West Virginia University College of Law librarian Nicholas Stump recently presented at the annual meeting of the Southeastern Chapter of the American Association of Law Libraries. The meeting was hosted by the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY on May 16-18, 2024. Mr. Stump presented two programs at the meeting.
On Friday May 17, 2024, Mr. Stump presented a program titled "Critical Legal Research and the Biases of General Artificial Intelligence: What Law Librarians Need to Know."
From the program:
This program covers what critical perspectives in law librarianship, including Critical Legal Research (CLR), can tell us about emerging use of generative AI in legal research and law practice. CLR is a decades-old movement that investigates how the dominant legal research regime and its practices perpetuate biases that reflect the societal status quo, inhibiting emancipatory thought. CLR has well-established criticisms of traditional print formats and online platforms, but the introduction of generative AI presents novel challenges. These include the ways in which biases, both in the hegemonic worldviews of human programmers and in proprietary legal data, are embedded in LLM (large language model)-driven legal research and law practice tools, as well as the aspirations of their proprietors to the extreme automation and ultimate concealment of the legal research process. Law librarians must grapple these challenges in the legal research classroom and beyond as we enter an era in which the corporate duopoly that controls legal publishing pushes these problematic tools on our students and patrons.
On Saturday, May 18, 2024, Mr. Stump spoke on a panel with Savanna Nolan (University of Georgia) and Devan Orr (William & Mary) titled "The Gen-Z Playbook: Teaching and the NextGen(eration)."
From the program:
Next year’s first year law student class could include students born as late as 2004! While a new generation doesn’t require new teaching methods, considerations like the NextGen Bar Exam, increased scholarship on neurodiversity and accommodations, and the ever-increasing rate of changes to platforms like Lexis and Westlaw (especially in light of AI technology) should change how we educate Gen-Z law students. The presenters will give attendees an overview of these topics and provide resources for further reading. There will also be a discussion where participants can share and listen about teaching concerns and strategies related to Gen-Z.
Find more of Mr. Stump's scholarship on SSRN and his SelectedWorks scholarship profile.