Banning AI in Law School: We've Seen This Before

1. Banning AI in Law School: We've Seen This Before

The University of Chicago Law School announced a new policy for teaching AI with headlines "AI strategy bans phones, laptops in class for first year students." What does history have to say?

Steven Sinofsky

Jul 11, 2026

This week the University of Chicago Law School announced a new policy regarding the use of AI in teaching law. The headlines read “AI strategy bans phones, laptops in class for first year students.” What does history say about this sort of action so soon in the evolution and understanding of a new technology?

Excerpt from the announcement of new AI Strategy at Chicago Law School. The full policy is https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/ai-strategy-statement

Whether this is the right thing for a short time, a new long-term approach to knowledge tools, or a step backward is the subject of much debate. In the short term, it is probably fair to say the general concerns over the rise of AI in terms of jobs, replacing humans, and current limitations of the technology (to name just a few debate topics) mean this change is seen broadly positively. This is especially true because it is from a thought-leading intellectual powerhouse.

It might be a surprise to some, but almost 45 years ago Harvard Law School banned the use of the first truly portable computers. Students were bringing (lugging) the 25lb (11.5kg) Osborne 1—the computer I learned to program on—to exams to type and then print their answers. There were no caselaw databases, no internet (didn’t exist!), no modem, no battery even...just a loud grinding tractor fed dot matrix printer and the first version of WordStar on a 5” screen and extension cords. Other students used a typewriter, probably the one they got as a gift for graduating college.

Harvard Law student with his Osborne. This is one of the first few thousand units which you can tell because of the colored logo! They sell for way more on Ebay but the 90K floppy drives are notoriously difficult to keep working. Many often comment “the battery must have been huge” but in reality there was no battery at all. And almost no space left inside there. The 64K of memory took up a lot of square feet! This is from the full article on Harvard reproduced below.

Two students brought computers to the exam in Alan Dershowitz’s criminal law class. Mid-exam a note was passed to the Dean of Students. The brave computer user who sought no special permission to use a computer—not because they were a hero or rule breaker but because using a computer seemed as obvious as using a calculator in math class—instead of a typewriter was summoned to the Dean’s office. In a follow-up meeting the student was given permission to use a computer while a hearing was scheduled. The primary concern it seemed was the anxiety the computer created for other students with regard to fairness. The hearing was months off.

First the story was written about in the Harvard Law Record. Then the Wall Street Journal picked up the story, March 23, 1982, with the title of the front page story quoting one of the computer users “Will Computer Memories Replace Notes on the Shirt Cuff in Exams?” Then, Time Magazine covered the story:

Time Magazine, April 19, 1982 “COMPUTER BUST https://time.com/archive/6883742/education-computer-bust/

This was huge news among a tiny set of very interested people, myself included. Computers were new and scary, but the world was optimistic. Time Magazine had yet to announce the computer as “Machine of the Year” (December 1982) but the world was abuzz with the potential of a computer in every home and on every desk. Atari sold twice as many computers as the next leading company, Radio Shack, both more than either Apple (279,000 units) or IBM (240,000.) Literally almost no one had a computer with about 1.8M units sold collectively worldwide since 1977.

While the initial concerns were about a potential unfair advantage for students with computers—something that will later be known as the digital divide—some began to speculate about longer term concerns of computers providing a form of cheating such as pre-written text. Interestingly the idea of connecting the computer to a database of other text or case law resources was simply speculation at this point. It is worth noting that just a year later it would be routine to use a dial-up service to gain access to databases like legal cases as I did with my Osborne.

I was in high school using my Osborne when I first learned about this story. It appeared in the #2 issue of the magazine dedicated to Osborne users. Back then every computer had its own magazines. The story detailed with photos the whole Harvard experience. Below you can see the whole story. It is just too wild to read today. Deans and university presidents getting involved. Banning the use of a tool. Fear. Anxiety. It all seems too absurd over a computer.

Oh wait…this time is different.

In the end the school banned the use of computers and word processors from exams. The brave student told the Dean “I opened the door to 21st century technology and they slammed the door in my face.”

Seems crazy. I know.

Regardless, students increasingly used a computer in preparation of course notes, outlines, and assignments, though not in exams or take-home exams. In just a few years, the computer was ubiquitous in law school. By far the most interesting development at first was just how much students were typing compared to how recent graduates were practicing law where typing was the first thing you stopped doing as a lawyer.

Business school was the same way but instead of word processors it was spreadsheets. MBA students began using Lotus 1-2-3 in droves years before the banks and consultancies they would work for would make worksheets ubiquitous. The most tech savvy students were using VisiCalc on Apple ][ first of course.

My own college experience looked a lot like what I read about at Harvard Law. I brought my Osborne to school. I had the computer because my father had bought one to use for his wholesaler, even though he had no knowledge of computers whatsoever. It was a wild fluke that I ended up moving from the warehouse to the front office to figure out how to make use of it.

My freshman year (1982) had a required writing course. I just assumed I would use my computer as I had to write my admissions essay and even some papers in high school. I had the only computer in my dorm of nearly 100 students where Smith-Corona typewriters were the ubiquitous tool. To use a computer at Cornell meant slogging up the hill to the “terminal room” and using a connection to the IBM 4300 mainframe which was housed at the airport. When I set my Osborne up on my desk and dialed into the mainframe—no small feat—I was able to amaze my new classmates during orientation week.

I was so anxious having read the story about Harvard I actually asked my prof if I could use a computer before the first class even started. She was very excited to tell me that the writing program was embarking on an “experiment” (her words) to “test the quality of writing that students produce when using a word processor compared to a typewriter” and our section was deemed one of the sections that would use a word processor.

I kid you not. In my limited world view computers were already ubiquitous. I had computer books and magazines. I sold computer software I wrote the summer before arriving at school. I was in a computer club filled with NASA engineers working on the Space Shuttle. I was dialing up to FIDONet bulletin boards and downloading CP/M utilities. Literally everyone *I* knew used a computer.

But Cornell, like most every school, was skeptical. The first week of our writing class the dozen of us in class took a field trip from our 19th century, wood-paneled seminar room to a tiny and sterile closet of a room that housed two Wang “word processors.” These were computers from a then famous Boston-based company that did one thing and one thing only, which was word processing. They cost $10,000 and had monochrome portrait-oriented screens with elaborate keyboards featuring rows of dedicated function keys for word processing capabilities. There was what was called a “letter quality” printer which was like a Selectric typewriter with no keys. To use one we had to buy our own 8” floppy disks at the bookstore.

It was then my turn to meet with the Dean. When I asked to use my own Osborne in my room I had to seek permission from the Dean who was overseeing this experiment. Would using a computer invalidate the “data” or give me an advantage. A demo was impractical but I was asked to bring a sample printout to see if the prof could read it. I was told I needed to achieve letter quality output. I called home in a panic and using my magazine knowledge I secured a Royal electric typewriter that connected to the Osborne with a 2” wide ribbon cable from 47th Street Photo in NYC. It sounded like a strafing A-10 Warthog when I printed a paper. It was impressive because it basically “typed” faster than any human.

My classmates using the Wang constantly complained about the fact that the two word processors were oversubscribed by all the experimental sections and to use one required making a reservation. What the experiment failed to consider was that students would actually write at the computer not simply type. They originally thought students would use paper and pencil for a draft then reserve time to type the result in. Using the word processor was just a fancy typewriter.

The process of writing with a typewriter varied depending on whether it was an essay, report, or research paper. Generally one had handwritten notecards that could be sorted and organized. Following that, a hand-written outline was created. From that outline a draft was written out longhand. Some assignments required going over that with the prof or TA. Corrections were made with red ink on that draft. Then a final draft was typed from that. As the semester progressed and deadlines approached, many of those steps got skipped. It turns out those analog tools were ripe for misuse as well.

This was a really important lesson. The people controlling things had no idea how the actual “work to be done” would change because of the tool. Writing on a typewriter while difficult was also expensive. One could only correct small mistakes, and awkwardly so, with whiteout or just a pen. Once you removed the paper from the typewriter aligning any fix was impossible. A typewriter was not for writing or thinking. It was simply better handwriting.

I had no paper drafts. I was using a word processor to outline, write, rewrite, arrange, spell check, and more. I was somewhere between annoyed and puzzled at the experiment being done. I wrote my entrance essays using a word processor. In fact, it soon became provable that using a word processor freed a person to—potentially—be far more productive and produce much better output.

From “A History of Computing at Cornell” this is a photo of students lined up at the Cornell computer sales office c. 1984. A little known bit of trivia, but until Dell Computer came along computers could only be shipped commercially and not direct to consumer because of FTC regulations about radio emissions. So not only did you get a student discount but you saved a trip to a computer store which was sort of like buying a car.As it would turn out so would everyone else. While home for winter break January 1984, a tv commercial ran during the Super Bowl. While we thought of Orwell and Van Halen as 1984, the commercial Apple Computer brought a new meaning to the year. The incredible marketing and distribution plans from Apple made getting the new Macintosh on campus vastly easier than acquiring a computer at home and the relative portability was a dream. They were cheaper than an Osborne and came with a free word processor and paint program. Dozens of my

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