During a recent legal conference, Professor John Korzen ( ’81, JD ’91) heard one panelist compare a good lawyer to Charlotte A. Cavatica, the fictional spider from the children’s classic Charlotte’s Web. Using messages weaved into her web, Charlotte advocated to save the life of Wilbur the pig, runt of his litter.

The analogy illustrated that, “A good lawyer is a good communicator with a good mind and a good heart,” says Professor Korzen, director of the Appellate Advocacy Clinic, which provides legal representation to appellate litigants in a variety of cases and also prepares amicus briefs. While the research and writing capabilities of generative AI continue to evolve, he says that AI can never replace “heart,” the ability to empathize with clients and understand their goals. 

The Role of Clinics in Legal Education

According to the 2024 AI and Legal Education Survey conducted by the American Bar Association’s Task Force on Law and Artificial Intelligence, more than half of law schools responding to the survey reported that they now offer courses dedicated to teaching students about AI. Further, 83% reported that they offer curricular opportunities in which students can learn to use AI tools effectively.

It is undeniably important to prepare future lawyers to competently use the technologies they will encounter in practice. At the same time, it remains crucial to educate law students on the intangible skills that will enable them to effectively advocate for their clients.

And that’s where Wake Forest Law’s seven clinics shine.

“Given the AI-ification of research and writing —and we are seeing encroachment of AI in the legal profession—clinics remain critical to legal education,” says Allyson Gold, associate dean of experiential learning and director of the Medical-Legal Partnership Clinic. Clinics are transformative experiences for many law students, notes Professor Gold, where students can apply what they learn in doctrinal courses and figure out who they are as professionals. 

In Professor Zaneta Robinson’s (JD ’03) Intellectual Property Law Clinic, students help clients secure trademarks and copyrights, but that’s usually not the only assistance clients need. For example, clinic students walk clients through who owns their intangible assets and draft contracts like assignments, licenses, and non-disclosure agreements.

“Clients may think they have rights in things that they don’t own, or they may have rights that they don’t realize they have,” says Professor Robinson. “On the front end, there’s a lot of client counseling and then we oftentimes spend more than a week or two just sorting out rights.”

Similarly, Professor Gold’s Medical-Legal Partnership Clinic relies on human connection. The clinic works with primary health care providers to identify potential legal issues, like substandard housing, lack of insurance, and improper denial of benefits, that might be causing or exacerbating a patient’s medical condition. Professor Gold says:

The ability to interact with others in legal settings extends beyond client relationships. IP clinic student and rising third-year law student Shyamaa Khan (JD ’26) says her work as a summer associate after her first year of law school often involved conducting research on her own and simply sending the results to her supervisor. After the clinic, she went back to Delaware-based IP boutique Devlin Law Firm for a second summer. Now she is better able to communicate with her colleagues about the research and legal conclusions.

In addition to interpersonal connections, clinics teach students non-linear, creative thinking. Professor Korzen points to a recent North Carolina Supreme Court case brought by restaurants seeking insurance coverage for business losses sustained during COVID-19 closures. Various restaurant industry groups filed amicus curiae—“friend of the court”—briefs in the case, which is not unusual. What was notable about one brief was that it was on behalf of an individual restaurant rumored to be a favorite of a key justice.

“I don’t think AI would be able to think outside the box that way,” says Professor Korzen.

One of the biggest benefits of law school clinics is the confidence boost they give lawyers-in-training. Third-year law student Sami Vincent (JD ’26) joined the IP clinic in her 2L year. She does not have any lawyers in her family and the clinic showed her “what it’s like working with a client.” 

According to Vincent, the clinic operates as a small law firm, with students working as associates with Professor Robinson. She recalls one client meeting where clinic students were using words like “intent to use,” a common trademark law term to describe a brand owner’s aim to begin providing products under a proposed trademark. Professor Robinson invited the students to back up and explain the concept in layman’s terms.

“The biggest thing I would say I learned is how to explain the law [to] someone who has no legal background in a way that makes sense to them,” Vincent says. The clinic allowed her to learn by trial and error in a low-stakes environment that prepared her for summer associate position with Sidley Austin’s Washington, DC, office.

Tech in Practice

But law schools also have a responsibility to prepare students for the technology they will use in practice. Professor Robinson is concerned that when students use generative AI tools before they have a legal foundation for their knowledge, they will not truly understand the lessons. Clinics help students contextualize their knowledge and put it into practice.

“If you do plan to use AI for generative purposes—for drafting an email or what have you—to the extent that there’s any legal advice, you’ll be in a better position to evaluate the accuracy and legitimacy of what AI created,” says Professor Robinson. “Without going through the exercise and building that mental muscle yourself, you open yourself up to vulnerabilities that just aren’t worth it, in my opinion.” 

Confidentiality is another major concern. Professor Gold says, “I tell students all the time, we have to be really careful about how we engage with AI. … You can’t feed information that you’ve gathered from a client interview into a generative AI system. That violates our duty of confidentiality.”

At Wake Forest Law, AI use in clinics and other classes can vary from professor to professor. Professor Korzen’s clinic doesn’t currently use generative AI, but he will be incorporating it into a legislative drafting course. He plans to require students to prompt AI to help draft a proposal for a local ordinance or a state statute. Students will then discuss the prompts as well as the substance of the proposals.

Vincent has had many conversations in her classes about issues like confidentiality, as well as the impact on legal doctrine, like how using generative AI as an artist or author might affect copyright ownership. As a summer associate, she has used AI tools to help streamline or summarize research. She recently read several highly technical research papers for her work in patent litigation. After she had read the papers, she used firm-approved AI to summarize their findings and confirm her own understanding. 

An Evolving Profession

Of course, this isn’t the first time the profession has gone through a major tech evolution. “There’s always a bit of panic every time we get a big, transformative technology, but I don’t think it will change the practice,” says Professor Gold. “It will [change] some elements of it, but I don’t think it fundamentally changes what it means to be a good lawyer.”

Clinic student Khan agrees. As an undergraduate, she says there was a lot of concern that “AI is going to take over the world and there’ll be no jobs left for us.” In contrast, “when I got to law school, a lot of my professors really stressed that, yes, AI can aid in research or AI can draft a contract for you, but the relationship you have with your clients can’t really be replaced with AI.”

As Professor Gold says, the advance in technology makes the clinical experience all the more important:

---