Chief Justice of India Surya Kant on Sunday advised law schools against completely prohibiting the use of artificial intelligence and other emerging technological tools in classrooms, stressing that students must instead be taught to use such technologies in a supervised, transparent and ethical manner.

Addressing the Second Edition of the Vice Chancellors' Conclave organised by National Law University, Jodhpur, the CJI said banning AI tools would not prepare law students for a profession in which such technologies are already becoming increasingly embedded.

He acknowledged concerns that students could become dependent on AI, lose the ability to construct arguments independently or mistake plausible-sounding outputs for legally correct answers. However, he said “prohibition cannot be the answer to that risk.”

"But prohibition cannot be the answer to that risk. A student who is forbidden from encountering these tools in a supervised, disciplined academic setting, will still encounter them when they enter a law firm, a corporate office, a public institution, a policy organisation, a technology-driven workplace or a courtroom. By denying them these tools, we won't have protected that student, we will have sent them into professional life a step behind their peers, unfamiliar with technologies that their colleagues and institutions increasingly expect them to understand," the CJI said.

Cautioning against a defensive approach to the AI tools, the CJI said that the better approach is to bring these tools into the classroom in a "transparent, supervised manner, so that students learn not only how to use them, but also to use them appropriately and ethically."

'Technology must assist, not replace, legal judgment'

The CJI appealed to the law schools to focus on developing students' ability to exercise independent judgment while working with technology.

“Our law schools must cultivate in students not merely technological familiarity, but the judgment to know when technology can assist, when it must be questioned, and when it must yield to human reasoning,” he said.

The CJI said a law graduate who understands only the output of a technological tool, without appreciating its limitations and risks, would remain dependent on it. A graduate trained to question the tool's assumptions, verify its conclusions and exercise independent judgment, however, could use technology to become more effective without surrendering responsibility.

Students must be taught when a technological tool can be trusted, when verification is non-negotiable and where the boundary lies between using technology to assist judgment and allowing it to replace judgment altogether, he said.

These, according to the CJI, are questions of curriculum and pedagogy that should be addressed with the same rigour applied to subjects such as constitutional law and evidence.

Legal profession already being reshaped by technology

The CJI said technology had already entered the legal profession and was transforming contract drafting, due diligence, legal research and dispute management.

Law graduates would increasingly work with tools capable of reading thousands of precedents in seconds, identifying legal and regulatory risks and assisting with evidence and information management. Online dispute resolution and other technology-enabled processes were also becoming part of the legal landscape.

Against this backdrop, he said, legal education could not remain separate from technological transformation.

CJI calls for law schools to lead, not merely adapt

The CJI also urged National Law Universities to move beyond simply adapting to technology and instead take a leadership role in shaping its use in the legal system. Law schools, he said, should become centres for research into algorithmic accountability, data protection, digital access to justice and technology-enabled dispute resolution.

He also stressed that technological progress must not come at the expense of fairness. While technology could improve efficiency for well-resourced individuals and institutions, law schools and the wider legal system must ensure that its benefits extend to litigants outside major metropolitan centres as well.

Concluding his address, the CJI said technology should make legal institutions and services more capable, but values must determine the direction in which that capability is used. Innovation, he said, should make justice faster, “but never make it less fair.”