Why allowing law students to use GenAI for writing assignments is a bad idea.

Some reflections on the labour market orientation on HLE curriculum decisions

Abstract

Curriculum decisions in Higher Education (HE) regarding students’ use of Generative AI (GenAI) are often substantiated by arguments such as graduate employability. This labour market orientation dictates that, because GenAI will inevitably play a crucial role in their future jobs, we should prepare our students by allowing or even encouraging them to use GenAI tools for their writing assignments. A quick scan of Dutch policy documents shows that the labour market perspective dominates the agenda related to GenAI on the governmental level and in Universities of Applied Sciences. In all HE institutions, the use of GenAI is allowed (sometimes conditionally, sometimes reluctantly) or even encouraged. We observe that the regulation of GenAI in Higher Legal Education (HLE) is virtually absent and fragmented, perhaps because the labor market orientation does not always align with local HLE education objectives. In our view this regulatory gap could only be filled if room is made for other orientations on curriculum decisions related to Gen AI, such as: focus on the legal discipline itself, on students’ self-development and on societal reform. This will enable HLE to make curriculum decisions aimed at training law students’ writing skills and teaching them to ‘think as a lawyer’.