Frances Seabridge, Andreas Georgiou
Keywords: commercial awareness; pedagogy; curriculum development; legal technology; employability.
On 1 June 2026 the Birmingham Law School hosted a Reimagining Commercial Law Workshop, funded by the Centre for Employability, Professional Legal Education and Research (CEPLER) and attended by legal practitioners, technology experts, and colleagues across higher education.
The meeting explored developments in generative artificial intelligence (GAI), employability and recruitment, commercial awareness, equality, diversity, and inclusion, and curriculum and assessment design. Its aims were to evaluate the content of the module and identify ways to stimulate curiosity and prepare students for varied career pathways. This blog post focusses on developments in GAI and its impact on legal education and practice.
Legal Technology & Innovation
Derek Southall (Hyperscale Group) was the lead expert on technology, digitalisation, and the impact of GAI on the legal profession. He argued that GAI has the potential to improve access to justice by providing free and immediate legal advice to individuals across social and economic backgrounds. This challenges solicitors’ traditional role as gatekeepers of legal knowledge, requiring law firms to adapt their practices and marketing strategies to emphasise specialisation, reputation, convenience and personal relationships with clients.
GAI can improve efficiency by automating tasks such as document review, legal research, contract analysis and other routine tasks, allowing legal professionals to focus on work requiring professional judgement and strategic thinking. It may also enable new services, including AI-assisted compliance monitoring and risk management. Future developments are likely to involve greater integration of GAI into existing services, particularly through major technology providers (‘hyperscalers’), as well as specialised publishing and research tools.
These developments have significant implications for legal education and the skills required of future lawyers. Commercial Law students must (i) understand contemporary legal practice and technological innovation, (ii) gain insight into how client needs are changing, and (iii) learn the effective use of existing and emerging GAI tools.
Legal Practice
Ali Tabari (St Philips Chambers) submitted written comments. From a barrister’s perspective, GAI currently has limited value beyond summarising lengthy judgments and completing routine tasks at an analytical level equivalent to the undergraduate level. It cannot replicate professional judgement, such as reliably identifying the ratio of a case. Reported cases of GAI misuse by lawyers raise further concerns.
GAI tools are clearly used in job applications, which creates recruitment challenges. Either the use of GAI is so obvious the application is disregarded, or applications using GAI tend to mask candidates’ true deficiencies and making them all the more apparent at the interview stage. Significant discrepancies between the application and interview prompt questions about an applicant’s honesty and integrity, potentially requiring disclosure to the Inns of Court.
Lucy Dolan and Rob Bridgman (Gowling WLG) shared views in their respective roles as Early Talent Manager and Partner at a global law firm. One of the main areas of disagreement with the technology expert was the claim that GAI improves access to justice. In reality, it merely creates the impression that it does. Overreliance on GAI can lead to poor legal decisions and divert attention away from the structural reforms needed to make legal advice more accessible. In the workplace, GAI is becoming more prevalent, yet trainees do not know when or how to use it effectively.
From a recruitment perspective, law firms are not seeking candidates who are already proficient in the use of GAI tools. Trainees will develop legal technology skills during their training, which provides a better opportunity for learning how to use GAI in commercial practice. Universities should not concentrate too heavily on teaching GAI skills. It would be useful for new recruits to have a baseline knowledge of the benefits and the pitfalls of using GAI. However, universities should prioritise the development of analytical skills, including the ability to navigate complexity, apply strategic thinking, and to deliver rational outcomes.
Higher Education (Business)
Dina Nathwani (Birmingham Business School) took the position that the evolution of GAI offers pedagogical benefits. It can reduce the time spent on repetitive tasks. It can be used to simulate real commercial transactions, for example by producing counterparty responses or dynamically altering the facts of a problem scenario. GAI can also be used to make exercises scalable and engaging. For example, students could be asked to compare human- and GAI-drafted documents to learn precision and clarity. This is highly aligned with what they will be asked to do as trainees in a professional environment.
Another example where GAI can have a positive impact is due diligence exercises, for example asking students to review a large volume of documents to identify risks and liabilities. GAI is particularly good at synthesising large regulatory landscapes and could be used effectively to navigate cross-border scenarios. Using GAI, students can move beyond learning what the rules are and investigate why business deals are structured in a particular way. This shift in mindset is the essence of ‘commercial awareness’.
The biggest risk of GAI is shallow learning and students outsourcing critical thinking. If students rely too much on GAI, their awareness of doctrinal issues will decline, and so will analytical depth. Effective assessment using GAI tools requires critique-based exercises, oral defence or explanation of the drafting process—not simple essay generation.
Higher Education (Law)
Shaid Parveen (Aston Law School) took the position that lawyers have always adapted to new technology, from typewriters and photocopiers to the introduction of online research databases. GAI is simply the latest development, and it will not be the last. The tools may change, but what the client pays for (professional judgement) does not.
GAI tools are already used extensively in practice. Firstly, they are used in surfacing legal authorities and summarising them in seconds (research). Secondly, they read entire data rooms to flag risks across complex transactions (due diligence). Thirdly, they produce first-cut contracts, client letters, and memos for the lawyer to refine (drafting). Fourthly, they sift through large volumes of documents to identify material information (disclosure and e-discovery). This demonstrates that GAI tools already perform a range of important tasks within law firms.
Yet the lawyer remains responsible for the outcome. The legal practitioner must pay regard to confidentiality and client privilege, ensure competent decision-making, comply with data protection rules, and uphold duties to the court. Students must develop these core competencies irrespective of the tools they use in their daily work.
Conclusion
Frances Seabridge and Andreas Georgiou (Birmingham Law School) acknowledged that guiding students in their use of GAI should be included as an element of the curriculum—especially given the latest headlines regarding the misuse of GAI by some solicitors and the repercussions for non-compliance with professional codes of conduct. In terms of demonstrating the ways in which GAI can distort the presentation of materials, it would be worthwhile considering a session on GAI, reviewing its use in the commercial law sector, but also highlighting the difficulties in using it for application purposes. Collaboration with law firms could assist in the provision of such a useful exercise.
The overall content of the module compares well with equivalent offerings at other universities. Targeted changes can be made to seminar exercises, using GAI to replicate real-world business scenarios. In terms of assessment, there are relatively straightforward exercises that could be employed, such as a “spot the difference” exercise asking students to compare GAI-produced work with a version marked by an academic. This work can build on the department’s ongoing review of assessment strategies.
This is a time of significant change. We continue to monitor internal and industry developments to inform curriculum design, support effective learning, and foster transferable skills.