About This Tool

A learning tool for developing structured judgment about AI use in legal practice.

Purpose

The Legal AI Assessment Trainer helps law faculty, practitioners, and law students build the analytical skills needed to make responsible decisions about AI tool use in legal practice. Rather than providing a checklist to follow mechanically, it develops the judgment to assess novel situations as they arise — because the AI landscape changes faster than any static guide can track.

The Framework

This tool is built on a two-part framework:

Part 1 — Tool Taxonomy classifies legal AI tools along two dimensions: scope (task-agnostic vs. task-specific) and domain (general-purpose vs. legal-domain), producing four categories: TAG, TAL, TSG, and TSL. Understanding what category a tool belongs to is the first step in assessing whether it fits a particular task.

Part 2 — Assessment Framework provides a structured three-stage process for deciding whether and how to use AI for a legal task: profiling the task’s risk across five dimensions, evaluating candidate tools on four dimensions, and matching tools to tasks with appropriate safeguards.

Three Practice Modes

Spot Assessment presents a scenario and asks you to select the most appropriate tool category. This builds pattern recognition — the ability to quickly size up a situation and identify the right category of tool.

Decision Tree walks through the full three-stage assessment framework, step by step. You rate the task’s risk dimensions, select an appropriate tool category, and identify required safeguards. This builds procedural competence — the ability to work through the framework methodically.

Risk Spotter presents a scenario with a proposed tool choice and asks you to identify the risks. This builds critical evaluation skills — the ability to spot what could go wrong with a particular tool selection.

Audience

The scenarios span practice areas (litigation, transactional, criminal, regulatory, IP, family, employment, immigration, estate planning) and audiences (law students, practitioners, faculty, in-house counsel). Filter by audience and practice area to focus on scenarios most relevant to you.

Limitations

This tool teaches a framework for thinking about AI assessment. It does not substitute for understanding the specific terms of service of any particular tool, the current ethics opinions in your jurisdiction, or the applicable court orders in your cases. The AI landscape changes rapidly. Use this tool to build judgment, not to find answers to specific tool-selection questions.

Currency

The underlying framework reflects the state of legal AI tools, ethics opinions, and regulatory guidance as of February 2026. The scenarios are illustrative and should be updated as the landscape evolves.