Academics and Courses
UCI Law takes a unique pervasive approach to AI and emerging technologies in its curriculum. In addition to specialized courses and experiential learning opportunities, the law and policy implications of AI and emerging technologies are woven into UCI Law’s first year curriculum and a wide range of upper-division courses so that all UCI Law students understand these issues, prepared to grapple with them in the real world, and ready to enter the legal profession of tomorrow.
Artificial Intelligence Courses
AI, Technology and Society
Prof. Ari Waldman
The information age creates myriad points of contact (and conflict?) between and among individuals, institutions, laws, government, and the cluster of technologies commonly called artificial intelligence We see it every day--generative AI like ChatGPT, predictive AI in search engines and credit scoring, curated social media feeds, misinformation in elections, bias in hiring and firing, and more. The use of data-driven technologies like AI, machine learning, and more have significant implications for how we live our lives, our privacy, our safety, and our capacity to flourish. This seminar teases out some of the ways AI both shapes and is shaped by society, with a particular focus on what it means for law. Every week, we will hear from an expert in the field of law, technology, and society. We will do a deep dive into one piece of their scholarship/work, a subset/panel will engage them in conversation, and work together to understand both the role of law in creating and regulating the information society. The seminar promises something new every week; we will discuss privacy, sex and gender, the future of work, politics and democracy, racial bias, healthcare and finance, and much more. Assessment is based primarily on an original research paper, which students may use to fulfill their upper level writing requirement. There will be no exam. The seminar is limited to 14 students.
Information Privacy Law
Prof. Ari Waldman
This interdisciplinary course is about us, our data, and the myriad ways in which digital platforms, data extractive corporations, and artificial intelligence products pose threats to our privacy. We will touch on the development of tort, contract, statutory, and even constitutional law, and we will address several questions throughout the class, including: How, if at all, can we protect information known to some others? How has technology changed our relationships with each other and with the government? Can traditional privacy rules and laws accommodate today's needs? How is the law responsible for the creation of extractive informational capitalism?
We will begin by discussing theories of privacy to which we will refer throughout the entire course. Then, we will discuss issues of privacy and disclosure by the media and by other private citizens. We then turn to informational capitalism, artificial intelligence and algorithms, ad targeting, and more. We will always discuss privacy in terms of power. This is not a class for those who are looking to go through a casebook case by case. Nor will we just go statute by statute. We will situate technology, human behavior, and law in its social context, consider the ways in which surveillance burdens marginalized populations, and critically approach new proposals for comprehensive privacy law, all with an eye toward asking questions of power: who has it, who doesn't, and how is the law involved?
Courses Incorporating AI & Emerging Technology into the Standard Curriculum
Prof. Ari Waldman
Tort law is the background law of everyday life. Torts are cases of alleged wrongdoing in which one private person sues another for damages, i.e., money, for harm done. It is the bread and butter of the law and it is the arsenal for going after quack physicians, Big Tobacco, and those that invade our privacy. Tort lawyers are, in many ways, trying to hold institutions of power accountable.
In this class, we will learn about intentional and negligent wrongs as well as products liability. We'll also learn a little about privacy, if we have time. Tort law, after all, is on the Bar exam. But this class will also teach you how to study and learn the law, how to be a law student, and how to think like a lawyer. Through our study of torts, we will learn many lawyering skills, including, but not limited to, how to read a case, identity the facts, parse the relevant facts, note the parties' arguments and develop our own, find the court's holding (or final decision), and evaluate, manipulate, and marshal that holding for the purposes of advocacy. This class will set you up to succeed in every other class in law school.
Your grade will be based on an open book exam during exam period, an in-class midterm, and class participation (which includes engagement on a daily basis and several in-class assignments).
Prof. Kaaryn Gustafson
This course will cover the basic constitutional rights associated with the investigation and prosecution of individuals accused of crimes. Particular emphasis will focus on the 4th Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures; the 5th Amendment's protection against self-incrimination and double jeopardy; and the 6th Amendment's right to a jury trial, right to confrontation, and right to have the assistance of counsel. To the extent possible, the class will use materials from real cases, including actual police reports and preliminary hearing transcripts.. Issues of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies are discussed throughout the semester. Topics include:
- Predictive policing practices and the use of algorithmic law enforcement software.
- The use of risk assessment software in setting bail.
- Questions of privacy and the Fourth Amendment rights in camera surveillance systems (including Ring doorbells) and facial recognition software.
- The use of government data sharing and software algorithms to flag individuals for public benefits fraud (and the tendency to miss individuals who might be engaged in the most serious wrongdoing).
- Questions of the tensions between the courts, legislatures, and communities in keeping a check on new technologies—particularly those technologies employed by private companies but used by government investigators.
Prof. R. Anthony Reese
This advanced copyright course will examine questions about copyright in the digital environment. Students consider the most desirable legal regimes to govern works of authorship on the Internet, and look at how existing copyright law is being applied to, or modified for, technological environments. Topics to be considered may include: digital music and Internet music transmissions; the scope of secondary liability of Internet service providers and others for digital or online copyright infringement; the extent to which those who create devices that can be used for infringing and noninfringing purposes (such as digital video recorders or peer-to-peer software) can be held liable for infringing use of those devices; issues of ownership and licensing of works of authorship in new media; the use of technological protection measures such as encryption, and laws forbidding circumvention of those measures; and open licensing for copyrighted works.
Prof. Jane K. Stoever
Law students enrolled in the Domestic Violence Clinic, under close supervision, represent abuse survivors and their children in restraining order, family law, immigration, criminal, and other matters while addressing clients' safety and support needs. Students develop interviewing and client counseling skills, engage in discovery, draft pleadings, develop strategic judgment, and conduct all aspects of evidentiary hearings (from opening statement to closing argument), among other lawyering skills. Students also engage in community education, system reform, and policy advocacy projects to attempt to more broadly prevent and intervene in domestic violence. The clinic provides holistic and transformative legal representation to domestic violence survivors and their children and collaborates with community organizations to ensure that clients have access to counseling, shelter, and other safety resources. Through the 6-credit clinic, students learn to be client-centered, culturally competent, reflective, ethical, and effective practitioners. Student in the Domestic Violence clinic learn about technology and abuse, engaging in safety planning with clients around technology, including discussing password access, social media posts with location data, and how to use technology to locate the opposing party and witnesses.
Prof. David Kaye
This course will introduce students to human rights issues at stake in the digital age. It will focus on freedom of expression and privacy under international human rights law but will also explore religious belief and conscience, assembly and association, public participation, and non-discrimination, among other fundamental civil and political rights. We will examine not only specific themes (such as fake news and propaganda, censorship, defamation, and surveillance) and the obligations of States, but also the responsibilities of corporate actors such as search, social media, telecommunications, and surveillance companies. While the course concerns online rights, it will also highlight the ways in which human rights mechanisms at international and regional levels are shaping norms and how those norms may be deployed for purposes of advocacy and scholarship. Students will write and present two papers: a short (7 - 10 page) case note and a longer analysis (15 - 20 pages) of a specific legal problem.
Prof. Jack Lerner
The UCI Intellectual Property, Arts, and Technology Clinic has developed an AI training program for students in the clinic. Through this curriculum, students will gain a basic understanding of how AI works from a technical standpoint, learn about applicable legal regimes, and explore ways attorneys can work to support the public interest where AI and other emerging technologies are implemented. Since 2018, the IPAT Clinic has been exploring how law clinics can work with nonprofit and consumer groups to protect the public interest in cases and controversies involving AI and technology. The IPAT Clinic expects to undertake its first clinical project representing such groups in litigation or rulemakings during the 2019-2020 academic year.
Prof. Jonathan Glater
The Law & Technology class is a ten-week exploration of current and imminent challenges posed by technology to law and doctrine. The class, which will pair students from the graduate program in engineering with law students, will take students from a virtual startup through design of a technology advanced product. Along the way, students will learn about and grapple with challenges of information security, potential liability in tort, potential criminal liability, freedom of speech, protection of voting integrity, so-called algorithmic discrimination, and protection of intellectual property.
Prof. Ezra Ross
This course, which will be part of both semesters, will focus on teaching skills that all lawyers use, such as fact investigation, interviewing, legal writing and analysis, extensive legal research, negotiation and oral advocacy. Students also are given an overview of the benefits and drawbacks of online legal research tools and the reliance on recording or computer technology in client/witness interviews. Students learn about issues with reliance on proprietary algorithms in legal research and the Boolean alternative. They also encounter a simulated case file addressing issues of invasive technology.
Prof. Carrie Menkel-Meadow
This class will explore the theory and practice of legal negotiation in both dispute and transactional settings, with role-plays, simulations, papers, short assignments and reflection pieces with feedback. This course requires reading, writing, analysis, performance and a final paper (which can be converted to longer for writing credit). The text is Menkel-Meadow, Schneider & Love, Negotiation: Processes for Problem Solving, 2nd edition. The class will also have a short component on mediation and dispute system design, the newest part of the "appropriate dispute resolution" field. This course will look at interdisciplinary materials to understand and perform both the cognitive and behavioral aspects of negotiation in the legal arena. It will also teach important life skills for dispute resolution and problem solving generally. The upper level writing requirement can be met with special permission. Attendance is mandatory. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS if you are not committed to attending every session. This course is offered on a graded basis only. Students may not opt for S/U in this course.
Prof. Carrie Menkel-Meadow
This course would be offered in seminar/workshop format, two hours (1 meeting) a week for the whole semester. The text would be Paul Brest and Linda Krieger, Problem Solving, Decision Making and Professional Judgment, a text that has been in use for a similar course at Stanford Law since 2010. The course will cover decision-making and game theory, social, psychological and cognitive impediments to good decision-making, heuristic strategies, some leadership skills, some quantitative (basic probabilistic reasoning) statistics, and creative problem solving. The course will ask students to focus on a particular set of legal or social problems (e.g. homelessness, climate change, online privacy and security) and to develop an action plan for dealing with the problem with legal, political and social answers. Each class will also have role=play simulations and case studies for practice in the various thinking modalities being considered. Each student will do a final paper/project, using strategic planning and "Human Centered Design" ((C) Stanford Design School to set out a strategic plan (whether litigation, social policy development, social and legal organizing, educational awareness etc.) to deal with a student developed legal "problem" to be solved, The course will also focus on some comparative study of different professions and their modalities for human problem solving (see e.g. Gardner and Czichsentmiyali, Good Work, Richard Susskind, The Future of the Professions.
Prof. Christopher Whytock
In UCI Law’s required first-year course on federal civil procedure, students learn to identify and solve procedural problems in the context of the federal civil justice system. Throughout the semester, students grapple with a pervasive theme: What are the implications of artificial intelligence and other developing technologies for civil justice and the practice of civil litigation? Students grapple with both the risks and benefits of technologies such as increasingly sophisticated judicial analytics tools, legal automation, and AI-driven research, drafting and dispute resolution.
Prof. Omri Marian and Prof. Nick Wu
Sophisticated data analytics is quickly becoming an integral part of every-day tax practice. Data automation tools and machine learning platforms are already being used in tax compliance, tax planning, and tax advisory. The purpose of this practicum is to allow students to experience first-hand the application of big data analytics to tax law practice. Students will learn how to use Alteryx Designer, a data analytics platform specifically designed for tax and finance professionals. Licensing to the product is generously provided by the Alteryx for Good program. In addition, students will have access to mock data sets. After learning the basics of machine learning, big data analytics, and Alteryx Designer, students will embark on a mock tax advisory project. Students will work in groups, draft and present a report to a "board of directors", and issue legal recommendations, all based on the analysis of available data.