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Living Our Professional Values Through AI

by Luke Cheman, 2L at the University of St. Thomas School of Law

As a law student, I have started using AI here and there – drafting memos for class, testing my legal knowledge, or just seeing what it can do. At first, it felt like learning a new tech trick. But I have realized it is more than that. Each time I practice with AI, I am also practicing the values that will guide me as a lawyer: responsibility, judgment, and growth. In other words, using AI is already part of learning how to live my professional values.

The Holloran Center compares professional values to the trunk of a tree.[1] The idea is simple: values are what everything else grows from. For lawyers, one of the biggest branches on that tree is responsibility. That means serving clients zealously but fairly, respecting the legal system, helping improve the law, and making sure more people have access to justice. It also means being honest in negotiation, guided by conscience, and willing to help clients think through tough choices. When we add AI into the picture, it is not just about learning a tool – it is also about finding new ways to live out those responsibilities.

AI as a Tool for Zealous Advocacy

AI can quickly pull information, draft language, or brainstorm arguments.[2] But representing a client well is not just about speed – it also requires making sure what you deliver is correct and actually useful. Learning to supervise AI, check its work, and adjust it to fit the client’s needs all constitute ways lawyers practice responsibility. The value remains the same; there is just a new tool in the mix.

AI as a Way to Expand Access

One of the best things about AI is that it could make legal assistance more available to people who cannot usually afford it. If AI cuts down the time it takes to do routine work, then that means pro bono lawyers, clinics, and small firms could help more clients.[3] For me, that makes learning AI feel less like a “tech skill” and more like a way to live out the value of service and access to justice.

AI in Honest Negotiation

Lawyers negotiate all the time, and AI can help by giving lawyers more options or ideas or by drafting language.[4] But the value of honesty does not go away. Using AI responsibly means not just dumping whatever it produces on the other side. It means choosing what is fair and accurate, and making sure we are not misleading anyone.[5] That is part of living into our values – even in negotiation.

AI and Judgment

AI excels at finding patterns and providing information, but it cannot weigh empathy or fairness.[6] Some of the hardest choices in law are moral ones, not technical ones. When I use AI, I can compare its answer to my own reasoning and ask, what is missing? Doing that actually strengthens my judgment. It is practice for the kind of decision-making that values like conscience and responsibility demand.

AI Supporting Professional Judgment

At the end of the day, clients do not just need facts – they also need guidance. AI can highlight risks or list options, but it cannot help a client sort out what is right for them or how their decision will affect others.[7] That is where lawyers come in. Being competent with AI does not mean handing over the wheel to AI; lawyers must use AI to facilitate better conversations with clients and to make our own judgment stronger.

Values like zeal, respect, fairness, conscience, and judgment are what make lawyering a profession. Each of those values connects directly to how we use AI. If we internalize and live those values, AI does not replace professionalism – it accentuates professionalism. And as law students, the more we practice now, the better prepared we will be to use AI as a real opportunity to serve clients with excellence and positively impact the justice system.

[1] Hamilton, Neil. “The Profession Has Core Values the Students Can Explore in Guided Reflection – Holloran Center Professional Identity Implementation Blog.” Stthomas.edu. 2022. https://blogs.stthomas.edu/holloran-center/the-profession-has-core-values-the-students-can-explore-in-guided-reflection/.

[2] Frazier, Kevin. 2025. “What I Say to Lawyers about AI.” Substack.com. Appleseed AI. May 22, 2025. https://appleseedai.substack.com/p/what-i-say-to-lawyers-about-ai.

[3] ‌Kerker, Kim. 2024. “AI Ethics in Law: Emerging Considerations for pro Bono Work and Access to Justice – pro Bono Institute.” Pro Bono Institute. August 29, 2024. https://www.probonoinst.org/2024/08/29/ai-ethics-in-law-emerging-considerations-for-pro-bono-work-and-access-to-justice/?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

[4] “How AI Enhances Legal Document Review.” 2025. Americanbar.org. 2025. https://www.americanbar.org/groups/law_practice/resources/law-technology-today/2025/how-ai-enhances-legal-document-review/.

[5] “American.edu.” 2025. American University. 2025. https://www.american.edu/cas/news/responsible-artificial-intelligence.cfm.

[6] ‌Nosta, John. 2024. “Is Empathy the Missing Link in AI’s Cognitive Function?” Psychology Today. October 19, 2024. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-digital-self/202410/is-empathy-the-missing-link-in-ais-cognitive-function.

[7] “AI Can Support — but Not Replace — Human Counselors, according to New Recommendations.” n.d. www.newswise.com. https://www.newswise.com/articles/ai-can-support-but-not-replace-human-counselors-according-to-new-recommendations.

Luke Cheman is a 2L at the University of St. Thomas School of Law. He’s preparing for a future career in the Army JAG Corps and is interested in the intersections between AI and the Law, especially how AI can influence the values and responsibilities of law students and lawyers.

September 25, 2025 by hami3258

Barbara Glesner FInes

Generative AI and Preparing Students for a Transformed Legal Profession

By: Barb Glesner Fines, Dean Emerita and Rubey M. Hulen Professor of Law,
UMKC School of Law

One of the reasons that artificial intelligence presents such a dramatic opportunity for the legal profession to increase efficiency and quality is the ability of generative AI to do some of the “dull and dirty”[1] work of law practice. We already use artificial intelligence to do document review, e-discovery, financial auditing, legal research, draft contracts, and more. Increasingly, it will be used to gain even more efficiencies in delivering legal services. We have seen the grossest of errors in using AI without supervision by experts, but problems of hallucinations and clear errors will decline as models improve. Yet, research also indicates that AI can produce these documents better than novices but not as well as experts.[2] Thus, we will still need experts to monitor the use of generative AI to ensure accuracy, fairness, creativity, and other values beyond simple win-loss metrics. We will still need experts to guard against abuses of AI.

The problem for legal education and for the formation of professional identity is that the profound expertise needed to be able to monitor generative AI requires professional judgment and deep mastery. Independent professional judgment and mastery are not acquired by classroom learning alone; they are acquired as an experiential matter through the process of trial and error, coaching, reflection, and feedback.

If novice tasks are undertaken by generative AI rather than novice attorneys, where will we develop the pipeline for the expert attorneys who will be able to supervise generative AI? This is a dilemma we face with each technology that frees humans from tasks. Calculators may not have had an overall negative impact on mathematics understanding and problem solving skills,[3] but it has undoubtedly decreased the skills of mental mathematics. Navigation skills have decreased with the introduction of GPS.[4] How will generative AI affect the development of new attorneys’ problem solving skills and independent judgment? How will legal education and the profession ensure that the next generation of attorneys have opportunities to develop these skills alongside the use of this powerful new technology?

This dilemma is yet another reason that intentional opportunities for professional identity formation are critical. The core pedagogies that develop professional identity are the pedagogies of apprenticeship. The challenge will be to design these experiences so that students learn not only how to harness the efficiencies of AI but also learn the skills to question and critique the products of AI while maintaining a commitment to the values of responsibility, service, and integrity. The answer must entail educators incorporating the use of generative AI into legal education and into the training of novices so that they can have the experiences of making mistakes and exercising judgment while also learning how to effectively use generative AI to assist them in those judgments. Kirsten Davis (Stetson University College of Law) and Carolyn Williams (University of North Dakota Law School) have been facilitating a “Legal Writing and Generative AI Convo Group” with over 450 law faculty to explore some of these issues. Undoubtedly each law school is having these same conversations amongst the faculty. Using the framework of professional identity formation to guide these conversations can help us think more deeply about how generative AI will affect the competencies our students need and the pedagogies that will best help them to acquire those competencies.

[1] Andrew McAfee & Erik Brynjolfsson, Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future 1498 (2017).

[2] Ethan Mollick, Co-Intelligence: Living and Working With AI, Chapter 8 (2024).

[3] Aimee J. Ellington, A meta-analysis of the Effects of Calculators on Students’ Achievement and Attitude Levels in Precollege Mathematics Classes, 34:5 J. Math Education 433 (2003).

[4] Lukáš Hejtmánek, Spatial Knowledge Impairment after GPS Guided Navigation: Eye-Tracking Study in a Virtual Town, 116 Int’l J. Human-Computer Studies 15 (August 2018).

Barbara Glesner Fines is the Dean and Rubey M. Hulen Professor of Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law.

October 7, 2024 by hami3258