Task Triage · For law teachers · Free
A law teacher’s day
The four questions, in order
- Question 1. Would the task put students’ personal data, their unpublished work, or confidential records or exam material into a tool your institution has not approved? If yes: do not give it to AI.
- Question 2. Does it call for your own academic judgment or decision, such as a mark, an integrity finding or a reference? If yes: do not give it to AI. It may support you, but you decide.
- Question 3. Would you be using AI to check AI’s own output? If yes: do not give it to AI. Check against an authoritative source instead.
- Question 4. Otherwise, ask whether the result is quick and easy to check against a source you hold. If yes: give AI the first draft and read it. If not: use AI for leads only and verify every point against an authoritative source before you teach it.
This is a practice framework, not a rule of law or of professional ethics. Your regulator’s rules and your employer’s policy always come first. No outside law and no tools are needed: apply the four questions to each task.
1.Tidy the wording of an assignment brief you wrote yourself. It contains no student names or data.
2.Draft ten multiple-choice questions on a topic from your own lecture notes, to be reviewed by you before use.
3.Summarise a long journal article to decide whether to put it on the reading list.
4.Ask for leading cases on a topic, for examples in next week’s lecture.
5.Paste a student’s essay, with their name and student number, into a free public AI service to get feedback ideas.
6.Decide the grade for a student’s essay.
7.Decide that a student plagiarised because a detection tool gave the essay a high score.
8.Ask the AI to confirm that the case on your lecture slide really exists.
9.Write a plain-language explanation of a doctrine for a first-year handout, using no student data.
10.Translate the key sections of a public foreign statute to use in a comparative seminar.
11.Draft a fictional fact pattern for a seminar exercise, with invented names and places.
12.Write a reference letter for a student, pasting in their grades and personal circumstances from the student record.
13.Draft a marking rubric from criteria you have already decided, to read and adjust yourself.
14.Turn your own lecture notes, with no student names, into a revision checklist.
Professional skills training. It is not legal advice, and it does not replace the rules of your regulator or the policy of your employer. It is not accredited by any court, regulator or professional body.