Lawyers Get Crash Course in Artificial Intelligence and Its Risks

A new certificate program is preparing lawyers to understand and navigate the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence. The Law and Artificial Intelligence Certificate (LAIC) program, launched by LexLab at UC Law San Francisco, aims to equip counsel with the technical fluency needed to evaluate AI risks, advise clients, and use AI tools responsibly.

The program was created in response to the growing importance of AI in the practice of law. 'Lawyers need more than a surface-level understanding of AI,' said Tal Niv, director of applied innovation at UC Law SF. 'They need enough technical fluency to evaluate what these systems can and cannot do.'

Last year, 20 instructors from companies such as Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta, Cisco, Datadog, and GitHub, as well as top law firms including Orrick, Gunderson Dettmer, King & Spalding, and the Norton Law Firm, taught sessions on topics like intellectual property, product liability, privacy, governance, and risk in deploying AI tools.

The program drew participants from as far away as Tokyo and Switzerland. Sammy Zeer, global indirect tax manager at Expedia Group, said the LAIC program 'offered a grounded exploration of both the transformative potential and the real risks' of AI and provided an exceptional foundation for understanding its implications.