University of Chicago Law bans laptops, phones in 1L core courses starting fall

The University of Chicago Law School will bar laptops, tablets and phones from classrooms in its required first-year core courses starting in the 2026-27 academic year, part of a broader overhaul of how the school teaches in the age of artificial intelligence.

The policy, detailed in a memo posted July 9 to the school's website, applies across all 1L sections in the nine required core courses, including Civil Procedure, Torts, Contracts and Constitutional Law. Exams in those courses will also be given in-class, without internet or file access.

The school is carving out limited exceptions: professors can designate classroom "scribes" to take notes electronically, authorize devices for specific tech-enabled activities such as polling, and accommodate disabilities as required by law.

The school said the policy reflects its own experience and an emerging scholarly consensus that active, in-person engagement is conducive to learning, and that reliance on devices to take notes or answer questions tends to inhibit reflection and reasoning. Administrators said the school will continue to lean on the Socratic method in the classroom.

The 1L policy is the most restrictive piece of the school's broader curriculum overhaul, which it says it developed after a year of consultation with alumni, law firm leaders, legal tech executives and its own faculty and students. Other elements push in the opposite direction: first-year legal writing courses will now formally teach students to use AI for research and revision, and upper-level electives will treat Socratic teaching, no-device rules and no-access exams as defaults rather than mandates, giving individual instructors room to experiment.

The school is also adding a new oral-defense requirement for its substantial research paper requirement, starting with this year's rising 2L class. Students will have to discuss their papers in person with their supervising professor after submitting a full draft, a step the school says is meant to confirm the work reflects their own thinking.

Law school administrators said the policies will be reviewed and revised as AI technology and legal practice continue to change.