This fall, the University of Chicago Law School will introduce a new course called the AI Lab. The course is designed to give students hands-on experience in building an artificial intelligence tool that aims to help users better understand tenant-landlord law across the United States.
William H. J. Hubbard, deputy dean and Harry N. Wyatt Professor of Law, said, “It’s unlike anything we have ever done. This initiative is not merely about helping students understand how to use AI tools in their legal work—it’s about creating AI tools so that students are standing in the shoes of a tech entrepreneur.”
Hubbard leads the Law School’s AI committee, which has spent two years monitoring developments in artificial intelligence within the legal profession and finding ways to integrate these advances into legal education.
“We want our students to be prepared to succeed professionally in the intersecting space of AI and the law, which is only going to keep growing,” Hubbard said. “This new opportunity will allow students to learn about it in a very immersive, hands-on way, and from an expert who has tangible experience.”
The course will be taught by Kimball Dean Parker, JD’13—a former student of Hubbard—who now serves as founder and CEO of SixFifty, a company specializing in automated legal documents and an AI database for employment law compliance. Parker described his approach: “We used something called ‘retrieval augmented generation’ to instruct the AI to not look at the internet and only look at our database of employment law information to answer questions from our customers.”
In the lab, students will build a database containing summaries of renter rights laws nationwide during the Autumn Quarter. They will also interview individuals with questions on landlord-tenant issues to ensure their product addresses real-world needs.
Parker compared generative AI development to using a blender: “The better the ingredients you put into the blender, the better the end-product will be. So, we’ll create a top-tier database of legal summaries and put it into our AI blender—and by the end of the course, we’ll release it to the public.”
The result will be an AI chatbot focused on renters’ rights—designed for accuracy and reliability—to assist people who lack access to traditional legal services.
“Every single state has different rules and laws around renter rights, and a lot of the information is very hard to find and in language that’s not easy to understand,” Parker said. “The goal is to create a tool that makes the law—in this case, landlord-tenant law—accessible to renters and landlords. There’s potential here to make a real impact on people’s lives.”
Previously at Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School, Parker led students in developing another legal-tech tool aimed at improving access to justice; however, that project did not utilize artificial intelligence.
Parker emphasized that understanding how AI works is becoming essential for future lawyers: “AI is like putty—you have to play with it to understand it,” he said. “The AI Lab is an opportunity for students to play in the sandbox of AI, to get hands-on experience with the defining technology of our age.“
He added that learning both how these tools function—and their limitations—will help graduates adapt more quickly as technology continues evolving.
“UChicago Law is a hotbed of ideas and innovation,” Parker said. “It has the smartest students and a renowned faculty. It’s the perfect place for this kind of project. I’m excited to dive in and see what we can create.”