Most AI tools today operate like answer vending machines. Insert a prompt and out comes a polished response. But legal training has long been built around almost the opposite interaction. The Socratic method does not hand students the answer. It questions, challenges, changes a fact, and asks whether the conclusion still holds. The frustration is part of the design. Students learn the rule, its limits and, eventually, which questions matter in the first place. What would it look like for AI to borrow from that tradition?

Law schools are already wrestling with the tradeoff. The University of Chicago is creating AI-free spaces in required first-year classes and exams while introducing AI into legal writing and advanced courses. Stanford students analyze legal problems independently, then critique AI-generated answers. These schools are separating the work that establishes a cognitive foundation from the work where AI can extend it.

This issue often manifests as a conversation about training junior talent in the age of AI. That is at the heart of the problem, but not the entire problem. Judgment is not acquired once. Lawyers keep developing it through unfamiliar facts, changing law, new clients, and the consequences of prior decisions.

And AI can interrupt those feedback loops at every level of seniority.

Another policy reminding lawyers to “think critically” and “check the AI’s work” will not be enough. If an instant answer is on the screen, people will use it. A lawyer who clicks approve is technically in the loop. That does not mean meaningful judgment occurred.

As builders, we have to confront how people actually behave and design around that reality.

  • istewart@awful.systemsEnglish
    4·
    14 hours ago

    It is my strongly-held personal thesis that chatbots are a direct design descendent of short-form social media such as Twitter. No, I will not be taking questions at this time

      • doleoEnglish
        2·
        13 hours ago

        I’d say “let them cook”, but it appears theyve hung up their apron.

  • yesman@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    11 hours ago

    Critical thinking is less a skill and more a value. It’s always inconvenient and something you have to go out of your way to do, even before AI.

    • supersquirrel@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      3·
      4 hours ago

      Critical thinking is less a skill and more a value.

      I disagree fundamentally, I think it is a self-deceiving trap to fall into the belief that critical thinking is a value you can hold up to the light and check to see if it is true and then place back within your heart… critical thinking is rather a practice which is why good universities emphasize that they are not there to distribute information but rather to serve as centers of practice with regards to learning.

      In musical practice there is always the requirement for self reflection and adjustment, that is why good teachers are so helpful, they point out what is invisible to you but overwhelmingly present in blocking your further progress.

      What inspires people to practice are not values, rather only some genuine desire for the pursuit itself can motivate you without burning you out to the core.