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Christine Schauder, who joined the Law Library in 2025 in the new role of head of emerging legal technologies, oversees the Law School’s Legal Tech Series, an ongoing program that offers training and resources for students to learn about emerging legal tools, including those powered by AI.

“We are devoted to ensuring our students are practice-ready by providing them with foundational legal research skills but also teaching them how, when, and if they should incorporate all of these new generative AI tools,” she says.

Recent Legal Tech Series events include a presentation about common AI hallucinations and how to mitigate the risk of AI-introduced errors, and an overview of the regulatory landscape related to AI. The Law Library also offers trainings for AI search enhancements in legal research databases like Lexis, Westlaw, and Bloomberg Law as well as demo opportunities for legal products like Gavel, Spellbook AI, and Rhetoric’s Cicero—tools that are designed for document automation, contract drafting and review, and improving oral advocacy, respectively. The goal is to introduce students to software that law firms are using already.

“Part of my job is trialing and demoing these different generative AI products that attorneys are currently using, so that we can give our students an opportunity to experience and test them out,” says Schauder. “I want to make sure our students are prepared and experienced with these products so they are a step ahead of their fellow associates when they enter practice.”

The library maintains an online research guide dedicated to AI that is regularly updated and serves as a clearinghouse for a wide variety of resources. It includes links to American Bar Association guidance on the use of AI; relevant state, federal, and international rules and regulations; and the latest in AI and legal research news, including articles like “Generative artificial intelligence: Legal ethics issues,” written by Law Library Director Kincaid Brown, ’96, and published in the Michigan Bar Journal earlier this year.

Students also have subscription access to a number of leading-edge AI research tools, including products that are specifically tailored for legal tasks and trained on legal materials, a process known as retrieval-augmented generation that helps improve accuracy and minimize hallucinations.

“There are more and more AI products that do really specific tasks, and those are usually pretty good because they specialize rather than generalize,” Schauder says. “Complex legal questions often involve several different steps and databases, so if an AI focuses on just one part of that process, like analyzing a contract for specific clauses, it’s usually more accurate and a lot easier to double-check than a lengthy output from a complex legal question.”

While AI may enhance some aspects of legal research, the foundations remain largely unchanged. And there are real risks for students and lawyers who are overreliant on AI technology.

“It’s really important for students to understand the legal research process to use these tools effectively. Students need to have that foundational knowledge and be able to recognize credible sources to evaluate the quality of the output and continue on from there,” she says.

As of November 2025, the AI tools and databases that are available to Michigan Law students include:

• Two products from LexisNexis: Lexis+ and Protege. Lexis+ is integrated into the platform for drafting and advanced search, and to provide other resources like document analysis and legal workflow recommendations. Protege is an AI assistant that offers a more conversational and customizable user experience.
• Westlaw CoCounsel. This generative AI tool uses Westlaw’s repository of case law and other legal resources to support document review, research, drafting, and other tasks as well as Westlaw AI Deep Research, which performs multistep research queries and produces results with detailed notes and links to primary sources.
• Two tools from Bloomberg Law: Answers and AI Assistant. Bloomberg Law Answers is a generative AI tool integrated into the platform’s legal database. Bloomberg Law AI Assistant is a chat-based interface that is focused on document summary and analysis.
• Rhetoric’s Cicero. Cicero is an AI-powered tool focused on helping to improve oral arguments, cold call responses, and interview skills.
• LegaltechHub. This directory includes AI technologies as well as articles providing insights into trends, innovations, and best practices in the legal field
• A number of AI tools from Google. Students have access to Gemini—a generative AI chatbot tool that can be used across a suite of Google products—and NotebookLM, an AI tool that allows users to upload documents for analysis, drafting, and other tasks.