AI is starting to make some classrooms seem a little more old school.

The University of Chicago Law School is requiring first-year students to keep their laptops closed in class this fall, part of a broader strategy to ensure students learn to think independently as artificial intelligence becomes ubiquitous in the legal profession.

The move comes as universities across the country grapple with how generative AI is reshaping higher education. Business Insider reported earlier this month that Brown University said it had recently disciplined dozens of students after uncovering what administrators described as a widespread AI-assisted cheating scandal, underscoring how difficult the technology has been for traditional assignments and remote assessments.

Instead of trying to ban AI entirely, Chicago Law says it is redesigning its curriculum to separate skills that students should develop on their own from those where AI should be embraced.

“We need to make sure students learn to think for themselves,” Adam Chilton, dean of the University of Chicago Law School, told Business Insider. At the same time, he said, “We can’t just naively pretend that AI can be turned off or that students won’t use it or that they don’t need to know about it.”

The school’s new strategy includes first-year classes without laptops, in-person proctored exams that prevent students from accessing outside materials, and oral defenses for major research papers to ensure students can explain and defend their work. It is also expanding AI instruction by integrating the technology into legal writing courses, adding more AI-focused classes, and giving students access to AI legal tools, including Harvey and Legora.

Chilton said educators have been “a little bit asleep at the wheel” by continuing to assign take-home assignments that students can complete with AI “without thinking for themselves, without learning for themselves.”

He said reports of AI cheating at Brown, Harvard and other schools reinforced concerns that students could advance in their education without developing rigorous reasoning skills.

The challenge, he said, is that AI has become indispensable in legal practice. Law firms increasingly expect new employees to use technology efficiently and responsibly, making an outright ban unrealistic.

Instead, Chicago’s approach is to create what Chilton called “space for both modes of learning”: teaching students to think without AI first, and then teaching them how to use it ethically once they’ve developed those foundational skills.