\u201cThis is the fundamental question: How are you going to do higher quality legal work with AI than you\u2019re going to do by yourself?\u201d Stacy asks. \u201cIt\u2019s not just being faster and cheaper. The jump in the quality of work, in the creativity for your client, is the difference. That\u2019s what I want my students to learn.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stacy, who has a background in computer engineering and took the helm at BCLT in 2021, started as something of a skeptic. After reading a stream of articles predicting AI would make young lawyers essentially obsolete, \u201cit seemed like scare tactics to get people to click on headlines,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sure, he reasoned, there are some routine tasks that AI could take over. But the law is full of complexities that a model might miss.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Like any good patent lawyer, Stacy started teaching himself the technology. Quickly, he came to understand that while AI models are continuously improving, it\u2019s the platforms set up for lawyers to use them that are going to change the legal industry. Once someone understands the right way to use the platform, future innovations are built in.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI realized that what we needed is a class to show what the foundations of an AI-based legal platform are and how you use it,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cracking the code
\n![\"Kristie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/kristie_chamorro_1000w.jpg\")
Stacy worked closely with Kristie Chamorro, an instructional and educational technology librarian at the Law Library, who has been studying these tools for several years and is assisting with the course. Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small<\/p>\n
To develop the three-credit course, which is open to 2L and 3L students, Stacy talked to more than 20 Big Law lawyers about how their firms use AI, and what\u2019s working and what\u2019s causing problems. He also worked closely with Berkeley Law Librarian Kristie Chamorro, who has been studying these tools for several year<\/a>s and is assisting with the course.\u00a0<\/p>\n He settled on Anthropic\u2019s Claude for the course, because he feels it\u2019s the most transparent and easy to understand platform. But the course is designed to be \u201cplatform agnostic,\u201d likening the skill-switching abilities to that of an iPhone user picking up an Android phone. Once Stacy learned what the law firms were struggling with, he started digging into why they weren\u2019t succeeding.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI had to do some diagnosis as to why they were failing,\u201d he says. \u201cWere they not accessing the right subscription? Did someone forget to allow web searching as part of their setup?\u201d<\/p>\n As he decoded the issues, Stacy found optimal schemes that he plans to use to train students.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe great thing about this class is we\u2019re designing something that\u2019s not trailing what law firms are doing \u2014 we\u2019re teaching something that\u2019s way ahead of what firms are doing,\u201d he says. \u201cI can tell students, \u2018the law firm you go to may not have this yet, but you\u2019ll know how to handle it when they catch up.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Chamorro says the course is \u201ca terrific addition to the curriculum.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCritical literacy around AI is now part of being practice-ready,\u201d she adds. \u201cStudents need to develop an understanding of what these tools can do, where they fall short, and how to participate confidently in conversations about their use.\u201d<\/p>\n Judicious deployment<\/p>\n Part of the challenge for lawyers, Stacy says, is determining when and where to use AI. He divides the current playing field into three categories:<\/p>\n \u201cAI automated\u201d work: Low-complexity tasks like document review or basic research queries. The risk to not using AI is that clients are unlikely to pay attorney hourly rates for these tasks moving forward.\u00a0 Where and when lawyers use AI to enhance their work depends a lot on what they\u2019re doing, Stacy says. For example, personal injury plaintiff\u2019s lawyers are heavy adopters because many of their cases resemble one another, at least in particular stages, so using AI can help them handle more cases and potentially even bring down the threshold for taking on a client.\u00a0<\/p>\n For transactional lawyers, on the other hand, using AI really means creating workflows that make a team both more efficient and able to analyze documents and cases in a way that highlights things a human-only team might have missed.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe workflows are really the secret sauce for any lawyer or group of lawyers,\u201d Stacy says.\u00a0 \u201cYou can standardize a process and make sure you\u2019re getting the same quality of analysis and\u00a0 escalating the things that need to be escalated. It\u2019s obviously going to be faster but it should also be better-quality work.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The course\u2019s 11 assignments will teach a wide range of skills, starting with basic prompting and ascending to tools that use Claude\u2019s features in concert to do research, draft contracts, and reach toward creative client solutions.\u00a0<\/p>\n A strong foundation<\/p>\n Stacy knows AI is going to be influential in the legal field. But lawyers themselves, he insists, will remain the most important component of representing a client.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat happens when every lawyer has access to the same platform and the same data set? What distinguishes one lawyer from the next?\u201d he asks. \u201cThe answer is judgment, and we need to build that first.\u201d<\/p>\n The need for students to build a foundational understanding of the law before they start trying to enhance those skills with AI is why the course isn\u2019t open to 1Ls, Stacy adds. With an eye on ensuring students get that grounding, Berkeley Law\u2019s faculty recently adopted an AI policy<\/a> that defaults to not allowing students to use it, although instructors may allow elements as they see fit.\u00a0<\/p>\n There are just some courses, particularly the black-letter subjects taken during the 1L year, where AI doesn\u2019t belong, Stacy says.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe know that the foundational legal research and writing courses work. The risk of cognitive offload by putting AI in those courses is too high, and there\u2019s really no benefit to it,\u201d he says. \u201cYou need to learn these skills, and I don\u2019t think you can elevate them with AI while you\u2019re still learning them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThe disruption zone\u201d: Mid-complexity work, the bread and butter of a law firm, is being impacted. AI can do some of these tasks, but judgment and oversight are critical. Lawyers who master this space, Stacy says, will dramatically outperform their peers.\u00a0
\n\u201cAI augmented\u201d lawyering: Offering clients a better version of representation, from novel arguments to strategic advice, requires human judgment and careful use of AI. But fluent lawyers can practice at a significantly higher level than their peers.\u00a0<\/p>\n