read on for six takeaways from the survey and additional insights—including how institutions can start to close the gap between students’ optimism about AI as a learning tool and their faith in their colleges’ ability to help them navigate change.

Takeaway 1: More students are using AI than ever for coursework, while a significant share—20 percent—remain resisters.

Takeaway 2: “Worried about dependence” is the most common student stance on AI.

Takeaway 3: A majority of all students expect AI to somewhat (39 percent) or very (16 percent) negatively impact their career prospects.

Takeaway 4: Just one in 10 students says that their institution is handling AI’s rise very well, in a thoughtful and proactive way.

…and more >>

 

 


Rethinking Learning Design in Elementary Schools — from edcircuit.com
Why K–5 leaders must redesign—not just adopt—technology to restore attention, deepen thinking, and align AI with how children actually learn

Rethinking learning design in elementary schools is critical as screen time and AI reshape attention, thinking, and student engagement.

Designing for Thinking, Not Just Doing
At its core, learning design must shift from task completion to thinking development.

This requires creating environments where students:

  • Spend time processing ideas
  • Work through confusion without immediate answers
  • Build persistence through challenge

It also requires clarity around the role of technology.

Technology should:

  • Extend thinking
  • Provide meaningful feedback
  • Support exploration

It should not:

  • Replace effort
  • Short-circuit reasoning
  • Eliminate productive struggle

The goal is not to reduce technology use.

It is to ensure that students remain the ones doing the thinking.


Should We Integrate AI into Our Teaching?: Evidence-Based Guidelines for Deciding When AI Belongs — from Faculty Focus by Norman Eng, EdD

Four Questions for Deciding Whether to Use AI

Question 1: Will this AI tool help students use, recall, and demonstrate understanding of core disciplinary content?
Question 2: Will this AI tool require students to apply their learning to a new context?
Question 3: Will this AI tool support—not replace—independent, evidence-based reasoning?
Question 4: Will this AI integration preserve meaningful human interaction?


 

OPINION: If higher education wants to rebuild public trust, start with making college affordable — from hechingerreport.org by John B. King, Jr.
Addressing high tuition, food insecurity and child care needs are important first steps

Higher education is under siege, with many students and parents balking at high costs. In a series of op-eds, university leaders lay out their efforts to keep college affordable. This is the first in the series.

For many people across the country, paying for college is the largest investment they will ever make. Increasingly, it’s one that feels out of reach.

Over the past two decades, tuition and fees at private, national universities have jumped by 112 percent; at some “elite” and highly selective schools the annual cost of attendance now approaches $100,000.

If higher education is to rebuild public trust, affordability can’t be an afterthought. It must be at the center of our strategic focus.


Also from The Hechinger Report, see:



Addendum on 6/10/25:

The Real Mission of Higher Education Is Hiding in Plain Sight — from insidehighered.com by  John Warner
A guest post laying out a path forward for all institutions.

Most colleges and universities are not actually organized around learning. They’re organized around teaching, research productivity, rankings, revenue, and the preservation of institutional prestige. Students sense this, even when they can’t articulate it. The public senses it, too. Academic researchers themselves have been making this argument for decades, but it has rarely felt more urgent than it does right now.

The Yale report says, wisely, that “trust is earned by doing what you say you’re going to do.” Universities say they’re about learning. The way to rebuild trust is to actually mean it and to build institutions that prove it.

The Yale committee is right that trust must be rebuilt through action over messaging. The most fundamental action, and the one most often overlooked, is this: Get learning right.

 
© 2025 | Daniel Christian