The question asks prospective students to write a series of generative AI prompts to produce an analysis to help them decide which law school to attend.
Katrin Hussmann Schroll, associate dean of enrollment management, integrated marketing and data analytics at Miami Law, told Law360 Pulse in an interview Tuesday that the law school added the optional question to evaluate prospective students' AI skills and whether they're prepared for law school.
Hussmann Schroll said the optional question also gives prospective students a chance to differentiate themselves from other applicants.
"It's certainly going to be a question that's only going to support and provide a way for students to highlight other skills that we may not be capturing in other aspects of the application," she said.
Hussmann Schroll said the law school considered asking applicants about how they use AI or the importance of the technology in the legal profession, but decided to focus on AI prompting.
She added that the law school wanted to give prospective students a chance to demonstrate their prompting skills on a familiar topic — where they want to go to law school — rather than legal tasks they will do as lawyers, but haven't learned yet.
"We were looking for different ways to assess writing. This is the first time we're doing a question like this," she said.
As AI adoption increases in the legal profession, more law schools are starting to reshape their curriculum to prepare students to use this technology as lawyers.
In December, the School of Law at Washington University in St. Louis announced the launch of a program in collaboration with startup Wickard AI focused on AI and the practice of law.
In April, Drake University Law School said it had created an AI certificate program for second- and third-year law students.
The University of Michigan Law School has also added an optional essay question to its admissions applications that asks prospective students about how they use generative AI tools and requires them to write their answer using the technology, according to the school's website.
--Additional reporting by Matt Perez. Editing by Karin Roberts.
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