AI developing as personal mentor for law students, professionals

The world of artificial intelligence seems to unfold at increasing speeds, as experts become more knowledgeable and lay people begin to adapt to the changes.

While AI has made its way into cell phones and classrooms across the country in recent years, much to the chagrin and concern of some, others are seeing it as a helper, not a hindrance.

“Lots of people think of them as you just put in a prompt, you get a response, right? But if you look and think about using them as a tutor, as a trainer, as a mentor, there actually can be really strong guides that don’t give you the answer, but help you think through it functionally,” said Josh Kubicki, a visiting lecturer at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law.

Kubicki is one of many professionals studying AI and how it can support users, specifically in the legal community.

As AI continues to develop rapidly, he’s encouraging lawyers to try to understand the technology now, while it’s still fairly simple to grasp.

“Just try it before it becomes too advanced that you’re either totally scared and freaked out by it, or they become so self-driven that it’s very tough to sort of feel like you can get what you want out of them,” Kubicki said.

One way Kubicki is helping law students understand the technology is by teaching them how it can be developed to meet their specific learning needs.

AI mentorship at IU

While AI technology like ChatGPT spits out directed responses to prompts made by users, Kubicki and others are working with AI platforms that can be designed to act as mentors to help users get to an answer on their own.

Last semester, Kubicki taught a class on the responsible use of generative AI in the legal profession, and specifically how the technology can be used to help lawyers in their practice.

Throughout the semester, students developed their own AI mentor using OpenAI.

As the students became more familiar with the mentor, they could hone it to meet their specific needs.

Kubicki said that while the technology can be developed to offer general guidance, it’s a better help to students if the mentor is focused on a student’s specific area of law.

“If you’re in a transactional class and you need some more background, you don’t understand some of the basic concepts and all that kind of stuff, you could design a GPT-based mentor like that,” Kubicki said.

Instead of using the mentors to give them answers to test questions or writing prompts, the mentors are developed to help students think more critically about their work, offering insights they maybe wouldn’t have thought of on their own.

“These should be a force multiplier for your intellect. They shouldn’t be a replacement,” Kubicki said.

The technology has been well received so far, with some students continuing to develop their mentor beyond the class. Kubicki said the mentors are designed to be available to students as they progress through law school and begin their careers. Ideally, the digital mentor will grow with its user throughout that user’s career.

And while he doesn’t want to replace human mentors, Kubicki sees AI mentors as a way to ensure new lawyers have access to as much mentoring as they need when they start their practice.

“We know basically that new lawyers being trained or mentored in law firms of any shape or size is always sort of a crap shoot in terms of the mentorship, the effectiveness and all that,” Kubicki said. “Second to that also, your mentor is not always available. And third, lots of new lawyers might not ask the mentor everything, because they feel like it might have career consequences, or they might be embarrassed, or they might assume they need to know everything.”

AI mentoring across the country

IU Maurer is among several higher education institutions and companies that are researching and implementing artificial intelligence as a support tool.

Khan Academy, an education nonprofit that offers learning assistance to students of all ages, has released its own AI-powered “teaching assistant,” Khanmigo.

The platform caters to teachers, school districts, and students, and is designed to support students’ learning from elementary school through college.

Like the technology students used in Kubicki’s class, Khanmigo was developed through OpenAI, assisting users in answering challenging questions on their own, according to the nonprofit’s website.

For educators, the tool can be used to reduce the amount of busy work they do, including making lesson plans, the nonprofit states.

As of December 2024, Khanmigo is being piloted to over 200 school districts across the country, according to an episode of CBS News’ 60 Minutes.

The Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society, an organization supporting college students and community colleges nationwide through scholarships, educational opportunities, and other resources, announced the launch of its own AI tool last August to help students complete Free Application for Federal Student Aid forms.

The FAFSA Mentor tool was developed in response to recent changes in how FAFSA forms are completed.

Using Open AI, the technology is pre-trained on a large amount of data that only generates output based on the latest version of the FAFSA form, according to Phi Theta Kappa’s website.

“The new FAFSA created confusion—not just for students, but also for the tools they rely on for help. The internet was full of detailed guidance on how to complete the FAFSA, but overnight, much of that information became outdated,” Lynn Tincher-Ladner, president and CEO of Phi Theta Kappa, said in an email.

Like Khanmigo and the mentors developed in Kubicki’s class, the FAFSA Mentor is designed to assist students and parents in their own specific financial situations.

The Mentor offers both 24/7 written and video explanations so users can access guidance that works for them.

The technology’s interface was also designed to mirror the look and feel of ChatGPT, so students can use it confidently, “right out of the gate,” Tincher-Ladner said.

Tincher-Ladner said several community colleges have reached out asking how they can scale the model to better meet the needs of their own students.

Phi Theta Kappa continues to improve the technology to ensure students all over the country get the support they need to fill out the FAFSA form with confidence, she said.•